Toward the Co-operative Commonwealth

"If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard," Eugene Debs

Would you help to abolish delinquency, disease and despair from the world? Then abolish poverty which is the cause. Would you abolish poverty? Then assist us in abolishing the wages system, the cause of poverty. Capitalism is to blame. It is the sordid, cankerous ulcer of privation and dissolution; it is the hideous nightmare of despair and gloom that waxes fat on the misery of helpless. To the socialist "the wages system" is a system of slavery, the wage worker being forced by it to sell himself from period to period, for life, in a market glutted with wage workers.  So long as society maintains the present system of wage slavery, there can be no relief. This one escape is through the concerted action of the whole working class. Encourage and assist others in abolishing the wages system by joining the Socialist Party which is distinguished by only having one policy - Abolish Capitalism, NOW! We stand on a platform of no reforms. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class. Why we should put the effort into building something we don't particularly want? We want a free society and not reduce the world to some uniform sameness in the name of equality; or any kind of command soviet style economy. Indeed, we should alter the old motto: “From Each according to their self-defined abilities, to each according to their self-defined Needs.”

The worker, amidst the riches which he or she has created, cannot satisfy his or her smallest necessity. Toil and drudgery in unhealthful work-places saps the vitality of life itself. "Down with the wage system!" That is the fundamental demand of the socialist movement. Cooperative association shall take the place of the wage system with its class rule. There shall be no more exploiter or exploited. Production and distribution of the produce must be regulated in the interest of the whole. We strive for the abolition of the class state, class legislation and class rule.

Although many speak of Britain as "our" country, and millions have died or have been mutilated in defence of what they called "their" country, as a matter of fact Britain does not belong to the whole of the British people, but to a comparative few. How many can point to a particular part of the map of the UK and say "this is mine"? Only a lucky few who have paid off their mortgages while the greatest portion of the country is divided among a few great landlords and landowners. In comparison with Third World nations Britain is spoken of as a wealthy country. Does that mean that its people as a whole are well off? By no means. Some are immensely rich, most get a bare living, a large number are degradingly poor. The land and the factories and the transportation - all the means of producing the nation's wealth - are owned by the capitalist class. Production is carried on not for the purpose of supplying the needs of the people but for the purpose of sale in order to realise a profit. Only those who have something to sell can get a living. Only those who can afford to buy acquire things. This is the capitalist system.  If things were produced for use, nobody would spend time in the manufacture of shoddy goods, jerry-built houses, or adulterated food.

The worker has nothing to sell but his or her labour power that is sold to an employer for so many hours a day for a certain price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one's body it comes to this, that workers actually sells themselves like a slave. We socialists, call it "wage slavery". Wages are determined by what it costs to keep a family. How many do you know who can regularly save out of their wages and be able to put something by for a rainy day. It is now a fact that the average person is not more than two weeks removed from penury.

Workers by their own nature are anti-capitalist due to the capital's nature to extort profits from the labour of the workers. A capitalist will only buy labour if he can make profit out of it. Just compare the value of the goods you turned out in a day when you were in the factory, and what you received for your work. The difference between the two is the employer's profit. Profit is the result of the unpaid labour of the worker. In capitalist England, the workers are continually robbed of the results of their labour. The employing class will compel the worker to work as hard and as long as he or she can, for as little money as possible. In spite of Health and Safety regulations, inhuman sweating still flourishes, whole industries in which absolutely inhuman conditions of work and pay still exist. Even through the efforts of the best organised trade unions wages never rise much higher than the cost of living. And even this is not secure. In the endeavour to produce as cheaply as possible, management continually introduces labour-saving technology, which enables them to produce more goods in less time and reduces the standard of skill required. As a result unemployment is continually on the increase and many a previously skilled worker has lost his or her trade.

The Socialist Party recognises first and foremost that labour and capital are always at odds. Whoever controls the basic means of survival controls society. There is no such thing as democracy or equality without the people having collective control of these means, both on a large scale and on a small scale, in the neighbourhood and the workshop. The way of competition offers only increasing bondage, while the way of cooperation offers real freedom. What does capitalism offer? A life-time of toil at a bare subsistence, a drab, colourless existence with always the dread fear of the sack.

The task now before us is to abolish wage slavery by the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a socialist society. Only then will humankind become really free. Together we can form a worldwide Co-operative Commonwealth. Help us to secure for all a free, full and happy life; secure in possession of a rational, human existence, neither brutalised by toil nor debilitated by hunger, and then all the noble characteristics of humanity will have full opportunity to expand and develop. Your proper place is in the ranks of the Socialist Party, fighting for the abolition of this accursed social system which grinds us down in such a manner; which debases the character and lowers the ideals of people to such a fearful degree. Rather than promoting a policy of self-abasement, the Socialist Party advocates principles of defiant self-reliance and trust in the people's own power of self-emancipation.