The Day of the People is Arriving

While there is a lower class I am in it; While there is a criminal class I am of it; While there is a soul in prison I am not free. Eugene V Debs

Men and women who have dreamed dreams have led in the world’s progress toward higher and better things. The exploitation of man by man, of nation by nation, fabulously enriches the favoured few and impoverishing and degrading the toiling and producing masses. The few have the power to rob and enslave the many. 5 percent privately own our natural resources and our industrial machinery. In virtue of which they have the power to rule nations and rob the people. The Socialist Party says it will put an end to private ownership of social necessities. The issue — the one and only issue — is socialism. There is no other. Stick to it! Proclaim it everywhere! Socialism or capitalism. Freedom or slavery? Which? That is the issue and the only issue and the only issue that appeals to the intelligence of the working class. The end of private ownership means the end of exploitation, and the end of exploitation means the end of war and the beginning of worldwide peace. Trade wars must be backed by machine guns and missile. The war of blood follows the war for trade. Put an end to it all by replacing capitalism with socialism, and industrial despotism with industrial democracy, wherein the people, the whole people, shall own and control their common means of life, produce all things for their common use and enjoyment, and not for gorging parasites, and then, exploitation having ceased, competition for trade being ended, the incentive to war vanishes and for the first time in history the mankind is at peace. We are socialists, world socialists, and we have no use, not one bit, for capitalist wars. We have no enemies among the workers of other countries; and no friends among the capitalists of any country; the workers of all countries are our friends and the capitalists of all countries are our enemies. The class war is our war and our only war. We have no interest in national wars for ruling class conquest and plunder. In all these wars the workers are slaughtered while their masters grow fat in the spoils of conquest. The time has come for the workers to cease fighting the battle of their masters and to fight their own; to cease being slaughtered like cattle for the profit of the ruling class and to line up in the class struggle regardless of race or nationality for the overthrow of class rule and for the emancipation of their class and humanity. Permanent peace, however; peace based upon social justice, will never prevail until national industrial despotism has been supplanted by international industrial democracy. The end of profit and plunder among nations will also mean the end of war and the dawning of the era of “Peace on Earth and Good Will among Men.”

In every revolution of the past the false and cowardly plea that the people were “not yet ready” has prevailed. Some intermediate class or political party invariably supplanted the class that was overthrown and “the people” remained at the bottom where they have been since the beginning of history. They have never been “ready” to rid themselves of their despots, robbers, and parasites. All they have ever been ready for has been to exchange one brood of blood-sucking leeches for another to drain their veins and fatten in their misery. False prophets of the people and traitors to the working class delude followers. But themselves people are ready for their day. The people are the working class, the lower class, the robbed, the oppressed, the impoverished, the great majority of the earth. They are THE PEOPLE, and they who exploit the working class, and the mercenaries and lackeys who aid and abet the exploiters, are the enemies of the people. Working class solidarity must be the watchword. Industrial unity and political unity the revolutionary solidarity o the working class, will give us the power to conquer capitalism and emancipate the workers of the world. Beware of capitalism’s politicians and preachers! These are the real betrayers of the people, the hypocrites. They are the descendants of the hypocrites of old who all down the ages have guarded the flock in the name of patriotism and religion and secured the choicest morsels for themselves by turning the sheep over to the ravages of the wolves. Beware of the liveried hypocrites of the landlords, the usurers, the money-changers, the stockmarket-gamblers, the exploiters, the enslavers and despoilers of the people; beware of the ruling class politicians and preachers in every form who are so profoundly concerned about your “patriotism” and your “religion” and who receive their 30 pieces of silver for warning you against socialism because it will endanger your morality and interfere with your salvation. They are the slimy, oil-tongued deceivers, who traffic in the slavery and misery of their fellow-beings.

Capitalism is the same everywhere. Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will socialism, born out of misery, fed by blood sweat and tears and animated by agitation and proclaiming its mission of emancipation. The Socialist Party is intent upon building up a working class party for independent political action. The Socialist Party stands upon a sound platform, embodying the principles of world socialism, clearly expressed, and proclaims its mission of conquest on the basis of the class struggle. Its tactics are in harmony with its principles, and both are absolutely uncompromising. The mission of the Socialist Party is to awaken fellow-workers to a consciousness to be a socialist. We are not after office, we want socialism. We care nothing about office except in so far as it represents the triumph of socialism. Our goal is the “brotherhood of man,” and the tenet “Each for all and all for each”. It is no utopian dream, not the product of imagination, nor a mirage of the desert to allure and vanish, but a world-view of life and labour in which the humblest individual secures life, liberty, and happiness. 

We know that day by day, nourished by the desperation and vitalised by the aspirations of the working class, the area of its activity widens, it grows in strength and when the final hour of capitalism and wage slavery strikes, the Socialist Party will proclaim FREEDOM TO ALL MANKIND.