Solidarity is the socialist's strength

Marx designated the working class the ‘grave-diggers of capitalism’ and that the emancipation of the working class would be the act of the working class itself. Capitalism has created the material basis for a classless society based on plenty.

Our world’s resources are wasted while people’s basic needs remain unsatisfied. Land is despoiled, misery mounts, and poverty spreads. Prisons are being built. Factories are closed. National chauvinism, racism, and religious strive are growing at an alarming rate. The capitalist economy remains in the grip of the crisis. The employers pretends that it has the solution to the crisis and promises “recovery” provided  workers accept the responsibility of the crisis. But in reality the bosses have no control over the course of the crisis and the demand that the workers accept more un- or under-employment, further reductions in real wages, and increased cuts in social services and welfare benefits, is simply a demand that the workers take more of the burden of the crisis upon their backs so as to ensure the recovery of profits which is the real concern of the capitalist class. The working class must not harbour any illusions about “recovery”. The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. This “recovery” can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the increased impoverishment of the people, a higher level of immiseration of the working class.

The Socialist Party asks: why is this and why is it that we have to put up with these conditions?  How can things be changed? Workers are told that oppression, exploitation and inequalities have always existed and will always exist. The supporters of the capitalist class invoke the laws of nature, they proclaim it divine law from the gods. Reality, however, is quite different. It shows that these are the explanations of those who profit from this misery and whose power depends on maintaining the present conditions. The reality is that, despite diversity in political regimes, in language, and in culture and beyond differences in race and nationality, the vast majority of the people of the globe share a common condition: that of living in a society where the owners of the means of production impose their will over those who possess nothing or little. In other words, the vast majority of people live in a society divided into social classes where the propertied classes, the merchants, the industrialists, the financiers and the landowners, dominate the class who have little or no property, the working class. The economic base of this social regime is the capitalist system.

The task of the workers is not to substitute one exploiting class for another but rather to rid humanity of all exploitation. When the capitalists drove out the feudal nobles and kings, it did so in the name of all the people; but, in fact, it only replaced the old oppressors with new ones. It couldn’t have been otherwise because the capitalists were  a class whose existence was based on the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the labour of others. Thus it only substituted a new form of class exploitation for an old one.

In attacking the foundation of the capitalist system – the private ownership of the means of production and wage labour – the working class undertakes at the same time the elimination of classes themselves. In effect, to eliminate the private ownership of the means of production is to destroy the material basis on which all exploiting classes are founded. Consequently, it is also to eliminate classes themselves. This is why we say that the  aim of the socialist struggle is the classless society, i.e.  a community in which no person exploits the labour of another. The proletariat has no one to exploit because it is the most deprived class in society. After the proletariat, there are no classes to serve as the object of exploitation. To eliminate the exploitation of the workers is to eliminate all exploitation.

Socialist society is a classless and stateless society. While under capitalism, production is done solely in order to make profits for those who own the factories, the railroads, the big supermarket chain-stores, etc., in socialist society, production is planned according to the needs of all people. socialist factories won’t shut down because investors don’t think they’re making enough money from them. Production will no longer depend upon the wishes of a handful of capitalists whose only goal is maximum profits, but on the collective will of all of the workers.

What millions and millions of men and women are calling for from the depths of their collective consciousness is an immediate radical change in the political and economic situation. The most vigorous anti-capitalist offensive can’t be put off till later. People are much more advanced than we imagine. They don’t worry over complicated doctrinal considerations, but with a sure instinct they call for the most substantive solutions: they expect much. Everything is possible. They know that the capitalist world is in its death throes and that a new world must be constructed if we want to have done with inequality, environmental destruction and war. The task of the Socialist Party is to unite and organise all workers and it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong.