We are living in the capitalist system, and have to conform to, while working to transform it. We cannot get outside the capitalist system, with all its results and influences; we have to deal with things as they are, not as we would like them to be. There are the worthy people who advocate universal peace and brotherly love. A desirable ideal, and one to which we in the Socialist Party look forward with hope in its speedy realisation, but one absolutely unattainable in the midst of the innumerable antagonisms of the capitalist system.
In order to destroy capitalism we have to act now, in and with the actual existing circumstances and means of to-day, and we have to consider how best those existing means and circumstances can be turned to our purpose. The system is no doubt dependent on the men who carry it on, but, on the other hand, these are dependent on the system, or they would cease to be capitalists. So long as they remain capitalists and wish to realise profits, or even are not prepared to face ruin as such, they will find themselves involved in the conflicts which are the inevitable results of capitalism. Wall St and the City of London has always been on the side of that policy made for war. Not perhaps that, they wished for war – but they were unwilling to make the sacrifice which would have prevented it. For the British capitalists they are able to persuade their fellow countrymen that they are fighting in defence of all that is good. They must get the latter to hate the foreigner. The capitalist system defends its own interests by spreading confusing ideas on the real nature of the system.
Our chief aim must be to warn the workers against allowing themselves to be misled by the lies of the media and the mutual recriminations of capitalist groups, and to remember that the worker in all countries is just as much a victim of capitalist oppression as they are and that they are compelled by circumstance to help each other against the common foe – Capitalism.
The capitalist class live in great splendour by exploiting the working class through the daily robbery of the enormous wealth the workers produce. In contrast to this, intense exploitation, oppression, poverty and misery characterise the lives of the working class. The working class, is made up of those who are deprived of the ownership of the means of production and therefore are forced to sell their labour power as a commodity to the capitalist class. The working class participates directly in production, transportation, communication, service, agriculture, and commerce. It is the class which creates the wealth of society and from which the capitalists extract surplus value. The working class also encompass the reserve army of unemployed, including old and disabled workers and semi-permanently and permanently unemployed workers forced to live on public assistance.
Why unity? Only by uniting the forces of the workers on the basis of a class struggle policy can the workers hope to even defend themselves from the attacks of the capitalists. The current disunity of the trade union movement should be apparent to every worker. Division within the the trade union movement translates into defeats for the workers, because the bosses take advantage of them to lower the standard of living of the entire working class.
Humanity is threatened with complete annihilation and there is only one force able to save it and that is the working class. The old capitalist ‘order’ has ceased to function and its further existence is now in question. The final outcome of the capitalist mode of production is chaos. This chaos can only be overcome by the working class to establish real order. It must break the rule of capital, make wars impossible, abolish the frontiers between states, transform the whole world into a community where all work for the common good and realise the freedom and brotherhood of peoples.
The workers must use the capture of political power as a weapon against their class enemies and to effect the economic reconstruction of society for the beginning of the real history of human liberation. Socialism is the only way out of the historic crisis that faces humanity. Reformists who put forward the utopian demand for the re-structuring of the capitalist economic system only postpone the revolution. Despite popular theories of the working class “dying away,” or being “bought off,” or losing its revolutionary potential, members of the working class are suffering more than ever before from capitalist exploitation and oppression. Growing in size and strength the global working class has “nothing to lose but its chains and a world to win.”
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