Join us in the cause of human liberation

Willing and able to work, with a family to feed and house -- but jobless? Such is the tragic plight of millions of today in a land of plenty. Why? What is wrong? Workers need a clear and candid answer to this question.

The cause of unemployment is inherent in the capitalist system of society. It is a notorious fact that tens of millions have basic needs that are unsatisfied. But under capitalism things are not produced to satisfy human needs; they are produced to be sold at a profit. When the capitalists cannot sell what the workers have produced assembly-lines are shut down, factories close, and unemployment spreads.

Every worker knows it takes only a few weeks or months of unemployment to wipe out any "gains" from years of employment. Homes, cars, and furniture are being repossessed at a rising tempo. Even highly touted "fringe" benefits -- pensions, insurance, hospitalization -- are down the drain.

All this is the inevitable consequence of capitalism -- of a system in which the capitalists, a numerically small class, own the factories, mines, railroads, and land, etc., in short, all the means of social production, while the overwhelming majority, the working class, owns nothing except its labour power.

Recurring recessions are the inevitable result of a central contradiction in the capitalist system. The capitalists can't stop an economic crisis any more than they can stop earthquakes or hurricanes. Their so-called "built-in stabilizers" are wholly inadequate for coping with the central contradiction in their system. Defenders of capitalism say automation makes jobs. But as production is concentrated in highly automated plants, the cruel and devastating effects of automation on workers' jobs become apparent. That is the grim reality of capitalism. And all that the capitalists and their politicians can do about it is to let the unemployed vegetate on the ever-reducing welfare or relief. Capitalist handouts, whatever their form, are degrading. The jobless worker stands in line for long hours to demean himself before some bureaucrat or do-gooder charity worker in order to qualify for food-stamps or food-bank parcel. He feels his degradation keenly. If he exhausts his unemployment compensation and goes on welfare or relief, the humiliation to which he is subjected is many times worse. His private affairs are pried into. He and his family are regimented in a kind of purgatory of poverty that erodes his self-respect. Reforms cannot solve the problem.

We have everything it takes to make our planet a veritable paradise. All that stands in the way is (a) the outmoded system of private ownership of industry and (b) the workers' failure to see themselves for what they are under this system -- namely, wage slaves, enslaved as a class to the capitalists as a class.

To end the curse of unemployment we must eliminate the cause of unemployment. We must replace private ownership of the industries with social ownership (i.e., the industries must be owned by all the people collectively). And we must replace production for sale and profit with a system of production for use. Then instead of kicking workers out of jobs, automation will shorten the working day, working week and work-year. Technological progress will no longer be something for us workers to fear, but an unqualified blessing that will ensure abundance and leisure for all.