The purpose of capitalism is the realisation of profit (surplus value) and the first step towards this end is the purchase of the necessary means of production. Thus beginning with money (capital), the employers buy factories, machinery and raw materials plus the energy (labour-power) of working men and women and the net return on this outlay is an increased sum of money, sufficient not only to repeat the process but enough for further expansion of production. From the unpaid labour of the workers, there is money to be reinvested in the productive process, either as an addition to the existing capital or as capital seeking fresh fields of exploitation, leading to an inevitable accumulation of capital seeking surplus-value.
All money set aside as industrial capital can be divided into two parts, that spent on the inert means of production we can call “constant” capital, while that for buying labour-power, which preserves and furnishes additional value is “variable” capital. Now if the function of labour-power is to labour, then the call for labour by the employing-class will depend on the market demand for commodities, while the market will, in turn, be gained by those owners that have succeeded in reducing the labour in their commodities to the lower level.
Labour-time is, therefore, the capitalist’s devil which claims as its victims those that are hindmost, driving them to centralise or amalgamate their capital and concentrate it in labour-saving machinery and mass production—to invest in constant capital rather than variable capital.
This results in large capital devouring its smaller rivals, while the social outcome is such that the means of production call for a progressively smaller number of workers to operate it, making it impossible for capitalism to find work for the total employable population, hence an industrial reserve army is in constant being, ever threatening the wage level of those in jobs.
Spurred on by the needs of the market and the greed for surplus-value, capital accumulation in the past was built up by driving labour-power below its value by excessive hours, piecework and low wages, but wiser methods hold sway to-day in production-drives advocated by the workers’ own “union leaders” coupled with the plea that the workers have a "share” in their job.
Yet not all capital invested in the capitalist economy is productive of value or surplus-value. To begin with, the industrialists—whose workers directly produce value and thereby surplus-value—must part with some of the surplus to others whose capital forms an integral part in the capitalist production. The middlemen, bankers and others, though not in productive industry, nevertheless share in the surplus according to the size of their capital and receive, over a period, an average rate of increment, enforced by competition: for capital flows out of those spheres where the rate is low to where it is higher. At this point, it might be asked: “How do those capitals whose workers produce no surplus-value, exploit their workers?”
The finance-capitalists whose service to capital is to centralise all the available loanable money for the use of the whole capitalist class, reap the difference between the depositors’ rate and the interest charge for borrowers. The work entailed being done by their employees, who merely receive the cost of subsistence or salary consistent with this type of work. The outlay in wages and equipment compared with the charge for the bank services give these capitalists their share in surplus-value. Again, the merchants and advertisers who market the products, effect this much more economically than could the many independent industrialists, thus saving them labour-time and capital. The wage costs' for their workers’ abilities and commercial knowledge, set against that part of surplus-value which the industrialists leave them to realise in the selling price, give the merchants their profits.
The landowners, hereditary possessors of the earth’s surface, lend no like "service” to capitalist production, hence the historic enmity of the capitalist class against this landed class, often of aristocrats from a bygone age. An eventual compromise is always concluded with this "charge on industry,” even though land as land has no value and will only yield rent out of the surplus values of farmers and industrialists. Landowners in this way take their share of the spoils through the undertakings on their land whether these activities be mining, building or agriculture. They accumulate wealth, brought about, by others activities. Their land offered as a commodity is bought and sold for a sum that is equal to an investment whose interest would equal the rent.
To sum up, surplus value is the totality of unpaid labour wrung from the workers' in the productive process. while its distribution to the capitalists as rent, interest, and profit takes place in the circulatory process.
Nationalisation does not touch the foundations of capitalism, and the capitalists themselves accept the need in their own interests to control big monopolies. Certain monopolised industries subject to the greed of private companies become instruments for the exploitation of other sections of the capitalist class, and so powerful that the abandonment of certain industries to private exploitation destabilises the whole system
In our Declaration of Principles there are three clauses of special relevance and these are the object, the clause affirming that there is an antagonism of interests between the working class and the Capitalist class, and the clause that lays down the need for the working class to organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government.
Nor do we want “workers’ ownership," which means syndicalism or cooperatives which remains sectional ownership but ownership by the whole community.
Our object is socialism, defined as a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. Our definition is not a mere insistence on a formula. We work for socialism and oppose capitalism—including nationalisation or state capitalism—because only socialism will solve the problem facing the working class. Many miscall state-ownership "socialism” or describe it as a useful stepping stone on the way to socialism. We do not want state capitalism and therefore have no interest in associating with those who do. The fact that they call it “socialism” only makes their activities more dangerous to the workers. It is an essential part of Socialist Party propaganda to convince the workers that the advocates of “something less than socialism” misuse the term and advocates of capitalism. It is the task of the Socialist Party to demonstrate that their activities are against the interests of the workers; that they are enemies of socialism and of the working class.
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