The average worker is unable to see any alternative to the
profit system. He or she is often
willing to see the boss get higher prices for the goods which he, the worker,
has produced. Under capitalism or the profit system, it is necessary to
maintain and, if possible, increase the gap between wages (or what it costs in
labour power to produce goods) and price (or the exchange-value which those
goods have on the market). This gap exists because the worker only receives the
price of his or her labour power and no share in the values he or she creates.
With socialism, there will be no wages at all. There will be no prices or
market values.
No profits; no production: that is the capitalist law. For,
the whole purpose of the capitalist production process is – profit, which is
but another name for the self-expansion of capital. The capitalist throws into
the productive process a certain quantity of capital as a means to expanding
it. That is the whole point in the process – for the capitalist. If at the end
of the process the capital thus thrown in has not expanded, i.e. increased in
quantity, the whole process is, from his point of view, useless. Which is why
we say that capitalist production is but a means to capitalist profit. Production,
which is essential to society, is only incidental to the process; profit is its
motive, and profit its purpose.
Under capitalism, the worker, at the end of the week (or
more commonly these days, the month), receives wages which simply go to
refurbish him or her for another Monday. Sunday is the day of rest if you’re
lucky and don’t have to work on Sundays, too. And so it goes on and on for
workers under capitalism – a continuous treadmill (sometimes broken by
unemployment), with the worker never quite catching up or getting ahead, but
always forced to go to work on Monday.
In socialism, all this is changed. Goods are produced for
the use of men and NOT for the profits which they bring to bosses. Labour power
is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased
at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and
able to produce more value. Men and women, inside socialism, will work and
produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and
for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which mankind and
machines can create will be given to people to develop their bodies so that
their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, esthetic
appreciation and artistic creation. From day to day, from week to week, and
from year to year, individual creativity will widen and increase. Men and
women, no longer fettered by the necessity of working for the bosses’ profits,
will be freed to live more fully. The time that is spent at work will shorten
yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful. Those who even
thinks of “reasonable profit” will be jeered at and treated as a barbarian out
of the past Dark Age. He who talks about prices and wages will be talking gibberish,
for we all have been freed from the capitalist system, freed from wage labour,
price and profit. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s
wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the
REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!” Socialism is the ONLY
answer!
We of the Socialist Party have nothing to do with those
other parties that pass themselves off as socialist. We are orthodox Marxists,
because we know that Marxism is the only revolutionary socialism of the working
class, and that is the only genuine socialism. History has demonstrated the
spuriousness of every other brand. Marxism is a theory of social evolution
which affirms that capitalism is obsolete and bankrupt, and that it must be, and
will be, replaced by a higher form of social organisation which Marx and Engels
called socialism or communism. Marxism teaches that socialism will not fall
from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the good will and
compassion of the capitalist exploiters, as the Utopians, who preceded Marx,
used to think, and as some people still seem to think. Socialism can be
realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The class
struggle is the motive force of history. All the actions and judgments of a socialist
party must always be directed against the capitalist class, and never be taken
in collaboration with them. The class struggle is the central and governing
principle of socialist politics. It is by carrying the class struggle to its
necessary conclusion — that is, to the victory of the working class and the
abolition of capitalism — that the socialist society will be realised. This is
the teaching of Marxism. There is no other way. And every attempt to find
another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by
collaborating with them, in peace or in war, has led not toward the socialist
goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers.
The road to the socialist solution is clearly indicated by
history. Socialistic aspirations of the working class are rising. Humanity’s
problems can be solved only as a world whole. Marx, however, did not say that
if you somehow destroy capitalism socialism must dawn. That is a fatalist and
mechanistic conception with which Marxism has nothing in common. What Marx did
teach and demonstrate was that if you destroy capitalism in a certain way, that
is, by a certain form of social action, the road to socialism would be opened.
In what way? In the revolutionary way. If socialism is to be the outcome of
capitalism’s downfall, it is necessary that mankind take conscious action in
that direction. The basic classes of capitalist society are the capitalist
class and the working class. Between them there is already a struggle going on;
the struggle by the capitalist class to maintain its system of exploitation,
and the struggle by the working class to overthrow it. What Marx taught and
demonstrated was that the road to socialism lay through the carrying forward to
its logical conclusion of this struggle by the working class against the
capitalist class. Why did he teach this? Not out of “selfishness” or “hate” but
by reason of reasoned necessity. Marx showed that the successful carrying
forward of the struggle of the working class to free itself from capitalist
exploitation would open the road to socialism by demonstrating that the working
class could not emancipate itself without also emancipating all 
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