“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.”
All capitalist governments and all ruling and exploiting classes are alike to the Socialist Party. Our fight as world socialists is against them all and we have no preference among them. We have not one iota of nationalist pride or jingo patriotism. Our only interest in is the preparedness of our fellow-workers through sound education and revolutionary economic and political organisation, to overthrow the world’s ruling classes and sweep their robber regimes from the face of the earth. The Socialist Party takes its stand staunchly in favour of the class war, the only war that can put an end to all war, and quite as staunchly against every war waged by the ruling class to rob and kill and enslave the working class. It means war, but war against WAR and not against HUMANITY. It means war against slavery and for emancipation. It is of little use to cry out against war while we tolerate a social system that breeds war. Capitalism makes war inevitable. Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers but ruthlessly invade, plunder, and ravage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all. Abolish that, establish industrial democracy, produce for use, and the incentive to war vanishes. Until then men may talk about “Peace on earth” but it will be a myth — or sarcasm. Let us show the people the true cause of war. Let us arouse a sentiment against war. Let us teach the children to abhor war.
There may well be still room for reform and betterment in the present social system, but this is of minor consequence compared to the world’s crying need for industrial and social reorganisation and revolution. Privately owned industry and production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane and civilised ends. With all its marvelous progress and monumental achievements through invention and new technology this world of ours - has not yet learned how to feed itself. There is no longer the shadow of an excuse for a hungry person. All the resources and all the forces are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide food and shelter for every man, woman, and child, thus putting an end to the widespread poverty and appalling misery, which now shocks and sickens humanity and impeaches our vaunted civilization. But these tools and materials and forces must be released from private ownership and control, socialised, democratised, and set in operation for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand. Such a world is a world of strife and hate and such a society can exist only by means of militarism and physical force. The day of awakening is at hand. The workers of all the world are breaking away from statecraft and priestcraft.
The Socialist Party challenges the right of capitalism to exist, and it proclaims the socialism as the legitimate successor of the present status quo order. Socialists appeal to the world’s workers upon the basis of their class interests. The Socialist Party make no pretense of attempting to serve both capitalists and workers. That is a political sophistry which socialism leaves a monopoly in the hands of the political spokesmen of capitalism. Socialism counts among the world’s workers all those who labour with hand or brain in the production of life’s necessities and luxuries. Socialism appeals to the self-interest of every man and woman so employed. With the interests of the owners of the great machines of modern production and distribution, the Socialists have no concern, except to abolish that ownership.
Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is postulated upon production for use. Whenever the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution fail for any reason to realise profits, it is in their power to cease production or distribution and the world’s workers may starve. Again, if the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution permit it to be operated, they dictate the terms upon which the world’s workers may use that machinery. In other words, the only function of the modern capitalist is to own that which his brother man must use. The worker has naught but his labour-power, of hand or brain, to sell, and if he must sell his labor-power upon terms dictated by another, he is a slave. He who controls my bread controls my head, and so the contest between modern capitalism and socialism resolves itself into the age-old question of human slavery.
The corporate wealth of the nation controls the capitalist government of the nation and will to the end of capitalism. Corporate wealth is the result of economic and industrial evolution. Until corporate wealth is supplanted by common wealth, it will continue to write the laws and to enforce them or now, as best pleases its owners. Control of corporations and the enforcement of regulation of capitalist legislation, by capitalist politicians, are twin frauds in the programme of capitalism’s efforts to fool the people. No capitalist politician or party dares to hinder business growth or profits. Such an eventuality is a possibility, but not a probability. The Socialist Party wastes little time in dwelling upon these fleeting fantasies of the capitalist reformists. We realise that the issues which divide the capitalist political camps are merely quarrels between rival groups of capitalists over the division of the spoils which they have expropriated from the workers. The Socialist Party is no more interested in the outcome of these political quarrels than it would be in the result of a quarrel between two hold-up men who had robbed someone of his wallet and who had fallen out over splitting the contents.
Instead, the Socialist Party concentrates on the monumental corruption, the hypocrisy and the shams of capitalist politics as an indictment of capitalism. Alongside it, is the inexcusable impoverishment and prostitution of fellow-workers, the destruction of his families in the mines and sweatshops of capitalism. The Socialist Party calls upon his brothers and sisters to join in the overthrow of capitalism through capturing the powers of government and transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism. We point out the staggering burden of militarism, the colossal fraud of capitalist courts, the indescribably corruption of capitalist business, the cant, the chicanery, and the hypocrisy of capitalist society, and We urge workers to join in the struggle to usher in a better day. For the first time in the world’s history a subject class has it in its own power to accomplish its own emancipation without an appeal to brute force. This is the appeal which the Socialist Part makes to the workers of the world. It invites them to seize political power in the name of the working class, and to decree their own economic emancipation proclamation.
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