You must believe in your power to change the world.

Down through the years, the ruling class has suppressed or distorted the socialist message so that its ideas are misrepresented and misunderstood. A society that permits poverty and hunger amidst plenty and abundance stands self-condemned. The Socialist Party is pitted against the whole profit-making system. It insists that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want, while the master class lives in luxury. There can be no peace until the workers organise as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution, and abolish the wage-system. In other words, the workers' collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial institutions in common. Surely it is right that the creators of wealth should own what they create and that we learn that we are all related one to the other, members of one body and that injury to one is an injury to all?  No matter how much we think about it, everything comes back to the question of the overthrow of capital as an economic and political entity. If it is not done, reforms in the economic structure can get us nowhere. We have to abolish this worker-capitalist relationship.

 The planet's productive capacity is not fully utilized. Its use is governed by the dictates of private economic power and by considerations of, private profit. Similarly, the scramble for profit has wasted and despoiled our rich resources of soil, water, forest, and minerals. Our human resources are wasted through social and economic conditions stunt human growth. Our industry can and should be so operated as to enable our people to use fully their talents and skills. Such an economy will yield the maximum opportunities for individual development and the maximum of goods and services for the satisfaction of human needs. Under the capitalist system, basic goods and services are produced and obtained from the market.  This means that a wide range of human activity is subject to the market and determined by its requirements in a way that was never true before. The workers who supply our goods and services are market-dependent because they generally live by selling their labour-power for a wage. In other words, labour-power has become a commodity. Capitalists depend on the market to purchase labour power and capital goods, and to sell what the workers produce. Workers are paid for their work. What are they actually paid for? They’re paid for their laboUr power for a certain period of time, not for what they actually produce during that time. Whatever the workers produce belongs to the capitalist, and the capitalist appropriates the difference between what the workers are paid and what their products or services will fetch on the market. So capitalists appropriate the surpluses produced by workers in the form of profit. It’s not done by means of direct coercive force but through the market.

Capitalists have to compete with other capitalists in the same market. Competition is, in fact, the driving force of capitalism — even if capitalists often do their best to avoid it, by means, for example, of monopolies. But the social conditions that, in any given market, determine success in price competition is beyond the control of individual capitalists. Since their profits depend on a favorable cost/price ratio, the obvious strategy for capitalists is to cut their own costs. This means above all constant pressure to cut the costs of labor. This requires constant pressure on wages, which workers constantly have to resist. It also requires constant improvements in labor productivity. That means finding the organizational and technical means of extracting as much surplus as possible from workers within a fixed period of time, at the lowest possible cost.

To keep this process going requires regular investment, the reinvestment of surpluses. Investment requires constant capital accumulation. So there’s a constant need to maximise profit. The point is that this requirement is imposed on capitalists, regardless of their own personal needs and wants. Even the most modest and socially responsible capitalist is subject to these pressures and is forced to accumulate by maximising profit, just to stay in business. We can talk as much as we like about corporate social responsibility. But capitalism itself puts severe limits on that. The need to adopt maximizing strategies is a basic feature of the system and not just a function of irresponsibility or greed — although it’s certainly true that a system based on market principles will inevitably place a premium on wealth and encourage a culture of greed. There’s no such thing as a capitalism governed by popular power, no capitalism in which the will of the people takes precedence over the imperatives of profit and accumulation, no capitalism in which the requirements of profit maximization doesn’t dictate the most basic conditions of life. The essential condition for the very existence of capitalism is that the most basic conditions of life have been commodified, turned into commodities subject to the dictates of profit and the “law”’ of the market. Production is determined not by what’s needed but by what makes the most profit. Everyone, for instance, needs decent housing, but good and affordable housing for everyone isn’t profitable for private capital. There may be a huge demand for such housing, but it’s not what the economists call “effective demand,” the kind of demand with real money behind it. If capital is invested in housing, it’s most likely to be high-cost homes for people with money. That’s the whole point of capitalism. Where production is skewed to the maximization of profit, a society can have massive productive capacities. It can have enough to feed, clothe, and house its whole population to a very high standard. But it can still have massive poverty, homelessness, and inadequate health care. You only have to look at the United States, where there are some of the highest rates of poverty in the developed world and where tens of millions have no access to affordable health care. What possible excuse can there be for that in a society with such enormous wealth and productive capacities? Capitalism is inefficient in another sense too. With its emphasis on profit maximisation and capital accumulation, it’s necessarily a wasteful and destructive system of production. It consumes vast amounts of resources; and it acts on the short-term requirements of profit rather than the long-term needs of a sustainable environment.