TO BE FREE, YOU MUST DARE TO BE FREE

The British capitalist economy remains in the grip of the crisis, the worst crisis since the thirties. We in the Socialist Party keep arguing that it was not the bankers but the capitalist, system which is at fault.  Such crises are an inescapable feature of the capitalist system. This system cannot ensure the harmonious growth of the economy, cannot ensure work and well being for all the working people, cannot avoid economic crises. Capitalist society is built upon our sweat and blood, our misery and want. Our victories on the economic field are turned against us, and our economic slavery is reinforced by an absolute political dictatorship of capitalism. Capitalists, as a class, run no risks whatever; the unfortunate in the competitive struggle for gain are simply wiped out by their competitors, who benefit by their downfall. Shareholders in capitalist companies rarely or never render any service to the company, or the community, as shareholders. In the vast majority of cases they have never visited the enterprises from which they draw their dividends.

Thus our economic struggle must of necessity become a political one. The class struggle ceases to be a struggle for higher wages and shorter hours, and becomes a struggle for the supremacy of the working class. The greedy employers are howling for lower wages and the further deterioration of working conditions.

Under capitalism, with its wage slavery, the worker and his family are nominally free; but, as we have seen, the land, the tools and all the product of his or her labour belong to the employing class. The workers are at liberty to change their individual masters, if they can, that is all. There is a continuous class war between wage slaves and the capitalist class, with its parasites. So long as wages are paid by one class to another class, so long will men and women remain slaves to the employing class.

So today the government is preparing the new attack on the whole working class by a preliminary drive against the foreign-born workers by advocating that all foreign-born workers be registered like criminals, photographed, and fingerprinted. The aims of this capitalist drive against the great mass of foreign-born workers are plain. First, the exploiters want to lower the standard of living and the conditions of employment of millions of our workers who happen to be foreign migrants. Then they will blame and attack these worse oppressed and more ruthlessly exploited foreign workers to the native workers for the degrading conditions they themselves have forced upon these labourers. The capitalists are thus hoping to sow dissension in and divide the working class in order to crush more easily all the workers, native and foreign alike. The workers must marshal their forces and close their ranks in defence of their unions and, indeed,  their lives! Wage slaves cannot emancipate themselves from slavery to the employing class, until they themselves cease to compete with one another for wages.

Wage-earners are thrown out of employment, not because they are clamouring for impossible wages, still less because they are unwilling to work, but because the employing class itself cannot produce at a loss, and therefore shuts down its factories or only runs them on short time. Wages paid in money seem to workers to come to them from above, instead of being only the value of a portion of the goods they themselves produce, paid to them in the form of money. They owe this blunder to their own condition of servitude.

Workers are not organised politically to meet their enemy. We do not have a powerful party of the worker,  an independent working class political party unreservedly committed to the protection of the interests of the workers. The Socialist Party is painfully aware of the fact that today the overwhelming majority of the working class is not yet sufficiently class-conscious or convinced of the necessity of socialism.

The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the working class and their conversion to socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first job of a socialist party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. The winning of seats in Parliament may well serve as useful means of serving these objects; but they are only means, and not the only means, and they must certainly not be permitted to supersede the objects themselves. No socialist will deny that it is a help to the movement to win a Parliamentary seat for socialism; but it is a hindrance rather than a help if the seat is won by a sacrifice of principle or by any sort of compromise which restricts the liberty of action of the socialist elected. When our men and women go to Parliament they want to go with a direct socialist mandate, and if they cannot go with that they had better stay outside. It is of no importance to us that this, that, or the other individual should be elected to the House of Commons. It is vital however, that a socialist should be elected and a seat won for socialism.  From this standpoint, therefore, it is better for a socialist to fight and be beaten as a socialist than to fight and win under any other banner.  Because we are such a small minority our most important work is to be done, not in Parliament but in the country at large. Our value will be agitational.

Reformism is trickery used to keep the working class under wage slavery. Reformists maintain that we can arrive at a certain “socialism” by winning reforms one after the other. What they don’t say is that whatever the bosses has to give up with one hand after a hard struggle, he will just take back with the other.  Socialists make no compromises with capitalism; they fight it relentlessly. To fight against reformism means to stop creating illusions about capitalism. The workers cannot wage a successful struggle against their own exploiting class and at the same time put their trust in organisations that have been and are hampering and betraying the struggles of their brothers and sisters here and  in other countries. The workers must organise an independent working class mass political party consisting of all workers. The Socialist Party calls upon all workers to join into one mighty army, to present one common front against the one common enemy, the employing class!

There are two roads we can follow. One way is to say: “Well, that’s too hard to deal with and let’s just deal with the easy problems, just with the day-to-day problems. Let’s just talk to the workers about things they can agree with us and understand, not about revolution and socialism because that turns them off.”
Others will agree and say, “This system’s too big, it’s too big what we’re going against, I got enough problems in my factory, in my community. I got enough problems in my home so don’t talk to me about that kind of stuff.

We however in the Socialist Party respond by declaring we should all really look and understand what’s happening in the world and this country and not keep it to ourselves but go out and struggle with our fellow workers and arm them with that understanding, so that when the time comes we can make revolution. It is only by understanding how capitalism runs against the interests of working people, of how capitalism must be fought by the working class and all others who can be united behind it and when the, people can be armed with an understanding of capitalism as the enemy – then we can advance on the road to revolution.

The capitalists always try to tell us you’re wrong to fight us because if our profits go down you’re going to go down the drain. But the only choice is to fight harder, to let their system fall down, let their profit system fall down, let the big corporations fall, tumble down into their graves. Let the big politicians who work for them tumble down, fight among themselves and get exposed. We don’t care, we’ll let them tumble down, we’ll kick them down, we’ll grind them into the ground. And then we’ll sweep away their remains and the remains of their system and we’ll build our own, our new, brighter future. A future where we workers will run the factories, produce for our needs and not for the profits of the capitalist bosses. Only by completely getting rid of this system of wage slavery and its law of profits and the system in which the capitalists own and control everything, including us and our labour can we achieve socialism. We can’t move forward step by step, gradually reforming the system. It must be revolutionary change.