The pro-capitalist parties, in spite of all their differences which are more pretend than real, have one common aim – the maintenance of a social system founded on the private ownership of the means of production (factories, natural resources, transport etc.) and the profitable exploitation of working people. Their main aim is to promote the accumulation and concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a privileged minority, and they use the authority of the State to exercise political control over the common people for the specific purpose of furthering their plans in this respect. Technological progress is reaping vast profits for the industrial and financial oligarchy and condemning thousands to permanent unemployment.
The dominant feeling among the working class today is fear. Many see their fate tied to capitalism, and its prospects are clearly not good. Capitalism promises people not amelioration of conditions but austerity, oppression and most likely the destruction of mankind. Every class-conscious worker seek a radical way forward out of the misery and madness of capitalism. Only through the struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire. The chaos of capitalist economy and the world market has made the establishment of a socialist society a desirable aim and an immediate necessity.
Several years of austerity have demonstrated the utter inability of the pro-capitalist parties to make good their promises. Yes, prosperity has returned but for the bankers, the mammoth corporations, the stock exchange sharks. The government bail-outs has rescued their investments and restored their profits. But the people continue to suffer. Wages rose a fraction for many workers and actually fallen for even more. Rising living costs has forced up the price of food. The youth leave school condemned to unemployment. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold and maintain only by piling additional burdens upon the people. Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world or even their own people. They are interested only in profits. The word on every politician’s lips is always “change.” Yet little ever does change. Millions of working class people desperate for relief from years economic hardship, hope elections will make a difference. But the capitalist class demand more efforts to make the working class pay for the crisis. The politicians’ promises of change prove to have been so many lies.
Populism seeks to convince workers to unite behind bourgeois politicians instead of undertaking class-based struggles against the capitalists. When class militancy heats up, a sinister populism aims to derail workers’ struggles with appeals to racism and nationalism. Such appeals to workers are essential if the ruling class is to rally part of the working class to its side—against the rest of the working class.
Capitalism’s destruction of the environment threatens the very survival of our species. But the system may not even allow time for that ultimate catastrophe. The current Cold War rivalry sparked off by the Ukraine confrontation brings back the spectre of the Great Powers engulfing the World in war, that once again could lead to nuclear holocaust.
Capitalism has created the class with the potential to overthrow it: the working class. Capitalism has itself laid the basis for transcending the misery to which it condemns humanity. It long ago built up the productive forces—industry, technology and a globalized economy—to the point where the potential exists to produce an abundance of all the things people need. Shortages of housing, food and every other form of want can be easily overcome, but that potential remains trapped by capitalism’s pursuit of profit. A socialist society would seek to produce the needs of all rather than the private profit of an elite class of profiteers. By producing an abundance of necessary goods for all, workers would undermine the very basis for the existence of classes. Necessary work would be divided equally among all. And the introduction of labour-saving technology, instead of creating unemployment as it does under capitalism, would be used to shorten the working week and free workers’ lives for greater leisure. In such ways the basis would be laid for the development of a society free of all forms of exploitation and oppression.
The World Socialist Movement must be democratic—open to all who understand and commit themselves to its support. It must have an internal party life which not only permits, but consciously encourages the full play and exchange of ideas. Despite the distortions about the Socialist Party’s viewpoint we are confident that developing realities, together with the conscious participation of all who consider themselves socialists, will move the workers forward towards socialism. Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty as the capitalist world totters on the brink of extinction. It is an essential condition of this assumption of power by workers that it should be sufficiently united, and that it should understand how to make use of the power in its hands. The Socialist Party will not base its political organisation upon dictatorship. Its historical mission, on the contrary, is to carry democracy to completion. Workers cannot afford to wait until the great struggles of the future to begin to prepare themselves politically. The WSM is dedicated to building the beginnings of a revolutionary political party of the working class.
So Defend! Defend! And Defend at every level of society, and Organise! Organise! And Organise at the grass roots in connected networks. And Unite! Unite! And Unite to rid the World of false political prophets. Not with bravado and loud-mouthed speeches but with a vision for a better future and a new social system of society
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