An Appeal

ABOLISH WAGE-SLAVERY

No sane man can be satisfied with the present system. 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 useful work. This means exploitation, wage slavery, and misery for the masses who do all the useful and necessary work. The only way out is to introduce a system of society in which production is carried on for use, for the benefit of all. But clearly such a system can only be instituted by class conscious 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.

Unions are essential for the working class. Without them, workers would still be subject to the every whim and fancy of the employers and their foremen. But unions, while indispensable in the struggle of the workers against capital, have limits as well. the capitalist class and the working-class stand like contending armies, openly opposed to each other. The class lines are clearly defined. There is no mistaking who is a capitalist and who is a worker, who is rich and who is poor. The organisation of rich class is almost complete. The capitalists are banded together in their Chambers of Commerce, their manufacturers’ associations. The workers are organised in their trade unions.

The capitalist class is the most astute, the most cunning, the most resourceful ruling class in the world. It has been made so by centuries of experience of pillage and piracy in all parts of the world. Such a ruling class, naturally, knows well the art of protecting itself. How often have the working-class revolts been either cunningly betrayed and dispersed, or crushed and drenched in blood?

 Capitalism has played its part in the history of mankind. It is no longer workable. It must be uprooted and destroyed, and a new system of industry built in its place. This is the historic task of the working class. Make it a real fight against low wages, bad working conditions, but more important, against the capitalists and the whole capitalist system. You are fighting against the bosses who rob and oppress you and that wherever workers fight the bosses they are right. Whenever the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution fail for any reason to realize profit, it is in their power to cease production or distribution and the world’s workers may starve.

 We wish to make it quite clear as to our exact aim and object. We are socialists, wishful above all things to advance socialism, and by socialism we mean the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system. Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is based upon production for use. The corporate wealth controls the capitalist government of all nations and will to the end of capitalism. Corporate wealth is the result of economic and industrial evolution. Until corporate wealth is supplanted by common wealth, it will continue to write our laws and to enforce them or not, as best pleases its owners. The Socialist Party declares  its object to be the abolition of wage slavery by the establishment of a system common ownership of the  means of production and distribution, to be administered by society in the common interest of all its members, and the complete emancipation of the socially useful classes from the domination of capitalism.

The longevity of the SPGB lies not in the personality of its members, nor in the ability of its propagandists; it lies in the fact that all the  teaching of this party has been, from the outset, based upon the class struggle – upon a recognition of the fact that the struggle between the Haves and the Have Nots is the main factor in politics, and that this fight can only be ended by the working class seizing hold of political power and using this power to transfer the ownership of the means of life from the hands of the capitalist to the community, from individual to social ownership. He who controls my bread controls my head, and so the contest between modern capitalism and socialism resolves itself into the age-old question of human slavery. Socialists  realizes that the issues which divide the capitalist political camps are merely quarrels between rival groups of capitalists over the division of the spoils which they have expropriated from the workers. He is no more interested in the outcome of these political quarrels than he would be in the result of a quarrel between two hold-up men who had robbed him of his purse and who had fallen out over a division of its contents.

The Socialist Party calls upon workers to join it in the overthrow of capitalism thru capturing the powers of government and  transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism.
It urges workers to join it in the struggle to usher in a better day. For the first time in the world’s history a subject class has it in its own power to accomplish its own emancipation without an appeal to brute force. The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production.  It is therefore a question not of “reform,’ the mask of fraud, but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by the co-operative commonwealth. Every worker who understands the interest of class and the nature of the struggle in which it is involved, will once and for all time cast their lot with the Socialist Party, which is pledged to abolish the capitalist system, class-rule and wage-slavery—a party which does not compromise, but, preserving inviolate the principles which quickened it into life. It is simply a question of capitalism or socialism, of despotism or democracy, and they who are not wholly with us are wholly against us.

If only the working class would use their eyes and see; their ears and hear; their brains and think, how soon this Earth could be transformed.