One Planet, One People, For the Common Good

CLASS WAR

History is forever repeating itself without us learning much from it. The halo of capitalism has been smashed by the recession. The halo of our industrial system is gone. It is no longer a sacred thing, which must not be meddled with because of fear of the consequences. For years the working-class has been silent, a sleeping giant lulled to sleep by its own victories and the ability of capitalism to expand and provide a gradually rising standard of living. The working-class has had to struggle to realise these gains, but this struggle has been contained within the limits and rules established by the system. Now the system has been unable to raise real wages for the majority of workers or to prevent a drop in the living standards.  All sorts of estimates are made of the number of unemployed. One thing is sure. The number is not getting any smaller, but instead, it grows larger as each year passes by. The future looks as black as the past. The workers are beginning to ask: Will unemployment ever end? What is the world coming to? Capitalism’s instability and the growing crisis affects every aspect of life.

The lives of the workers are made up of worry, anxiety, insecurity, and hardships. There is the monotonous grind of uninteresting drudgery, the constant penny-pinching to make ends meet, and the continual necessity of learning to do without things. Workers are  abused like dogs by tyrannical foremen, pauperised by low wages, destroyed by piecework systems, crushed to death by faulty equipment. All this misery is created so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can continue to line their pockets. The only protection the workers have had from the most savage exploitation, the sole thing that has kept us from sinking into complete degradation is our trade unions. These organisations have achieved results entirely upon the basis of the amount of power they have been able to exert.

Profits and wages clash, and profits beat down wages. The two basic classes in our society, the working class and the capitalist class, are locked in a bitter struggle. A handful of capitalists  make fabulous profits off the labour of working people.  All the major means of production - the factories, the mines, telecommunications and transportation – are concentrated in the hands of  capitalists who employ millions of workers. Every bit of capitalists’ vast possessions was stolen from the people. It’s the capitalists that get rich by appropriating the fruits of our labour. At the end of a work week the worker collects his or her pay. The capitalists claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, a worker gets paid for only a small part of the value he or she produced. The rest, the surplus value, goes straight into the boss’s pocket. The bosses get rich, not because they have “taken risks” or “worked harder,” as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and reduce the number of employees with speed-ups, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. And if the boss thinks he can make more profit somewhere else, he just closes his factory and throws the workers out on the street.

The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or fight it! As long as the wages system continues, part of the wealth which the workers create will be kept back from them. The share which is withheld from the workers is the larger share, and, as machinery increases and improves, the share will grow larger. The things necessary for the production of wealth must be made the common property of the workers, and must be controlled by them. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, advocates the organisation of the workers for the purpose of taking control of the means of production. The Socialist Party is not a political party in the sense that other parties are because it has no reform to advocate. Can reforms help the workers? Reforms are the trade of politicians. Reforms invariably result from economic pressures on the employers and so far as the workers is considered, their sole effect is to render tolerable if not beautiful the capitalist or wages system. The revolution comes about because of the economic experience of the working class, and has for its accomplishment the abolition of the wages system and the entire overthrow of capitalism to the end waste and want. We shall not compromise with the capitalists.

There exists a false belief and trust in the Labour Party, which is often considered a working-class party. The majority of its supporters are drawn from the workers.  This party cannot, and will not, free the workers; the workers must free themselves. We workers would be more than foolish to help one section of the capitalist robbers against another section. The capitalist robbers as a whole rob the workers and the robbers’ division of the spoils is not our problem. Rather, our problem is to expropriate the expropriators.

 The World is rich in natural resources. It is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation.  There can never be class peace between exploiter and exploited, between boss and worker.The working class cannot eliminate exploitation and poverty unless it overthrows the capitalist system.