Our War Is The Class War

We know our enemies – it’s those who are exploiting us. The Labour party has been a great disappointment for many of us and such a complete failure that its consequence has thrown discredit upon all political action.  This is very regrettable as it has destroyed the confidence of the workers in their ability to build a really independent working-class party as a force against the vast economic and political power ranged against them. The Socialist Party have told the working class, year in, year out, that, even if all the palliatives which they themselves hope to achieve, were put into effect, no permanent good could result to the workers as a whole until the power of one class to employ and pay wages to another class should be finally put an end to. Surely now, having exhausted all the other possibilities they must be now coming to the conclusion that we may be right, and the course of events is helping to move forward the realisation of socialism.

Working men and women see an increasingly desperate situation growing even worse. Cities are crumbling. Day after day, the capitalist corporations are squeezing us harder and harder to get their record profits. Wage-cuts Speed-ups. Lay-offs. More and more injuries and deaths and occupational illnesses on the job. Union-busting. At the same time, sparks of resistance flare up. The Socialist Party call on all workers to build a real fighting union movement. The unity we construct will put a powerful weapon in our hands to stop the capitalist attacks, end the system of wage slavery, and win better lives for ourselves and our children.

There is a war raging and it basically comes down to the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class is easy to identify -  the handful of millionaires who own or control  the factories, mines and fields. They are the class that owns and sells all the things that we make. We sell our ability to work to this class for a supposed living wage. The government protects the managements’ right to dictate the terms of employment to us. The war between the capitalist class and the working class is due to the system of wage slavery. For the young workers looking for their first job, the middle-aged workers with families fend for, and the older workers who are just hanging on until the penury of retirement, the capitalists have what we can’t live without. Jobs. We have to eat. To eat we have to work. To work we have to work for the capitalists. To work for the capitalist we have to accept his terms. We are slaves of the wage system.

The capitalist onslaught comes on many fronts, and so it must be fought on all fronts. The way to beat the capitalists’ divide-and-conquer strategy is to build unity between unions, between the organised and unorganised and between the employed and unemployed. We’ve seen the lack of democracy in our unions and we’ve seen a union hierarchy protecting its own privileges and because of this, many workers have declined to get involved with their unions. Democratic election and decision-making, with the right to recall union officials are fundamental principles and perhaps if practiced more, workers will rally to a real workers’ organisation that fights for their needs.

To fight the class war to end the wage system, this is our future. The phrase class-consciousness sounds very philosophic and mysterious, and the word class-war conjures up something brutal and reprehensible. Both appear as theoretical abstractions of a text-book. But the fact is, the two phrases are simply expressing the reality of every-day life. Take class consciousness, it merely describes the common feeling for the need of solidarity and the understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all. Class-consciousness,  gives rise to the class war where we confront our collective foe - the emplyers. Socialists are accused of trying to create ill feeling that sets class against class.  The truth is we only point out that this social conflict already exists.  Society today is a struggle between two classes, the capitalist who owns and the propertyless class with nothing. While the worker is not class-conscious – that is, knowing and understanding his or her class subjection and its cause -  he or she possesses only a dim perception of the fact from the daily experience of the struggle for life. We meet this class war everywhere, but do not always recognise it. It is a task of the socialists to label its every manifestation, in order that everybody may perceive it.

Certainly, the class war is war. The war to end wage-slavery, to end capitalism with its evils of misery and degradation, deprivation and hunger . It is also the war to end all wars. And until that class war is won we do not want peace—because such peace will be the peace of the beggar and the slave.