Legalised Theft

Those who seek short-cuts may all too easily lose their course. Organisation means getting together with a common understanding and a common end in view, and working systematically for the attainment of that end. For the workers to organise effectively, they must have a correct understanding of their position in society and of the conditions under which they live and work. If they fail to understand these things, they will either not organise at all or will organise in an ineffective manner. The effectiveness of their organisation depends on the correctness of their understanding. The better they understand conditions the more effectively they will organise. To change society and end oppression, we need a plan to get from where we are now to liberation - a strategy that will work and which will address the fundamental issue of who are our friends and who are our enemies, that explains how we will go about uniting all who can be united to end the existing order of things.

Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers. Huge corporations and financial institutions are headed by a wealthy oligarchy that dominates the political and economic  life of this planet. This handful of capitalists control world industry and commerce  and make fabulous profits off the labour of working people. The capitalists and their spokesmen endlessly vaunt the merits of our country where “everyone has an equal opportunity.” The capitalists 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, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. 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 pay. The capitalists claim this is a fair exchange. But it is robbery. In reality, a worker gets paid for only a small part of the value he produced. The rest, the surplus value, goes straight into the boss’s pocket. Capitalists do not pay us for the amount of work we do. They are only willing to pay us wages for part of the value we produce, only the wages which are absolutely necessary to maintain ourselves and our families. The rest of the value we produce, the surplus value, gets converted into their profits when they sell the products, the goods and services, we produce for them. This process is the exploitation of labour where a portion of our labour becomes their only source of profit. It is legalised theft.  It is the law itself that upholds the rights of private property. It is the law itself which upholds the authority of the bosses over us in our work. He is not free who, deprived of the instruments of labour, remains at the mercy of the privileged who are their owners. The working class makes its living by selling its ability to work. The capitalists own the
places and things that are used to create goods and services. They appropriate for  themselves all that is produced by the collective labour of the working class. This gives  rise to an irrepressible conflict, a clash of basic interests that can be solved by the  working class taking all power into its own hands.

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! The working class has always fought against the capitalists and has a proud history of struggle. There can never be class peace between exploiter and exploited, between boss and worker. The capitalists will fight to the end to protect their system.  It is the the police, the courts, the prisons, and the armed forces that are used against us when we resist. The entire government is a tool of the capitalist class. The economic struggle has had to take on the government – legislative restrictions, trade union controls and court injunctions to impose those constraints

The working class, for its part, cannot eliminate exploitation and poverty unless it overthrows the capitalist system. It must wipe away the nightmare of capitalism. The history of capitalism is also the history of workers resistance. The capacity of the working class to take its destiny into its own hands has been repeatedly shown. Concessions have been wrenched from the capitalist class but concessions are never permanent and we are presently losing some of what the working class has won in the past

 Ownership of the means of production is decisive in determining who has power in any society. When socialists look at the issue of class we see that  every kind of society, from ancient times until now, is organised around its tools - it  means of producing things that satisfy people's needs and wants. Ownership of the  means of production is basic. Classes are large groups of people, who have a defined  relationship to the means of production, such as ownership. The result of the these differences in who owns what means a difference in who gets how much wealth.

Putting that control in the hands of those who produce the wealth, the working class, is the first step in creating the basis for real equality among all people. Only socialism can respond to the aspirations of the working class. The struggle for socialism is a worldwide struggle.