The problem that socialists set themselves up to resolve is the separation between the means of production and the producers. The factories in the hands of the workers despite lives spent in useless sacrifice. The workers are excluded from the riches they create. Under the system of non-possession of the property-less working class of the instruments with which they work, all progress, no matter what its nature, is turned against them, making greater their misery, their slavery; accentuating the insecurity of their existence; in a word: making unavoidable their exploitation—their robbery.
We hear “profit sharing” much spoken of as a remedy to heal all social sores, to reconcile labour and capital. If the cure were applicable, profit sharing would only remove the field of battle to a conflict over the profits to be shared. But without insisting on this point, in urging the worker to produce the most possible, it would only oblige him to do in two days the work of three, concluding consequently in the multiplication of the already too numerous days of no pay or stoppages. From the hell in which the dispossessed productive class struggles and writhes there is no redemption—“abandon all hope ye who enter here!”
We have a war of all against all.
Firstly, war between the employee and the employer for their respective shares in the produce; on one side, wages, on the other, profits; each side exerting itself to carry off a maximum.
Secondly, war between workers and fellow workers over who gets a job and for how much pay.
Thirdly, war between capitalists and capitalists over the division of spoils.
Capitalist society can provide a superabundance of riches to meet every demand of consumption and happiness, yet, instead, it produces misery, suffering, ruin, and death. The solution to the social problem is to create a vast co-operative commonwealth. production of exchange-values with an end to realising profit will disappear, and be replaced by the production of use-values for consumption with a view to satisfying social wants. In place of robbing and exploiting one another, we will all help one another.
The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the competitive profit system, but to abolish it. We stand unequivocally for the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of wealth production and distribution — in a word, socialism. The Socialist Party is necessarily a world party. It is everywhere and always the same. It takes no backward step. It refuses to be bribed or otherwise deflected from the straight course first mapped out by Marx and Engels. The Socialist Party has no interest in any of the so-called issues over which capitalist politicians fight sham battles. It cares nothing about banking regulation, taxation, or imperialism. The issue is socialism vs. capitalism. It stands first, last, and always for the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, and will press forward unceasingly until we secure them, thereby liberating humanity and solving the problem of the centuries. The Socialist Party claims that the cooperative commonwealth will take the place of wage slavery. The present social system is not only a failure but a colossal aggregation of crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of mankind. It promises only an increase of the horrors. The Socialist Party offers no hope to our toiling brothers and sisters except the path to the cooperative commonwealth. Let us realize the possibilities standing unitedly and wholeheartedly let's develop the power to fight for our emancipation. The Socialist Party is positive and constructive. It stands for complete political and industrial democracy.
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