Against Capitalism, Against Reformism

Making profits is shrouded in great mystery by the capitalists. They seek to make the workers believe that it is through some occult power that they make the processes of production yield them profits and build up great fortunes for them. There is no mystery about the source of profits.

The capitalists do not create wealth out of the aid in juggling with industry. They make profits because they purchase the labour-power of the workers for less than the value of the goods the workers produce, that is, they do not pay the workers the full value of their labour. There is not other way of making profits out of industry. When the workers are educated to the real nature of the profit system they lose all respect for the masters and their property. They see the capitalists in their true colours as thieves and parasites, and their "sacred" property as plunder. They see state, church,media and educational establishments  as tools of the exploiters and they look on these institutions with contempt. They understand the identity of interests of all wage workers and realize the truth of the slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

The capitalist system is based upon the production of commodities for profit — for the profit of a
small group who own the means of production, and who do no socially useful work. This means exploitation, wage-slavery, and misery for the masses who do all the useful and necessary work. The capitalist’s prosperity depends upon the making of profits and their conversion into capital. The higher the profits and the lower the wages, the greater is the accumulation of capital.Capitalist governments protects the rich and assists them to rob the workers. The only fight that you as a worker should be interested in, the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class for political power and the ownership of the machinery of production. It is the age-long class war. The only way out is to introduce a system of society in which production is carried on for use, for the benefit of all.

The desire for profits is the motive force which drives the capitalist class to use its capital in the production of wealth. In order to secure profits the workers must be exploited. The plain fact is that a numerically small group of people, the capitalists, who own the machinery of production and the natural resources of the country, have the majority at their mercy. The opposite of low wages are big profits. The present industrial system divides the people into two classes. Anyone with a grain of common sense will admit that. There are people who work for wages and those who employ the wage workers. There are the people who own the industries and those who must go to the owners of industry or their representatives to plead for the chance to earn a living.

The ownership of industry is the source of the power of the profit-seeking class. It gives them control of the opportunities of people to secure the necessities of life. The millions of men and women in this country who are dependent upon the wages they earn for a living are economic serfs. They have not won the “inalienable right of life, liberty, and happiness” as the American Constitution puts it because their ability to earn the necessities of “life, liberty, and happiness” can be taken from them by the owners of industry, and is taken from them whenever the owners of industry are unable to make profits for themselves from the labour of the workers.

The power to hire and fire the workers, to give and take away the opportunity to earn a living, carries with it the power to compel the workers to work for such wages as will leave the capitalists a profit from their labour. The lower the wages for which the capitalists can purchase the labor-power of the workers and the longer their hours of labour, the greater will be the capitalists’ profits. Naturally, the capitalists pay the lowest wages at which they can induce the workers to work. Since they are in a position to deny the workers an earning if the workers do not accept their terms, they have been able to keep the wages at little more than a subsistence level.

The workers naturally seek to increase their wages and reduce their hours of labour. They endeavor to secure for themselves more of the wealth they produce and better working conditions. The capitalists resist. for they can see their profits being menaced by the workers’ demands. The workers organise their power and refuse to work unless their demands are granted, and we have a strike with all its accompaniments of stoppage of production, misery and suffering for the workers, and rioting and bloodshed when the capitalists bring in their strikebreakers, or call in the government to assist them in forcing the workers into submission

Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. A relatively small minority recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, while most seek an accommodation with capitalism  to try  to satisfy their needs within the system rather than by overthrowing it. Reformists will make proposals as to how the present regime should deal with problems without ant fundamental change. Reformists talk about government policy because they seek to govern. When capitalism was in its boom-days, there was some hope that capitalism could grant, and reformists could wrest concessions for the workers. Since capitalism has been in recession and it cannot grant substantial concessions. Trade union leaders have found they are unable to gain concessions through negotiations and  compromises. Declining profits hampered the capitalists and they could not give in easily to the economic demands made on them.

 Reform politics is to accept capitalism; to work within its limits. What is needed is unity of thought and action. Far better no organisation at all than a fake form which divides the workers against themselves and misleads them in the interests of the employers.