End the wages system

The working class has fallen on troublesome times. All the forces of society and all the powers of government are arrayed against workingmen and women. In many places, the lot of the average worker is scarcely one remove above slavery.

Any form of society has to provide two things. Firstly, it must have to feed its members, clothe them and satisfy cultural needs through material goods, i.e. it must produce the means of subsistence for all. Secondly, society must replace used-up raw materials, replace machinery and factories and so on to allow the continued existence of society and the provision of work. Without these two major requirements of any human society, culture and progress would be unsustainable. Even capitalist production must meet these demands.   But is it not the case that every capitalist goes blindly on producing, competing with others, and hardly sees what is happening in front of his nose, the anarchy of the market and chaos of capital accumulation. Surely with the environmental degradation and global warming, the planet is now heading for ruination. Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world and now the future of the species on the planet itself is now in doubt.

Let the working people manage and plan production to suit the needs of the people – for peace, prosperity, and plenty for all. The Socialist Party's goal, of course, is to turn all production away from the profit motive to supplying human needs.  Let us get together and pull together for the common good of all. There is not a redeeming feature to the present competitive wage system.. Every thoughtful person knows it is maintained for sating the greed of the ruling rich. Nothing less than the complete overthrow of the debasing grinding and degrading conspiracy against wage-workers will do. Why should one person be a wage-slave to keep another in luxurious idleness? We want a society whose workers run everything in the interests of the world's workers. We want a system that encourages every worker to become involved in running society; that educates everyone to act for the common good and does not indoctrinate people to look out for number one; that opposes placing selfish interests above the social needs. In socialism, the principle "to each according to need" will be as basic as the principle "every man for himself" is under capitalism. We want society to help each person grow as an individual. Under capitalism, only the bosses are free – free to hire and fire, free to pillage and plunder, free to make their profits. With socialism, the principle of work will be: "from each according to ability." People will work because they want to, because their brothers and sisters around the world need their work. They will share in decision-making, including the distribution of goods and services according to society's needs. They will share shortage if there are any along with abundance which there will be. The wage system will have been abolished. Distribution founded on free access eliminates the material incentive for the emergence of new bosses corrupted by all sorts of privilege. Government or party officials, specialists will no longer receive more money for work that is supposed "more important." The measure of work will have nothing to do with what people receive. People should and will get what they need, within the limits of what everyone can produce. The abolition of wages causes the social basis for privileges and a new class of bosses to disappear. For the first time in history, workers will receive a fair share of society's wealth, regardless of the work they do. Socialism will bring to an end socially useless forms of work that exist now only for capitalist profit. There will be no need for lawyers, advertisers, or salespeople. In one stroke, it will do away with layers of needless government bureaucrats, as well as the hordes of petty supervisors who oversee and manage us for the bosses.

What every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which are capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. The capitalists would love to perpetuate this situation.  When we fight for a demand like a wage increase of we are merely fighting against the effects of capitalism. Not merely that. We are petitioning the employing class. In other words, we envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. Of course, every pay rise that is won by the workers is immediately offset by the employers by more intensive work, by stricter supervision etc. and by a general price increase. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he or she started. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it with socialism. This is the inevitable limitation of trade union struggles. We do not, of course, therefore oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. In the course of these fights with our employers, workers begin to learn about the system of capitalist exploitation and the need to abolish it. Trade union struggles are necessary to educate the workers. But the economic struggle must be transformed into a political struggle for the capture of political power by the working class and it, otherwise it will sink into the morass of reformism.  We must go further and abolish the wages system itself.

Ending the wage system will reduce the problems capitalism causes inside the working class. Sexism, nationalism, and racism, are some of capitalism's greatest evils, exploiting one worker to a greater degree than another. Marx said that "the worker in white skin can never be free as long as the worker in black skin remains in chains." We oppose nationalism. National borders are artificial; they exist to divide workers and keep different sets of bosses in power. Workers need no borders. Workers in one part of the world are not different from or better than workers in another. Nationalism creates false loyalties. We endorse the revolutionary slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!"