Our Socialist Vision

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s Work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system.’ "

if you dream of becoming rich and really living the dream, your job isn’t going to get this job done. That’s because when you work at a job you work an hour, and you get paid for that hour. The problem is, it doesn’t matter if you earn $15 an hour or $150 an hour or even a $1000, there are only so many hours in a day. That limits how much money you can make. Fortune 500 CEOs who earn millions of dollars a year get rich, sure, but they’re the exception because they also get paid in stock options. It’s not some vast conspiracy. Companies have a financial obligation to their bottom line and their investors to pay employees the lowest possible salary the market will allow. That’s Business 101. Poor men and women may indeed become rich but not by the simple wages of their labour. They never do become rich except by availing themselves, in some way, of the labour of others. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

The Socialist Party tries to educate and unify the working class and show that every conflict between workers and the bosses is part of the general struggle in society between the capitalists and its state on the one hand, and the working class on the other. By starting from the working-class point of view and a scientific conception of society, the Socialist Party educates fellow members of the working class and encourages their conscious participation in political action to overthrow the capitalist system.  It recognises that the peoples of the world have the same interest; to end the barbarous profit system. For many long years the Socialist Party pleaded with fellow-workers to organise and take over the entire means of production and distribution. Books, pamphlets, leaflets, and journals of all kinds were freely circulated, with scanty result. Heedlessly the workers moved along, turning their backs on revolution by their blank indifference to questions of supreme importance.  It is the academics who try to make a few elemental principles of political economy and of sociology so difficult of understanding yet the subjects are easy of understanding. All workers who are satisfied with their wages, the wages system and capitalism would probably get mad as hell if they took a little time off to read more about what is really going on. Do not be frightened at the long words. If we can get a clear conception of the socialist method of production and distribution, then we can use that idea to challenge the present method employed by capitalism and obtain the support and organisation of the workers to put it into practical operation. The industries are already in the hands of the workers, but the strength of the employers lies in the fact that they control and direct the product. Who will pay the wages? No one. Money, the most powerful weapon of the capitalist is discarded. But we must eat to live. Very well, the canning factories, the docks, and warehouses are already in the hands of the workers. The flour mills and bakeries, the dairies and packing houses are controlled by them. The dockers, railwaymen and lorry drivers deliver the food, the shop assistants and canteen workers supply it to the workers and their families. Distribution will not be according to the amount of money a person has but according to his or her need. Here is a system of industrial democracy, the only true democracy, not the choice of choosing Tweedledum or Tweedledee every five years and being controlled by him and his partners for the period between, but the control of one’s own job and environment, the control of one’s own life. The government of people gives way to the administration of things. We are now poor and enslaved not because of lack of reforms made by politicians, but because the employing class owns and control the means of production, without access to which we cannot live. So long as others control the means whereby we live so long shall we be slaves? Only by taking common ownership and democratic control of the means of distribution can the workers be free.

Today we are less preoccupied with the abolition of the wages system than ever, and this fact stamps itself as a hallmark on the enslavement of our socialist movement to snivelling attempts to mollify inhuman social relations whilst preserving them intact. The old cry for a fair day’s pay echoes itself time and again. The Socialist Party recognises the class war between the property-less and the possessing class and it can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production and distribution by the whole people, thus abolishing the State and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth or a social-democracy.

Socialism entails the total abolition of money, buying and selling, and the wages system. It means the community must set itself the task of providing rather more than the people can use of all the things that the people need and desire, and of supplying these when and as the people require them. Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, making advertisements and all the various developments of commerce which, in fact, employ more than two-thirds of the people today.

The Socialist Party has always maintained that socialism will onlybee achieved by a majority of the working class taking conscious, revolutionary action to capture political power and institute common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Before this step can be taken workers must be equipped with an understanding of what socialism entails. When socialism does eventually come to be established, someone born into this society, the final emancipation of all mankind, would accept common ownership and working for the needs and betterment of all human life (indeed, not working for nothing) as the normal way of life. He or she would look back unbelievably at a system of society, whereby the propertyless majority were exploited and used for their whole lifetime, subjected to wars, hunger and poverty, for the benefit of the propertied few, and wonder how this system lasted for so long. A person born into the capitalist system of society is conditioned from birth to accept this system as normal, until he is educated to the fact that there is an alternative to the capitalist system of society. The alternative being a system of common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of the whole community. A class-free society that would end for ever exploitation, war, and poverty. A system of society whereby man would have a free, satisfying, full life. Secure for all time from the ravages of the capitalist system, with an unlimited horizon ahead to work for the betterment of all mankind.

 Capitalism exists today because of a class monopoly of the means of production. This monopoly can only be broken by the combined efforts of the working class and, for this task, the workers need their own political organisation. In the UK, this is the Socialist Party of Great Britain.