Human ingenuity and natural resources
are wasted by the capitalist system, which makes profit the and
capital accumulation the only purpose of business with all
concomitant evils perpetuated by this system - ignorance and misery.
Science and technology are diverted from their humane purposes and
made instruments of war-fare and for the enslavement of and the
starvation of men, women and children. The Socialist Party holds that
this system, through the destructive action of its failures and
crises places no real value on human life. We therefore call upon our
fellow-workers to muster beneath our banner so that we may be ready
to conquer capitalism by making use of our political power and by
taking possession of the State, so that we may put an end by the
abolition of capitalism, and bring all the means of production,
transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body,
and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth — a
commonwealth which, although it will not make everyone equal
physically or mentally, will give to everybody the free exercise and
the full benefit of their talents. The Socialist Party appeals to all
who are interested in the emancipation of the working class from the
chains of wage slavery to join it and through it and its companion
parties in the World Socialist Movement, to work for the overthrow
of the present capitalist system in all its social and economic
ramifications, and for the establishment in its stead of a worldwide
socialistic cooperative commonwealth.
The Socialist Party believes that very
little can be gained by trying to administer the capitalists’
political machinery; that this machinery is especially adapted to fit
the necessity of the capitalist ruling class. It believes that what
the working class gains under capitalism at one point they lose at
another; and that as the struggle goes on it will become more and
more bitter, and the general distress and subjugation of the workers
more and more acute; and that this process must go on until the
workers learn the lesson that the source of their trouble is inherent
in the wage system, and that the remedy is not patching up this
system, but to its final overthrow and the establishment of the
cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party agrees with Tolstoy who
said, the master class will do any and everything but “get off the
backs” of the working class. The Socialist Party's mission is to
sweep the capitalist system into oblivion, and usher in the socialist
cooperative commonwealth. Socialism comes not as a remedy for the
evils of existing society, but as a programme of principles for a new
society. Socialism commences the unity of humanity as a fact. It
does not proclaim it as a sentiment, but recognises it as a
scientific fact. For good or ill, whether we will or no, we are bound
up together in this world and can only achieve our well-being
together. Each for all and all for each is the only rational mode of
procedure, in view of this fact. We might like to have separate
interests and be able to extricate ourselves as individuals from this
unity; but we cannot do so any more than we can individually
extricate ourselves from the law of gravity. We all in common depend
upon the same common resources of nature. None of us is rightly born
until every child born into the world as the immediate inheritor of
all the resources of nature, of industry and society, of inspiration
and culture; of all that tempts to goodness and greatness and makes
for fullness, freedom, and gladness of life. If the whole world were
full and glad with life and should yet consent that one child should
be born with less, the world would be damned. Until all of us
together see to it that every person is equal with every other
person in access to resources, opportunities, and liberty, we shall
none of us see freedom upon the earth. In this sense shared-interest
and self-interest are one and the same; for no one person has a true
interest in oneself who does not regard the whole life of mankind as
their calling and interest; and no-one has a true regard for his
brothers and sisters who does not seek to make him or herself a whole
and free individual in their service.
Since all people in common depend upon
the sources and tools of production, there can be no individual
liberty save these resources and technology belong to the people in
common. There can be no social peace and sanity so long as some
people own that upon which all people depend. All that can be said
against slavery can also be said against the private ownership of the
tools of production and distribution; for the private ownership of
the common sources and machinery of life is nothing less than the
ownership of human beings. Noone is free so long as he or she is
dependent upon another for the chance to earn a livelihood. If a man
owns my bread, or owns that which I must have in order to get my
bread, he owns my being, unless I choose to revolt and starve.
Private ownership of the land, of its
productive machinery, means private ownership of the people. Who
sells his or her labour-power for wages sells themself; for
labour-power is life. The wages system is merely an advance in the
slave-system, but it is no fit system for free men or women; and
there can be no true freedom for all until there is not another
hireling left under the sun. The labour of the world is essentially
slave-labour. There is not a wage-slave on earth who has not in some
degree degraded themself, even in spite of themself, by dependence
upon the private buyer of labour. So long as some men own that upon
which all men and women depend, the owners and the dependents are
alike corrupted, enslaved, and robbed. The capitalist system rests
upon this power of private capital to legally appropriate the fruits
of the labour of society yet the only elemental right is that the
people in common should own that upon which the people in common
depend. The ownership of the wealth by the few has been the poison of
history. A civilization build upon fraud and force, gambling and
lying, stealing and political debauchery, capitalism and
slave-labour, simply seeks its own retribution and downfall.
The Socialist Party will build on a
sure foundation that has for its end, the commonwealth, the common
wholeness, the common freedom, the common abundance and fulfilment of
all men and women. Nature offers resources enough for abundance of
life for countless billions of human beings. Critics answer that we
aim for a society for saints and angels, but not for a society of
human beings such as we are; that we must wait till we have a better
brand of human beings before we can have socialism. All of which is
very much like saying that it is not safe to cure a man of his
disease until he gets well; or like saying that well will not come in
out of the rain until we first get dry. It is a strange idea that
makes men and women regard what they know to be basically good as
dangerous in practice, and what they know to be very wrong as
actually safe. Socialism strikes at the root of the chief cause of
our less than perfect conduct and proposes to abolish that slavery
and competition which making mankind brutal and dishonest. The whole
influence of capitalism is to war against love and liberty, and to
make all that is lovely in human life impossible. Socialism comes to
remove the causes that prevent men and women from true fellowship.
Socialists have no thought of arraying
one class against another class as individuals; class-consciousness
does not mean class hatred. Let us admit that socialists sometimes
give utterances that have the class-hatred ring about them.
Class-hatred is nonetheless alien to the spirit and genius of
socialism. Even so bitter a controversialist as Karl Marx says that,
of all men, socialists can afford to be tolerant and kindly toward
the capitalist class, knowing that class to be victims of a system as
truly as the labourer. What the socialist does mean by
class-consciousness is this: that nothing can obviate the hideous
fact that one class of human beings is living off another class; that
a capitalistic class is heaping up the produce of the producing
class. And we appeal to labour to become class conscious, because we
knows perfectly well that the labourer cannot achieve his or her
freedom, nor have the produce of his or her labour, until we becomes
conscious that we are the real producers and the owners of the earth.
Capitalist barons and landlords will exist and despoil the earth with
economic and military wars until the disinherited and dispossessed of
the world arises to take possession of its heritage. So long as the
worker is willing to be a mere wage-earner, so long as he oer she is
led about by politician, just so long will conditions worsen. The
working class must achieve its own liberty, if it is ever to be
achieved. Liberty cannot be handed down by an upper class to the
lower class; it has never been so achieved, and ought not to be so
achieved. If liberty were something that could be imposed upon one
class by another, or could bestowed as a gift from superiors to
inferiors, it would vanish in the night. Mankind will not be free
until they have won and established their freedom in experience and
by the power of their own brain and brawn. The class-conscious appeal
is not for strife or hostility, or antagonism, but for dignity; for
constructive purpose. The end of socialism is the abolition of all
classes and parties and the coming in of but one class, the people,
with opportunity for everyone to produce their own living and at the
same time to become, as Charles Kingsley said, “a scholar, a saint,
and a gentleman.” Unless workers as a class are so awakened that
they become courageous enough to adopt the socialist commonwealth as
an immediate goal, and adopt a spirit of goodwill towards all, no one
can achieve their liberty for them, or ought to achieve it for them.
All history demonstrates how the people have had to achieve for
themselves each inch and gain of liberty, and how they have been
again and again betrayed. How can we truly respect ourselves, or help
to make the socialist movement what it ought to be, if we fail it in
its moment of sorest need? Socialists are not appealing to you for
support on the ground that socialists are better than other people,
but on the ground that socialism is better than capitalism.
Socialism proposes to bring forth and
educate the best that is in humanity; capitalism and competition are
bringing forth and educating the worst. Socialism comes not to
destroy, but to fulfill. It comes with no attack upon any man, but
with the message of goodwill. It offers the economic basis for the
realisation of that fraternity which has been the dream of the ages.
It comes with no attack upon personal possessions. Capitalism has
already destroyed the possibility of the bulk of mankind ever
becoming property owners.
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