Wake up, workers

Capitalism knows no law but the law of its own will. It acknowledges but one law — the law of force. Capitalist society, like all class societies, is divided into unequals. So long as one class continues to own the means of production, and another class owns nothing but its ability to work, which it is compelled to sell to the other class in order to live – the best government in the world, composed of the best men and adopting the best laws, cannot possibly establish equality between the two classes.  Capital always seeks to intensify its exploitation of labor. Labour seeks to resist the lowering of its working and living standards, and attempts to improve them. Capital always seeks to strengthen its power in society. Labour defends itself from this growing power and tries to develop its own.  In view of the fact that the capitalists are so few and the workers so many, the workers could impose their will by sheer weight of numbers. The government is the executive committee of capitalism, the over-all manager of its common affairs. A machine whose basic function is to maintain the rule of one class over another is necessarily also a machine of oppression. The capitalist government is therefore an instrument for maintaining the power over society of the capitalist class and for suppressing the class that is ruled over, the workers. The capitalist government exists to keep labour in the position of the exploited class.

It is  impossible to gain influence or control over the government without organisation. The capitalists are organised economically, in powerful industrial and financial associations, and politically, in big parties. They have the wealth which makes it possible to organise, control and maintain them. They have always enjoyed the unrestricted right to organise them. Capitalists have no difficulty in maintaining their political parties. But countless restrictions and obstacles are placed in the way of independent working class parties, even in such matters as getting on the ballot, and above all in the fact that the workers do not have the wealth that the capitalists use to maintain their parties and conduct their election campaigns.

The right of free speech  is enjoyed equally by all only in form and not in reality. The economic power of the capitalists enables them to own the mass media. If  they do not own the media outright, they control it firmly, through advertising or simply by virtue of the fact that the owners and editors have a thoroughly capitalist point of view themselves. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of creating and influencing opinion through its control of the mass media. In a thousand different ways it instills its class ideas into the minds of the workers. It poisons their thinking. It not only gets them to believe that capitalism is eternal and natural, but that socialism is unnecessary and impossible. It even gets many of them to oppose such an elementary necessity as union membership. If the capitalist class can do ninety-nine percent of the talking and writing, because of its economic power, and the working class only one percent – then we do not have a genuine democracy but, as we have called it, a bourgeois democracy.

 Are we doomed forever to be wage slaves of capitalism? Must we endure the exploitation and misery of capitalism without hope of changing society and our position in it?

We are not helpless. We need not be so many submissive, acquiescent individuals. It is no longer possible to oppress us at will. Every socialist should recognise the mission and encourage its growth. Every worker should recognise the socialist ballot as the weapon of their class and use it accordingly and not vote to perpetuate the system. Until then, as in the past, the Socialist Party shall support every strike and when they lose any of these struggles, no disheartening words from our journal shall add to the bitterness of their defeat. We understand capitalism will over time always prevail unless it is overthrown. The attitude of the Socialist Party toward the trades-union movement broadly endorses it and is one allowing it to manage its own internal affairs, without meddling which must result in harm and no possible good.