In a world where profit-making is the motive force to production all sorts of rubbish, shoddy and inferior goods are produced. The purpose which such goods will serve is secondary. Whether they serve any purpose at all does not really matter so long as a market can be found for them and a profit realised. Inferior goods must be presented as equal to superior ones. The health, wealth and general well-being of the people who buy does not come into the picture from the business point of view. Alternative medicines, for instance, even if not dangerous in themselves, can cause a delay in the time before proper treatment is applied, and thus be a danger. Advertisers can bamboozle workers into the acquisition of all sorts of consumer goods and create the impression that such possessions indicate an improved standard of living andworkers can look back on previous generations and imagine themselves better off than their forefathers, losing sight of the fact that their forefathers had things which they have not, and were without things which workers today might have missed with advantage. Capitalism is a system of society which produces goods incidentally. Fundamentally its aim is the amassing of surplus value. Productivity and Profit are interchangeable and synonymous terms. Of all the commodities exchanged in the market there is one peculiar commodity known as labour power. That commodity is represented by the mental and physical capabilities of the men and women of the working class. Since the workers under capitalism have no means of obtaining a living other than by way of selling their power to labour, that labour power becomes a commodity. Like other commodities, it is, broadly speaking, paid for or exchanged at its value. But between the value of labour power and the value of its product there is a difference. The capitalist does not employ workers from a motive of philanthropy. Capitalism could not exist in that way. The workers produce the wealth, only a portion of that wealth is returned to them, the remainder being retained or appropriated by the capitalist. The difference between what the workers produce and what they get in wages is generally known as profit, but called by Marx surplus value. That profit or surplus value, though not realised until the exchange of commodities takes place, is actually derived from the process of production, and represents the unpaid labour of the workers. The Marxian theory of value, not only shows us what value is, and how it is determined, but also shows us the source from which flow the riches and poverty in modern society.
There is a complete divorce of production and consumption. Production is earned out for profit and not for use. Capitalism is contradictory and anti-social. An unavoidable feature of capitalism is that goods and services are produced for sale. The profits which are realised when goods are sold go to the people who provide the capital - the investors, who invest their money precisely because they hope to get a profit. If the investors think their profit is in doubt they will usually withdraw their capital regardless of the consequences. Capitalism is now a futile social system. It cannot unite the human race — it can only divide it catastrophically. It cannot serve human interests; it can only deny and damage them. It cannot solve its problems, such as poverty and war, but only continue to produce them in one form or another. No socialist claims that in socialism the workers will receive the full value of their product, since a certain amount must be set aside for reproductive purposes. But all that is set aside for this purpose under socialism will be used for the benefit of the whole of society, and not as it is to-day, for the benefit of a few leeches.
Non-socialists may see certain evils in the world, evils which grow more glaring as the years pass, and all they can do is to say in effect, “Let us destroy these abominable evils, and if, in doing so, we, at the same time destroy associations of peoples, even if we thereby wipe out mankind itself; better chaos or annihilation, than the degradation and prostitution of life as it is to-day." The Socialist Party, however, has no desire for social chaos or total annihilation; these visions of despair would drift into nothingness if people could only be brought to understand—to understand themselves and the social system under which they live and which makes them the unhappy beings that they are. We are endeavouring to give to our fellow-workers an exposition of life as it now is, as it might soon be, and as eventually it will be. What we. desire is a sane and healthy system of society, to be erected on the dead ashes of the system which is passing, wherein no-one shall be called upon to sacrifice ability or body in order to obtain the wherewithal to live; wherein the worker, the artist, the scientist (possibly a trinity in one person) may unite with, and dovetail into, one another, in the production of wealth, which would be the property of an appreciative and enlightened humanity; not, as now, the property of a few unworthy and unappreciative parasites.
The capitalist class, by means of their control of the media, are able to focus the attention of the working class on things that are often of little concern or consequence so the exploiter can devote his energies more closely to the source of profit. The wage-worker listens to the master’s voice and submits to the master’s will. The owning class live on the surplus value extracted from the workers: the workers have to wage a ceaseless struggle to maintain even a part of the value of their work for themselves. In such circumstances it is a truism to say that the more the owners can fool the workers into believing that there is no conflict of interests, the happier—and richer—the owners will be. The standard of living of the proletariat falls, yet one rarely hears a statement that places the blame where it belongs, on the supporters of the capitalist system. The exploiter could not long continue in his privileged position if he failed to keep going the deception; the capitalist not only lives at the expense of his victims but he succeeds in preventing them from finding out how it is done. It is obvious that the process will continue until the worker decides to end it, and the idea of ending it will never enter his head until he realises that only by doing so can he or she hope to enjoy a life worth living. The trouble with human beings, as anyone who has mixed with them knows, is that they are — human beings. They are too often different from each other; they have different tastes, capacities, abilities. Capitalism does not, and must not, see human beings like that. From its beginnings it has had the need to flatten individuals, as far as production and exploitation are concerned, into the same mould. The story of capitalism has been the story of the death of one individual craft after another, of the refinement of productive techniques and of the progressive separation of man from the things he makes. The first crude steam engine was part of this process and so is the most recent computer. To capitalism human beings are units on the production line, just like nuts and bolts although needing different handling. They are part of the costs of production, a column in a ledger, a click on a computer. Capitalism tries to dehumanise mankind.
Anyone who wants to abolish the capitalist social system should not waste their time trying to reform the nature of capitalism. Their place is in the Socialist Party, helping with the task of achieving socialism. Yet nearly all of us, without knowing it, give our support to and help perpetuate the very things we find unacceptable. We endorse the poverty, hunger, cruelty and warfare that blight humanity. We do it every time we express support for the big political parties, every time we vote for them. Because all of these parties stand for the continuation of a world system of which poverty, hunger, cruelty and warfare are an integral part. We repeat the lesson we have been repeating, monotonously for years: No leader, however honest, clever or well-intentioned can lead the workers out of slavery. No man or group of men, however intellectual, can found a new society which depends for its success upon the knowledge and understanding of the bulk of the population. Socialism can only be attained by working men and women who know what socialism means and how it is to be obtained. Therefore, it is necessary for working men and women to do the comparatively small amount of thinking that is necessary to understand socialism. When they have done so they will know the steps to be taken, and will no longer need to rely on leaders. How then do we go about not supporting poverty, famine, disease and war? The answer is to take a long hard look at the world around us, to see that all attempts to improve the nightmare system of production for profit are futile, and to join a vigorous democratic movement determined to replace it by the society of abundance, equality and security which is there for the taking. But it can only be taken when a majority of men and women use their votes not to elect leaders who promise to run things for them but send to the seats of political power democratically elected delegates from a mass socialist party who are committed to one thing and one thing only the abolition of the outdated system of money, wages, profit and buying and selling and the bringing in of a new, truly humane society which will produce only for people’s needs and will make full rational democratic use of the abundant resources of planet earth.
According to many academics the world is full of "socialisms" and the plethora of definitions they present us with is certainly confusing. The Socialist Party has always had to challenge the avowed enemies of socialism and denounce the self-styled friends of socialism who attached the name socialism to the varied forms of state-capitalism. The anti-socialist parties and press, often for reasons of their own, but sometimes out of pure ignorance, helped on the work of misrepresentation by describing as “socialist” the Labour Party, and Soviet Russia. We are concerned to defend the name of socialism. Let us, then, reiterate that the Socialist Party never has and never will lend itself to the pretence that something else other than Socialism is "just as good.” We have never worked for or defended state-capitalism, whether as advocated by the reformist parties in this country or as practised by the Bolsheviks in Russia. We have never been prepared to pretend that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were democratic; we have never glossed over the brutalities of committed. We have always held that Socialism is, in its nature, democratic and international. We have never been prepared to compromise those views. In war, as in peace, we repudiate the false friends and avowed enemies of socialism who seek to associate socialism with various forms of capitalism and capitalism’s wars. Some continue to emulate revolutions of the past and so urge a revolutionary civil war, as the only ways possible, while condemning in advance as 'opportunist', 'reformist', the more peaceful ways of capturing power. The future revolution will take place with a minimum of violence since by becoming the movement of the immense majority it will have radically altered the relationship of forces to the detriment of the tiny exploiting minority, desperately seeking to maintain an exhausted and outdated economic system. Obviously no one can know in advance but it is possible to speculate that the capture of power will take place relatively without violence. No doubt the existing power will be tempted to install a dictatorship, but will it still have the strength, undermined as it will be by an immense majority determined to see things through; in the long term the ruling class will be obliged to yield.
The rate of progress in socialist thinking of the working class is difficult to judge. But it by no means follows that because we are a tiny handful of socialists now, a few hundred after over a hundred years, that their progress cannot suddenly take off. And once a take-off point is reached, it is reasonable to expect that socialists’ efforts to convince their fellow workers will accelerate at a rather more encouraging rate than we have seen until now. One lesson fellow-workers must learn, and must learn soon, is that the development of society has now reached a stage where nothing but the establishment of socialism can save society from collapsing into ruins. Capitalism is doomed by the fact that it inevitably produces poverty, wars ad environmental havoc; only by the replacement of the present order by the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production in the near future can society be saved. Failing this solution to the social troubles that afflict us the possibility of a complete social breakdown and a relapse into barbarism is a not impossible end to present social development. The future depends upon the workers understanding the source of social misery and taking the only course that can end it. That they will do so is our conviction in spite of the ugly shadows that are gathering. The job of a politician is to be an illusionist, to convince the property-less that they had power, that they were the strength and glory of the nation, that they were free and that their freedom was precious, that they controlled their civilisation by their vote, to make them feel proud and superior because they were not slaves. Then, no matter how how poor they were, they felt proud and ready to defend the society that kept them in that condition against those who were their companions in misery—their fellow workers. Only a social revolution can get rid of the ailments which afflict human society today. That revolution cannot be masterminded by leaders; it must be carried through by a politically conscious, participating working class, worldwide. This is at present a minority viewpoint yet it is the very stuff of social progress to a free, co-operative, abundant world.
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