Monday, September 26, 2016

We arra people

Who are the people? The people are the working class, the toiling property-less, the robbed, the oppressed, the dispossessed, the impoverished, the vast majority of the world. There are many signs of the awakening of the workers' movement. The Socialist Party endeavours to prepare the way for the Cooperative Commonwealth by teaching the hopelessness of reformism and by teaching the real meaning of social revolution.

The Socialist Party is  existence for the purpose of securing political power so as our fellow workers can take possession of industry and for the first time make this Earth fit for men and good women to live in. The Socialist Party looks into the future with absolute confidence and we see the dawning of the cooperative commonwealth and the vision of a world without a master, a world without a slave. The present system of social production and private ownership is rapidly converting society into two antagonistic classes — i.e., the capitalist class and the propertyless class. Independent political action and the trade union movement are the chief emancipating factors of the working class, the one representing its political, the other its economic wing, and both must cooperate to abolish the capitalist system.  Therefore the Socialist Party declares its object to be:
The organisation of the working class into a political party to conquer the public powers now controlled by capitalists so as to implement the abolition of wage slavery through the establishment of a worldwide system of cooperative industry, based upon the 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.

What is the meaning of capitalism? Capitalism is an economic term to the economic system of our civilisation, by which a few men acquire the privilege of living off the work of others, who produce a surplus value above that which they receive for their own sustenance. Capitalism refers to the system where a capitalist profits from the labour of others. If he sits in his office for long hours pouring over work-sheets and productivity levels does not alter the fact that he has an income apart from his labour sufficient to sustain him for life without labour, and therefore he is economically independent. The working class under capitalism live in the futile and forlorn hope of bringing in an income, sufficiently rewarding to achieve economic independence as the capitalist class.

Capitalism thus is a divided society of 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. The Socialist Party declares itself the champions of the working class by its intention to bring the abolition of wage slavery by the establishment of a system of  common ownership of the means of production and distribution. To those leftist reformists who plead for a redistribution of wealth and the introduction of some universal citizens income, we ask what are you more interested in the possession of the property of the world which creates wealth? or the possession of the money, which is a creation of capitalist laws and which is principally used to exchange property between capitalists? The chief function of money is as a medium for the exchange of property. In socialism, private ownership and barter being at an end, money would lose the functions which it possessed under capitalism and would be abolished. Socialists have no patience nor any regard for legislation which may oblige the capitalist class to disgorge part of their spoils while leaving them in control of the capitalist system, by  which they can recover and once again absorb the property of the people. Rather than palliatives the Socialist Party, although it may stand alone encourages our fellow-workers towards their  historic mission — the abolition of wage slavery and establishment of the cooperative commonwealth.

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