Connecting the Dots

The Socialist Party primarily concern itself with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. We do not advocate reformism or gradualism to solve workers’ problems but nor do we oppose workers trying to achieve reforms to improve their conditions. We fully understand that the capitalist system is not a consistent and perfectly regulated device. It is filled with economic contradictions. We find examples in the tendency of capitalism to eliminate competition on one hand, and to endeavor to maintain competition on the other — such as the corporate cabals which negate competition, and against this contradiction governments pass anti-monopoly laws which make it a penalty to form an agreement in restraint of trade. Among the many contradictory phases in the political and the economic life of capitalism, there may be found an opportunity to strengthen and benefit the working class without giving any corresponding advantage to the capitalist class. All measures which have a tendency to raise the standard of life of the working class through shorter hours, superior educational facilities and opportunities, through higher wages and a better opportunity to organize trade unions, help and assist the socialist movement because it strengthens those who are taking part therein and compose the bulk of its membership. We advocate trade unions because it is a class movement and because it is an economic weapon which maintains for the working men and women a higher standard of existence than if they were unorganised. There is no place in the socialist movement for a cataclysmic revolution.  Socialism does not advance necessarily in response to or because of great economic distress. These crises may point out the fact that something is wrong, but the suggestion of the remedy and the cure for these ills is quite a different problem. Of course, it may be true that the better paid worker may be a little slow in picking up socialist ideas due to the fact that their condition is an improvement economically on other workers and that they perhaps have less to complain about. To say that we must oppose all reforms until the Socialist Party has complete control will breed sterility.

What is the meaning of capitalism? Capitalism is an economic term. It is applied by political economists and sociologists to the economic system of our civilisation, by means of which men achieve economic independence and have the privilege of living idly upon the labour of others, who produce a surplus value above that which they receive for their own sustenance. Capitalism refers to the system. A capitalist is one who profits by the system. If he works himself, it does not alter the fact that he has an income apart from his labour sufficient to sustain him for life without toil, and therefore his is economically independent. The working class under capitalism live in hope of creating an income and of increasing it through the appropriation of the surplus products of others who labour. They would like to achieve economic independence in the same manner as the capitalist class. The working class includes those who are not able to do more than sustain life by means of selling their ability to work labor to the capitalist. Capitalism divides society into two antagonistic forces, because it is based upon two sets of conflicting economic interests. They each desire economic independence. One of these forces believes that it is justly entitled to the economic independence which it has, but which it manifestly did not create; the other force believes that it is being unjustly deprived of that which it creates and which it never possesses. Private ownership of the means of production and distribution is the seed of capitalism, of which wage slavery is the most revolting feature. This seed has now brought forth a bitter fruit in the class struggle, but the Social Party, championing the working class, declares its intention to abolish wage slavery by the establishment of system of cooperative industry, based upon the social or common ownership of the means of production and distribution, to be administered by society in the common interest of all its members and the complete emancipation of the socially useful classes from the domination of capitalism.

Why should people be opposed to common ownership of the land? How many of them today own the land they live upon? Why should we struggle through a lifetime to maintain private ownership of a few acres, to leave to our children, subject to all the vicissitudes of the capitalist system, when through the substitution of common ownership, we relieve ourselves of this  grapple with greed, make ourselves and our children the wards and defenders of society. Under the system of competition for the private ownership of capital, the most that can be claimed by the advocates of an increase in money is that it enable more individuals to compete and thus temporarily or permanently revive the middle strata of society , and that this revival  would lead to more regular employment and better wages for the working class. Assuming all of this to be true (which it is not), it means the perpetuation of wage slavery. Are the slaves to be blamed for voting against the proposal to perpetuate their slavery? Are men whose consciences revolt against the cruelty of the competitive system to blame because they vote against it? The wage class have never been in thorough sympathy with the redistribution of income advocates. Which is the working class most interested in: the possession of the property of the world which it created, or the possession of the money, which is a creation of capitalist laws and which is principally used to exchange property between capitalists that has been stolen from the workers? Ninety-eight percent of the wealth of the world is owned by the capitalist class. Two percent is owned by the working class. The chief function of money is as a medium for the exchange of property. The interest of the working class in the money question under capitalism cannot amount to more than the property which it has to exchange with the use of money. Inside socialism, private ownership and barter in capital being at an end, money would lose the functions which it possessed under capitalism and would be abolished. The Socialist Party is confident that it is making progress toward the abolition of wage slavery and establishment of the cooperative commonwealth.