THE FUTURE IS WITH THE PEOPLE

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.