Freeing Ourselve

“enough for everyone and time for what we will.”

Slavery existed long before capitalism. Today the vast majority of people are employees, "wage earners," at least the vast majority of those who can find a job at all. Wage slavery is the predominate form of oppression today. Workers are forced to sell themselves (actually, their labour power) in order to survive. Rather than being owned, and provided for in some fashion. A typical wage slave’s day is eight hours of wage slavery, eight hours of free time to eat, relax and watch TV, and eight hours for sleep, in order to regenerate for the next day of wage slavery. Everything we need to live our daily lives has to be paid for. Water, gas, electricity, housing, transport, food and clothing – the principle is the same: if you can’t pay, you can’t have. No one likes being in a condition of slavery. It’s understandable that slaves either identify with their master or deny that they are slaves. Slavery has never lacked for defenders, and wage slavery is no exception. One after another they appear, selling their services to the plutocracy, presenting arguments in defence of capitalism, or in attempted refutation of Socialism. They have been hailed as new prophets, as the saviors of the capitalist slave system.  The ineffectiveness of their defence of wage slavery, has changed little since Marx's time.

Marx should be acknowledged as the most dominant thinker affecting the way political economists think about world poverty and mass powerlessness over the last two centuries. Marx cannot be faulted in his analysis of why a market economy in the modern world contains the seeds of its own destruction, assuming that the ownership of the means of production remained concentrated in too few hands and workers had only their labour to sell in direct competition with labour-displacing technology or with workers willing to work for lower wages. Whether the bosses are state-officials or CEOs, the paid hirelings of a small ownership elite, the worker ends up being a wage-slave. Even unions, if they confine themselves to obtaining higher wages do nothing to empower the worker or gain real liberty and justice. The worker may be well paid, but in the end he is still simply a wage-slave who gets more than the other wage-slaves. Instead of fighting for an end to the system of wage slavery, reformists prop it up by sowing illusions in the advantages that come from a higher wage. Rather than fight to free workers from exploitation by the ruling classes and oppression by their state, the reformist “socialists” seek to transform the capitalists’ state into an institution that “works for the people.” They may litter their speeches with appeals for “socialism,” and “revolution but the radical rhetoric and wishful thinking cannot measure up against what these phony socialists” end up doing in the real world. It would be both dishonest and unprincipled to portray reformism as something “revolutionary.” Wage slavery and exploitation have not ceased to be at the heart and root of capitalism. Today there seems to be no challenge to this system.

In Wages, Price and Profit, Marx talks about ‘that false and superficial radicalism that accepts premises and tries to evade conclusions’. He goes on: ‘To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system. What you think just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production?’ Later on he says: ‘Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” [or any other dream of a cooperative and crisis free capitalism] workers ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wages system!” Marx’s point is completely valid. How can there be justice when the system is built on and exists on the injustice of exploitation?

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explained:

“The modern labourer… instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper (i.e. beggar), and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth…. (The bourgeoisie) is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery (as a slave to his/her job – a wage slave), because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.”

What could be more true today?

The apologists for capitalism portray it as the “natural” state of affairs arguing “it’s always been like this, and it always will be”. But they’re wrong. Early human societies were communal: they weren’t divided into rich and poor and they shared property instead of having to buy and sell the things they needed. After this, human history has been a succession of different class societies: different systems of the rich exploiting the poor. We get the slavery of Ancient Greece and Rome, then the feudal system of barons and serfs, and then we get capitalism. Under capitalism the vast majority of the world’s population is systematically deprived of any way of supporting itself other than working for an employer. An economic system that cannot hush the wails of hungry children isn't worth a damn. Wage slavery is more about living an inhuman life an exploitative system to survive. We don't have freedom to choose our values. We must choose those values that help us to make money. We can’t ensure a safe environment for our loved ones. We can't protect them from exploitation or pollution,

Where do profits come from? It is argued that it comes from buying cheap and selling dear - “marking up” the price. But if all capitalists systematically charged too much for the things they sell there would be spiraling inflation and the system would collapse. No, the real source of profit is the labour of all the people who work for a living. The harder the workers work, and the lower the wages they get paid, the bigger the share dividend. Would you help to abolish crime, 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. So long as society maintains the present system of wage slavery, there can be no relief except through the united effort of the whole working class in ending it. Socialists recognise the system for what it is – vicious, brutal, built on the exploitation of workers and interested in only one thing – profit, profit and more profit.

Class-struggle must not limit itself to narrow “bread-and-butter” economic demands. We only have one life and people should rather spend it enjoying themselves instead of being wage slaves. It’s as simple as that. Socialism would end wage slavery and give the means of production back to people for use and not for profit. Socialism is what people truly need and deserve. We can build a sharing economy and give each other the means to make our own way in this world with dignity. We can do it together. We can balance the needs of the planet and human needs. Our fight is to organise as a clear conscious force, a class for itself, to break capitalist state power, abolish wage slavery and establish a comprehensive, democratic self-rule throughout society. Capitalism holds no future for the human race other than the destruction of the environment, mass poverty and unemployment, disease and war. Capitalism’s not natural, it’s not fair and it’s not permanent. It will produce either socialism or barbarism. Which will it be? The answer is in a co-operative commonwealth. Cooperative labour and association shall take the place of the wage system with its class rule.  The instruments of production must cease to be the monopoly of a class -- they must be the common property of all. There shall be no more exploiter or exploited. Production and distribution of the produce must be administered in the interest of the whole. Our end is a society of associative labour. The welfare of all is for us the one end of society. We seek justice and fight injustice. We seek free labour and attack wage slavery. We seek the prosperity of all and struggle against misery. A Utopia? No. It’s a necessity.

The Socialist Party is united upon one issue: No More Wage Slavery!