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| CAPITALISM - DIVIDE AND RULE |
Some people refuse to learn. Others refuse to remember. And
still others remember what they have learned only up to the moment when events
call upon them to put it into practice, whereupon they start to forget. A
socialist is not an ordinary person who absorbs ignorance and prejudices pumped
into him or her like a sponge every day in a hundred ways. The socialist
endeavours to think about social problems. The first question he or she asks
about any problem that needs tackling is this: How has this problem arisen.
Only after this question has been answered as ably as social science permits,
is it possible to tackle it intelligently and effectively and with positive
results.
Society is divided into property owners and propertyless
people and this lies at the root of the crises and problems of the capitalist
world. Millions of workers own neither the land nor the machinery they use nor
the products they make. These are the property of the capitalists. The vast
majority of people in society to-day are thus at the mercy of the private
owners. They cannot organise the distribution of the wealth which they have
co-operated to produce, because they do not possess this wealth. It is the
property of the private owners. Here is to be found the fundamental reason why
the socially necessary goods are obtainable only in the market-place as
commodities. They cannot give the goods to society, for that would be an
abandonment of the right of private property to extract profit. They cannot
distribute the goods according to the needs of the people, however vast and
urgent those needs may be, because private property production is governed by
the law of production for profit irrespective of the needs of the people. The
criterion of all capitalist enterprise is—does it make a profit? When it ceases
to make a profit it goes bankrupt—it is finished and the workers are cast on to
the scrapheap of unemployment. For the capitalist there is no other way of
disposing of the goods produced other than through the exchange market, the
laws of which are not need nor beauty, nor quality. It is a transaction between
individuals exchanging property, however repeated, however multiplied, however
varied. One can have exactly according to his means to pay. If you have £1 or
its equivalent you can have £1’s worth of goods. If you have nothing, then you
can exchange nothing. Thus the number of boots sold is not governed by the
number of men, women and children needing
boots but by the number who are able to buy
boots. The market demand therefore is not the measure of human needs nor human
capacity to produce, but the measure of the means at the disposal of the people
to purchase the things they need. Society can measure the resources of the
country through its social organisation. It can measure the needs of the people
through its social organisation. But it cannot distribute products it does not
possess, nor control production when it does not own the means of production.
When society owns the means of production it will own the products. When it
owns the products it can distribute them to its members according to their
individual and collective needs. This is the only solution.
The State in a class-divided society can be nothing other
than an instrument in the hands of the class owning the property and means of
production in society. The talk of “reconciling class interests” is simple
deceit. It is impossible to reconcile the interests of the slave owner and the
slave, the exploiter and the exploited. We have no intention or desire, no
right and no need, to abandon the fight for socialism. The only way we know how
to do this is: tell the truth about capitalism; help make those we can reach
conscious of the problem of society today and how to solve it, and increase the
clarity of those who are already partly conscious of it. We will do everything
we can do to deepen the understanding of the capitalist system. We will
continue in our way even if we fight alone. We will try to teach the ignorant
better; and we will answer the deceitful as they deserve to be answered. We are
working for the power of the working class and as such, we shall be guided
accordingly in our campaign for the cause of the working class, of socialism and
against all attacks upon them.
In the World Socialist Movement the case for socialism will
remain clear and firm. It will be heard and it will be echoed.
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