Socialism - Real Liberty for Everybody

 “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” ― William Paley

Private ownership of the means of production and distribution is responsible for the ever-increasing uncertainty of livelihood and the poverty and misery of the workers, and it divides society into two hostile classes — the capitalists and wage workers. The once powerful middleclass is rapidly disappearing in the mill of completion. The struggle is now between the capitalist class and the working class. The possession of the means of livelihood givers to the capitalists the control of government, the press, the pulpit, and to schools, and enables them to reduce working people to a state of intellectual, physical, and social inferiority, political subservience, and virtual slavery. The economic interests of the capitalist class dominate our entire social system; the lives of the working class are recklessly sacrificed for profit, wars are fomented between nations, indiscriminate slaughter is encouraged, and the destruction of whole races is sanctioned in order that the capitalists may extend their commercial dominion abroad and enhance their supremacy at home. But the same economic causes which developed capitalism are leading to socialism, which will abolish both the capitalist class and the class of wage workers. And the active force in bringing about this new and higher order of society is the working class. All other classes, despite their apparent or actual conflicts, are alike interested in the upholding of the system of private ownership of the instruments of wealth production. The Conservatives, the Labour Party, the other bourgeois ownership parties such as the nationalists, which do not stand for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of production, are alike political representatives of the capitalist class. The workers can most effectively act as a class in their struggle against the collective powers of capitalism by constituting themselves into a political party, distinct from and opposed to all parties formed by the propertied classes.

Working people have been impoverished. Poverty is necessitated by an economic system based upon individual ownership of the means of production and distribution utilised for exchange and private profit. It is fully understood that low wages, long hours, and scarcity of employment — that is, poverty — can only disappear with the disappearance of the capitalist system of which these things are the inevitable outcome. Political parties, like individuals, act from motives of self-interest. The platform of a party is simply the political expression of the economic interests of the class it represents. The Tory Party differs from the Labour Party as the manufacturing capitalist differs from the large financier capitalist; it is a difference in degree only. We find by an examination of their manifestoes that substantially the same statements are made. Both the Tories and Labourites are in favour of competition, the existing system. They condemn its anti-social tendencies, its fraud, but they still favour the system itself. Corporations are organised purely for private profit; the rights of the corporations to exploit the working class and exact tribute from the people are to be respected.

The Socialist Party differs from them both as the exploited wage worker differs from his or her exploiter; the difference here is not in degree but in kind. The Labour and Conservative parties are in favour of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution. They are in favor of the existing wage system. There is absolutely no difference between them. Upon the other hand, the Socialist Party, standing upon principle declaring in favour of common ownership of the means of production, declaring to the world that there is no other solution of this economic problem. The Socialist Party will do whatever it can to hasten to coming of the day when war shall curse this earth no more. We are pressing forward step by step until the minority becomes the majority, and inaugurates the system of the cooperative commonwealth. We ask you to join and cast your lot with socialism to stand side by side with us. It is infinitely better to vote for economic freedom and fail than to vote for continued wage slavery and succeed. Cooperative industry carried forward in the interest of all the people that is socialism. Real liberty for every human being on earth; no person compelled to depend on the arbitrary will of another for the right or opportunity to create enough to supply his or her material wants. There will still be competition among men; but it will not be for bread, it will be to excel in good works. Every person will work for the society in which he or lives, and society will work in the interests of those who compose it. We look into the future with absolute confidence we will enjoy a land without a master, a land without a slave.

The trades union movement and independent political action are the emancipating factors of the wage working class. The trade union movement is the natural result of capitalist production and represents the economic side of the working class movement. We consider it the duty of socialists to join the unions of their respective trades and occupations to assist in building up and unifying the labour organizations. We recognize that trade unions are by historical necessity organized on neutral grounds, as far as political affiliation is concerned. We call the attention of the trade unionists to the fact that the class struggle so nobly waged by the trade union forces today, while it may result in lessening the exploitation of labour, can never abolish that exploitation. The exploitation of labour will only come to an end when society takes possession of all the means of production for the benefit of all the people. It is the responsibility of every trade unionist to realise the necessity of independent political action on socialist lines, to join the Socialist Party and assist in building upon a strong political movement of the wage-working class, whose aim and object must be the abolition of wage slavery and the establishment of a cooperative commonwealth, based on the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution