The impossible is possible

Capitalism offers no hope of ending the reign of poverty. The majority of the population is not engaged in productive work. The greater part of the work-force is employed in buying and selling, its bureaucratic administration and its coercive control. This is the private property system. We wish to replace it by socialism. In socialism the land, the means of production and transport are no longer privately owned but belong to all the people as the joint owners of the Earth and its products. No one can be disinherited; no one can be deprived of the right to a share. Our share will not be measured in so many acres of land, or amount of food in a ration-book, or so many goods, with which to buy, sell, and carry on trade. The share of a member of the socialist commonwealth is the right to the free access to the common treasure-house.

Socialism is denounced by the hired jackals of the capitalist media and by the subsidised hyenas of academia. Socialism has been attacked and incriminated at all times. Invent lies, smear its proponents in every way you can; something will stick and we find those reproaches repeated and echoed even by working men and women.  Our critics say that the socialists intend to divide all property. Everybody who owns anything must give up what he owns; this whole mass has to be divided equally among all the people, and each person may use his part just as he likes. After a while, when some have used up their allotted part and a new disproportion of property has arisen, a new division will be made; and so on. Especially the money and the land are to be divided – this is what some people say concerning socialist sharing. Have you ever seen or heard of a socialist demand such nonsense? No. you have not! Just reflect for a moment on the “fair shares” of the railways. Who should have the rails, or a locomotive, or a carriage? And since everybody would have a right to demand an equal share, all these things would have to be divided up.  Concerning the division of money, a story goes that Baron Rothschild was accosted by two workers who said: “Baron, you are a rich man; we want to divide your wealth with you.” Baron Rothschild took out his purse and answered: “Certainly! We can do that business on the spot. The account is easily made. I own 40 million florins; there are 40 million Germans. Consequently each German has to receive one florin; here is your share” and gave one florin to each of the labourers, who looked quite confused as Rothschild walked off smiling. This teaches that the division of money is but an idle invention.

Whether the means of production—that is to say, the land, mines, factories, machinery, etc.—are owned by a few large  capitalists, who organise corporate monopolies , or whether they be owned by a lot of small capitalists, who are opposed to Big Business, is all the same to the working class. Let the capitalists, large and small, fight this out among themselves. Between them socialists have no choice, no preference. It is simply a question of capitalism or socialism, of despotism or democracy, and they who are not wholly with us are wholly against us. The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production. It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist Party is organised. It is a question not of reform but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by the cooperative industry. This is the revolutionary immediate demand of the World Socialist Movement.

Why does the great body of working men and women still permit itself to be ruled and exploited by the capitalists? Why are they not in a position to drive the minority of exploiters from power? To answer bluntly, because they are an unorganised, undisciplined, often individualistic and ignorant mass. The majority is impotent because it consists of a divided crowd of individuals each one of whom wishes to act according to his own impulse, regard his own interests, and in addition has no understanding of our social system. It lacks organisation and knowledge.

The ruling class, on the contrary, is strong because it possesses both organisation and knowledge. Not only does it have in its service scholars and men of learning; it controls also a strong organisation, the state administration. The army of officials, government underlings, law-givers, judges, representatives, politicians and soldiers works like a gigantic machine which instantly suppresses any attack on the existing order; a machine against which every individual is powerless and by which, if he or she opposes it, is crushed like a troublesome insect. The capitalist control a machine which can easily shatter in a struggle even a great organisation of workers. In this machine each works as a part of the whole: in the working class each man acts for himself or a small group. No wonder that the few, through their superior strength, rule the majority with ease.

The unions always have their limitations; they include only members of a particular occupation or employer.  In politics class stands against class. There the delegates of the workers movement  speak not as representatives of the rail industry or the miners; they do not even represent the wage-workers exclusively, but the whole body of those exploited by capital. Their opponents are not representatives of individual groups of employers, but of the whole owning class; they fight in parliament against bank and finance capital or land-owning capital, just as much as against all exploiters.

The victory of socialism is desirable because only socialism can put an end to the exploitation of man by man and of women by men. Because only socialism can put an end to the struggle for the re-division of the world, for national possessions, which takes place between the different continents, nations and races. Only socialism can put an end to war and poverty and the innumerable injustices which are an everyday feature of our lives. Socialism by suppressing the cause of these rivalries and antagonism – the monopoly of the means of production – forms a new society based on the principles of human solidarity and reciprocity, and economic soundness. It will put an end to all waste and all unproductive work. It will abolish antagonism of interests and reduce authority to a minimum, making it function not in the interests of a class but in the interests of society as a whole. Socialism consists of a rationalisation of production, of all our activities and our very lives themselves. And that, not in the interests of some, but for the benefit of all. Socialism is then from every point of view desirable.

 Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it corresponds to the interests of all; because it satisfies the goodwill the desire of well being, and the common interest of the producing class which forms the immense majority in all countries. Socialism is possible because men and women are more and more brought into close co-operation in pooling their efforts. All sorts of associations and organisations, political, intellectual and moral, are accustoming people to regulate their work and their lives. Socialism is possible because the forces of production, thanks to machinery and technological advances, have reached an unheard levels of development. They only need to be put in action for the benefit of everyone in order that all members of society may be assured of complete well-being. Socialism everyday becomes more possible through the social education of the working-class, organised as it is in political parties, trade unions, and co-operatives. The same phenomenon of concentration, of organisation on collective basis, is to be observed in other spheres, social, political, intellectual, and moral. Rational organisation becomes more urgent as a consciousness of solidarity develops among the producers who can take over control of mass production; everything stands ready by their own very nature to be placed in the hands of the workers who produce them.

It is a mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. That is the conclusion all science of our era comes to. Everything evolves. Everything changes. Human history is a record of perpetual transformation.

Chattel slavery was replaced by the semi-slavery of serfdom which gave way to the servitude of wage-slavery. This is the last form of slavery because socialism which will bring to an end the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms. It is however quite conceivable to exist under one regime and not believe in the possibility of another, perhaps due to a favoured privileged  position, or for others because they do not know or do not think there is an an alternative.  Before the fall of the Bastille everybody believed that the French monarchy would last forever. Before the 1917 Revolution in Russia no one believed that the Czarist regime would fall. There is no reason whatsoever to despair of human progress. What appears to us impossible today is done tomorrow. Today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality.