Fellow-Workers, the spirit of our time is revolutionary and growing more so every day. The message of socialism, which, a few years ago was spurned by these people, falls today upon eager ears and receptive minds. Their prejudice has melted away.
A new social system is struggling to surface. The new system that is to succeed the old is clearly revealed in its spirit of mutualism and its co-operative manifestations. The old economic foundation of society is breaking up and its social fabric is beginning to totter. The capitalist system is doomed. The signs of change confront us everywhere. Social changes are preceded by agitation and unrest among the masses. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the nation’s industries, the toiling masses will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. Private ownership and competition have had their day. The Socialist Party stands for social ownership and co-operation. We demand the machinery of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class.
The Socialist Party as the party of the exploited workers in the mills and mines, on the railways and on the farms, in the offices, the workers of both sexes and all races and colours, the working class in a word, constituting a great majority of the people and in fact THE PEOPLE, demands that the world's industries shall be taken over by the workers who shall operate them for the benefit of the whole people. The choice is economic despotism, and the other is economic democracy. We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people.
In the struggle of the working class to free itself from wage slavery it cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the working class itself. The simple question is, can the workers fit themselves, by education, organisation, co-operation and self-imposed discipline, to take control of the productive forces and manage industry in the interest of the people and for the benefit of society? That is all there is to it.
The capitalist theory is that labour is, always has been, and always will be, “hands” merely; that it needs a “head,” the head of a capitalist, to hire it, set it to work, boss it, drive it and exploit it, and that without the capitalist “head” labour would be unemployed, helpless, and starve; and, sad to say, a great majority of wage-workers, in their ignorance, share in that opinion. They use their hands only to produce wealth for the capitalist who uses his head only, scarcely conscious that they have heads of their own and that if they only used their heads as well as their hands the capitalist would have to use his hands as well as his head, and then there would be no “bosses” and no “hands,” but men and women instead—free men and women, employing themselves co-operatively under regulations of their own, taking to themselves all the products of their labour and shortening the work day as machinery increased their productive capacity. Such a change would be marvelously beneficial all around. The idle capitalists and brutal bosses would disappear. All would be useful workers, have steady employment, fit houses to live in, plenty to eat and wear, and leisure time enough to enjoy life. That is the theory that the Socialist Party is fighting for. But this is not a mere fanciful theory. It is a vital force in society that is at work like gravity, steadily, unceasingly, transforming society and at the same time preparing the workers for the change.
All the workers have to do is to recognise this force, get in harmony with it, and fit themselves by self-training and co-operative self-control for industrial mastery and social freedom. This seems simple enough and so it is, yet simple as it is it involves the greatest struggle in history. The idle capitalists who now rule the civilized world and rob the workers of the fruit of their labor will fight to the last ditch and they have numberless hirelings, mercenaries and lickspittles in the form of lawyers, politicians, legislators, judges, office-holders, professors, priests, editors, writers, reformist leaders, soldiers, detectives, etc., etc., to fight their battles for them. All this vast army serves as retainers of and apologists for the idle capitalists by whose grace they hold their jobs, and the entire brood is set solidly against socialism. These servile prostituted puppets all insist that working men and women are “hands” to be worked by capitalists, that they can never be anything else and that socialism is but the devil’s lure which they must shun as they would a deadly viper, and this they are dinning into the ears of the slaves early and late through their media, their pulpits and confessionals, their civic federations and charity balls, and seeking in a thousand other ways, secret and subtle, covert and treacherous, to thwart the efforts of the socialists to open the eyes of the workers that they may see the light and find their way to freedom.
This task on the part of socialists, who are almost wholly wage-slaves with their brains in working order, is a herculean one and socialists are the very last to underestimate its magnitude. They realise fully what they have undertaken, and how crucially they are to be tested in the struggle, and this has been the making of them and they are today the most fearless, persistent and successful agitators and the most self-possessed and optimistic people in the world. They are not waiting for some so-called “great man” or “good man” to do something for them, but they are preparing to do all things for themselves. The workers are in a great majority and without them every wheel would stop, industry would drop dead, and society would be paralyzed. All they have to do is to unite, think together, act together, strike together, vote together, never for an instant forgetting that they are one, and then the world is theirs. They have but to stretch out their millions of brawny arms and trained co-operative hands and take possession. But to reach this point requires education and organisation—these are the essentials to emancipation.
They must unite in one and the same industrial union and one and the same political party. And the union and the party must be managed and directed by themselves, not from the top down, but from the bottom up. When the head of a “boss” appears it is only to disappear if the workers know their book. Brains are wanted, but not bosses. The workers do not want to be patronized any longer by intellectual “superiors.” They are organized upon the basis of mutual service and the superiority of all, and all are welcome to join upon that basis, the brainier they are the better.
But no bosses! Labor has been bossed for centuries unnumbered and from now on it is going to boss itself. Labor has had all it wants of the “great man,” who condescendingly smiles upon it to have himself lifted up on its shoulders and boosted into prominence, luxury and office. The workers and producers, the builders, the sowers and reapers, the weavers and spinners, the mechanics, artisans and laborers of every kind and sort are the creators of society and the conservators of civilization, and when they come to realize it they will conquer in the struggle for supremacy and people the earth with a race of free men and women.
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