Wake Up, Workers

Socialism — what fear and anger the word arouses in the minds of the rulers of society! Daily the press pours out its denunciation and men in high places issue their warnings and threats against it. Socialism is dictatorship, it means bloodshed, wholesale murder and destruction. It means the collapse of orderly society, the breakdown of production, and consequent misery and poverty. Thus speak those whom socialism threatens with the loss of their privileges to amass wealth at the expense of the misery and poverty of the masses. Why does socialism arouse such dread and anger among the exploiters of the workers? Why do they fear it so? The answers to these questions are to be found in the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels — who first formulated the principles of the socialist movement.

Marx and Engels said that the history of the past was the history of a class struggle. They said that in each period of the past there appeared a ruling class — rich, powerful, living in luxury and splendor — and an exploited class which worked hard and long but enjoyed little of the wealth it brought into existence. They said that in the past the struggle between these classes had resulted either “in the revolutionary reconstruction of society or the common ruin of the contending classes.” In modern society this struggle presents itself, they said, in a conflict between the capitalists who own the factories, mines and mills and the means of production generally, and the workers who have to sell their labour power to these capitalists in order to earn a living. They said that since the capitalists own the things that the workers must use in order to earn a living, the capitalists have the whip-hand and that they compel workers to sell their labour power for much less than the value of what they produce. In fact they argued that the workers usually receive in the wages paid them only just enough to buy the necessities for a poor sort of living for themselves and to provide for the raising of children so that the line of workers might not be exhausted. The workers produce the amount of wealth they receive in wages in two, three, or four hours, depending upon the technical development of industry, but they are compelled to keep on working up to eight, ten, or twelve hours and during the hours they work over and above the time required to produce their wages they produce “surplus value” for the boss. They said that naturally the workers attempted to improve their standard of living by an effort to secure more of the wealth they produced and that the capitalists resisted this effort of the workers in order to keep as much as possible of the product of industry for themselves as profits, and that, consequently, the there was a class war between the workers and capitalists. The working class are the grave-diggers of capitalism and the builders of the new world.

A better world is of course possible, if we ourselves make it possible, but a worse one is too! Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive forces and a sound, planned, that is, socialist, organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, human beings collectively will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his or her life to physical labour. Second, he or she will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on those blind and dark forces.