Capitalism dominates the globe. Whether you admit it or not, there is a capitalist class and a working class pitted against each other in an irrepressible struggle. These two classes can never be permanently harmonized or reconciled. It is this that is called the class war and there can be no peace. Politics is simply the expression in political terms of the economic interests of certain classes. The employers realise this fact and they are in politics, not for altruistic reasons but to engage in political warfare against workers. Working men and women have already organised upon the industrial field against the power of their masters. But they have yet to learn that it is necessary to unite independently for the political battle, only too frequently dividing and fighting each other at the ballot box, instead of class unity.
The class now in power cannot rule honestly. They must rule corruptly. They are in the minority. They have not the votes of their own to put them in power, but they have the money with which to bribe the electorate. They have the money with which to pervert the courts and to buy the law-makers in the legislatures, and to corrupt all our institutions. They have the power to do this because they have the money, and they have the money because they own the means of production and distribution. The great mass of the workers depend upon them for employment. In this system no working person is in any sense free. They have little means of making themselves heard. Nevertheless, workers are beginning to open their eyes, beginning to understand that they have brains as well as brawn, that they can think as well as work, that they are fit for something better than wage-slavery. They are beginning to stand up and to realise that what is done for them must be done by themselves. And so they are gradually developing their own solidarity. For sure they are still in a small minority but others are awakening, people all across the globe are stirring. They are beginning to realise their interests, their power, their duty, their responsibility as a class more and more now. People whose life consists of a long, hard, fierce struggle all the way from youth to old age are starting to wonder how strange it is that in this world of abundance and plenty there is still so much poverty and want. The capitalist media tries to obscure it in every way possible yet it is impossible to disguise the failure of the system to provide for all the people and those people will continue to search for the reasons and seek the answers.
The class struggle battles is part of the war for the existence of humanity. The demands of people for access to food, housing, education, health care and an opportunity to contribute to society are summed up as the demand for a cooperative society. Such a society must be based on the common ownership of the means of production and the distribution of the social product according to need. These demands are antagonistic to capitalism, which is based on the buying and selling, including of labour power. This antagonism is economically, socially and politically polarising society, making social and political revolution inevitable.
Few can deny that the world today is in upheaval. That is reflected in the widespread anarchy, turmoil and conflict. The fact that such conditions prevail generally throughout the world, and have prevailed for a long time, logically suggests the presence of a dominant common social factor. That common social factor, the Socialist Party has repeatedly demonstrated, is the capitalist system that does not and cannot work in the interests of the majority. Socialism has unfortunately been presented as a system not of abundance but of scarcity, as a system not of increased leisure and comfort, but of sacrifice and back-breaking toil.
The Socialist Party has come together to inspire the working class to the conscious, effective struggle to overturn the outlived, rotten system of capitalism, in order to replace it with a society on a socialist basis, free of class exploitation, oppression and inequality. 112 years ago, when the Socialist Party was organized, there were no planes, no computers, no satellites or space stations in orbit, and no nuclear power stations or nuclear weapons. Nor was there a particular great concern regarding pollution of the land, air and water on which all species—humanity included—depend on for life. But there was widespread poverty, racial prejudice and discrimination, spreading urban chaos, brazen violations of democratic rights, the material and economic conflicts that contain the seeds of war, and a host of other economic and social problems. All of those problems still plague the world but have grown to even more monumental proportions in regard to the destruction to the environment. Unending reform efforts have failed to solve or even alleviate these long-standing problems to any meaningful degree and have only inflicted further decades of misery and suffering upon millions of workers and their families.
Against this insane capitalist system, the Socialist Party raises its voice in emphatic protest and unqualified condemnation. It declares that if our society is to be rid of the host of economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the means of life and production for the profit in the interests of a few must be replaced by a new social system. That new society must be organised on the rational basis of social ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism. Accordingly, the Socialist Party calls upon the workers to rally under its banner for the purpose of advocating this revolutionary change, building class-consciousness among workers and developing the organisation that the workers can use to implement towards this end.
Despite the many threats to workers' lives, liberty and happiness today, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all stands within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realized only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organizing, politically and industrially, for socialism.
The Socialist Party calls upon all who comprehend the critical nature of our times, and who are increasingly aware that a basic change in our society is needed, to place themselves squarely on working-class principles and join us in the effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its malevolent results. Let us place the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help us build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, multiplied by all the technological and other factors of modern civilisation.
Struggle, Solidarity, Socialism
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