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Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Enough Is Plenty


The Socialist Party is organised to assist the working-class movement by a dissemination of its literature, to educate the working-class into a knowledge of socialist principles and to prepare them to co-operate with the workers of all other nationalities in the emancipation of labour. The Socialist Party affirms its belief that political and social freedom are not two separate and unrelated ideas, but are two sides of the one great principle, each being incomplete without the other. It seeks the democratic administration of all the means of production and distribution, all the instruments of labour, all social property in which all shall be co-owners, guaranteeing that right to life without which all other rights are but mockery. The Socialist Party is pitted against the whole profit-making system. It insists that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want, while the master class lives in luxury. We share the Industrial Workers of the World sentiment that "there can be no peace until the workers organize as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution, and abolish the wage-system."


The class war for socialism is a fight between a slave world and a free world. Poverty is not inevitable but it is inevitable so long as capitalism exists, so long as the profit-economy reigns. An improvement of the world standard of living is possible, but not on the basis of capitalism. The elimination of race and sex discrimination is possible but not in a class society where the reality of the social order increases discrimination and antagonism as the means of keeping the ruling class in power. Genuine freedom of speech, assembly and organisation are possible, but only in a free society. Social change can be meaningful only on the basis of a fundamental alteration of the economic system, by the transformation of society into socialism, by the abolition of a private property in the means of production – the profit system – and the establishment of genuine economic, political and social equality. In other words, the workers in their collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial institutions and secure to each laborer the full value of his or her produce. Isn’t it right that the creators of wealth should own what they create? When shall we learn that we are related one to the other, that we are members of one body, that injury to one is injury to all? Until solidarity for our fellow-workers, regardless of race, colour, creed or sex, fills the world, until the great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice cannot be attained, and there can never be lasting peace upon earth. The mighty movement of which we are a part is discernible all over the world albeit in small numbers. Workers are still far from being in possession of themselves or their labour. They do not own and control the tools and materials which they must use in order to live, nor do they receive anything like the full value of what they produce. Working people everywhere are nevertheless becoming more aware that they are being exploited for the benefit of others, and that they cannot be truly free unless they own themselves and are in democratic control of their labour.

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