The Profit System Must Go

There prevails a widespread discontent with the existing social order which is manifesting itself in the many raised voices for the reconstruction on a completely new basis of society to end the concrete evils of this economic system. It is not a vague feeling of unrest rising out of general conditions but the result of sharp, stinging experiences. What are these experiences which have generated the demand for a different system of production and distribution? Without an understanding of what is wrong and the sources of these wrongs it is impossible to formulate the reconstruction aims which will end the social ills from which we suffer. It is necessary that we have a clear understanding of what is evil and whence its source if we are to take action to remedy the situation.

The working class must make its stand against the capitalist system – whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheaper labour, can mean only ruthless exploitation and abject slavery.  We have solved the problem of production. The wonders of machinery and technology has freed us from the danger of lack of food, clothing, or houses to live in because of the inability to produce them. We can produce all that is needed to supply the necessities of life, as well as the comforts of life — education and the opportunity for recreation — to all the people. Yet the individual worker is always at the mercy of his or her employer, never sure that tomorrow he or she may be dismissed. Today work may be plentiful and the opportunity to earn a living easily secured but tomorrow the factory or office doors may be closed and the employees out on the streets, facing hunger and starvation. This is not only true of the shop-floor workers. It applies to the salaried staff in management equally. The plain fact is that a numerically small group of people, the capitalists, who own the machinery of production and the natural resources, have the masses at their mercy. They are our masters and we, the workers, their serfs. The evils of the present social order — insecurity, low wages, and industrial conflicts — are the product of an industrial system in which the supreme purpose is the taking of profits. The present industrial system divides the people of this country into two classes. Anyone with a grain of common sense will have to admit that. There are people who work for wages and those who employ wage workers. There are the people who own the industries and those who must go to the owners of industry or their representatives for the opportunity to earn a living. The ownership of industry is the source of the power of the profit-seeking class. It gives them control of the opportunities of the masses to secure the necessities of life. The millions of men and women in this country who are dependent upon the wages they earn for a living are economic serfs. They have not won the “inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness,” because their opportunity to earn the necessities of “life, liberty, and happiness” can be taken from them by the owners of industry, and is taken from them whenever the owners of industry are unable to make profits for themselves from the labour of the workers. The power to hire and fire the workers, to give and take away the opportunity to earn a living, carries with it the power to compel the workers to work for such wages as will leave the capitalists a profit from their labour. 

The business of making profits is shrouded in great mystery by the capitalists. They seek to make the workers believe that it is through some occult power that they make the processes of production yield them profits and build up great fortunes for them. There is no mystery about the source of profits. The capitalists do not create wealth out of the air in juggling with industry. They make profits because they purchase the labour-power of the workers for less than the value of the goods the workers produce; that is, they do not pay the workers the full value of their labor. There is no other way of making profits out of industry. The lower the wages for which the capitalists can purchase the labour-power of the workers and the longer or intensified their hours of labour, the greater will be the capitalist’s profits. The workers naturally seek to increase their wages and reduce their hours of labor. They endeavor to secure for themselves more of the wealth they produce and better working conditions. The capitalists resist. They see their profits menaced by the workers’ demands. The existing economic system is a huge profit-making machine, which has no relation to the happiness and well-being of the masses of the people. It does not exist to bring them “life, liberty, and happiness.” The ruling class would like the workers to forget these things. If the work of reconstruction is to result in a better world, its aim must be the abolition of the profit system. Its continued existence is incompatible with any proposal to reconstruct our production system in any cooperative or rational foundation. Common ownership is logically the next step in the evolution of society, hand in hand with industrial democracy. The workers will enjoy the wealth they produce. If, after supplying everyone with nutritious food, good clothing, a comfortable home, and the opportunity for education and leisure, they find they have surplus products on their hands, they will simply cut down the hours of labour. We can through socialisation — through the organisation and coordination of our powers of production, eliminate waste and create a large increase in our productive ability. The abolition of exploitation through the abolition of rent, interest, and profits, will insure to all the enjoyment of the wealth produced through our greatly productive power and will end the misery and poverty which is such a dark blot upon our civilisation. Production for use and not for profit will enable us to bring into existence more than enough wealth to give a high standard of living.

The work the Socialist Party has to do on the way to freedom, is through building a class conscious political movement which will carry on the work of educating the workers to an understanding of the system of exploitation which now exists and the class character of the government and to organize the workers for the struggle to wrest control of the government out of the hands of the capitalist class. At the same time, it is an essential part for the workers to build up organisations in the industries themselves, having as their goal to supersede the capitalists in control of industry. In these organisations in the industries are the beginning of the new industrial order that will expand and grow until they become a huge cooperative network of the workers for control and management of the work of production and of all matters pertaining to their common interest.