Abundance for All

Employers are impelled to squeeze the last drop of profit from the workers. At this very moment, the employers are trying to reduce the already totally inadequate pay and dismantle working conditions. A systematic campaign has been waged by the employers  for the destruction of the trade unions. Day in and day out, the media express their distaste for the workers organisations. In Wages, Price and Profit Marx insisted that if workers were to abandon their battles around wages and working conditions, then “they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation ... By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.” But these battles are not ends in themselves. In the very next paragraph Marx also warned against exaggerating the importance of such battles and becoming “exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ending encroachments of capital...” Thus while this struggle is necessary if the proletariat is to resist everyday attacks and still more to develop its fitness for revolutionary combat, such struggle is not itself revolutionary struggle. Moreover, unless the economic struggle is linked to building a consciously revolutionary movement – unless, as Marx puts it, it is waged not from the view of “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” but under the banner of “abolition of the wages system”–then such struggle turns into its opposite, from a blow against the bourgeoisie to a treadmill for the proletariat.

But what are wages? When a worker hires himself to an employer he agrees to work for him, that is, to give him a portion of his time and energy each day in return for a specified sum of money. Hence it is seen that to shorten hours is, by decreasing the quantity of time and energy given, equivalent to raising wages and may be included under that head. Similarly, as wages are, in the long run, not the actual money but the "living" which that money will buy, the betterment of conditions generally may also be included in the general term wages. We find, then, that the object of the union is to secure for its members a betterment of wages. Wages being, superficially, the sum of money, but, in the last analysis, the living, in exchange for which the worker delivers up to an employer for a specified time his or her physical energy, in other words, labour-power. We find the fact that we must work for ever less and less wages is merely a necessary corollary to the simple fact that we must work for wages. We find that we must work for wages because we have not the necessary implements of production to enable us to work for ourselves. We must, therefore, in order to gain our livelihood, work for those who own these means of production. We cannot employ our own power to labour, we must, therefore, sell it to those who can employ it. Purchasing our power to labour, to them belongs the fruit of that labour; in it we have no part for we have sold out and receive our portion, at best a meagre living.

Seeking the cause of our enslavement we find it in the ownership by the masters of the means of production, the mills, mines and factories and the avenues of transportation. Owning these they, as a class, command our labour. To them we must sell, in competition with our fellows, our power to labour for a wage, the equivalent of which but a few hours of the day’s toil will reproduce. The hours we labour thereafter are the profit of the masters. Out of that unpaid toil are their rent, interest, and dividends paid, for to the owners of the means of wealth production belongs the wealth produced. It follows, therefore, that were the means of production collectively owned by the workers, to the workers the wealth produced would belong. The fruits of what is now their unpaid toil would then be theirs to use and enjoy. The enhanced productivity due to improved technology, the benefits of which accrue now to the masters would accrue then to the workers, to whose ingenuity they are due and by whose effort they are employed. The lessening of the labour needed then, in place of constituting, as now, an ever-pressing peril and an increasing source of hardship and degradation, would, by lessening the necessary hours of work, be but a boon and an easement to the workers. Increased productivity, instead of spelling intensified poverty would but signify enhanced ease and plenty.

But between the workers and the ownership of the means of production stands the State. If the property of the masters is stolen, restitution and punishment come at the hands of the State. If the ownership of property is in dispute, the State adjudicates. If property is threatened the State, with police and militia, with judiciary and legislature, hastens to its defence. The title deeds to property are written and guaranteed by the State.

The State giveth, the State can taketh away. It is now the instrument of the masters to preserve their property. It can become the instrument of the workers to turn that property into their hands. Now the control of the State is in the hands of the masters. The old political parties represent, if they represent anything, but warring factions of the master class. Whichever party wins to political power neither helps the workers. The politicians reign but, unseen, the capitalists rule. Be he never so honest or well-meaning, the old party politician can but serve Capital, not Labor, whether or not he wills or knows it. By training, education and thought he is the henchman of Capital.

So long as the workers can be beguiled into supporting any of the parties of capital, that is any party which is not against capital, capital is safe, be the victorious party never so fierce in its denunciations of abuses, never so sincere in its professions of sympathy for labour. While capitalist ownership is untouched, capital is master, labour slave. Only by themselves conquering political power for the purpose of abolishing capitalist ownership of the means of production can the workers ever obtain any easement. They must have the whole loaf or be content with none. So to the conquest of the State we, of the working class, have set ourselves. Not for honour or glory. Not for personal political advancement. These we might achieve more easily otherwise. Nor for the love of suffering humanity. But because we know we are slaves; we have lived enslaved long enough and are determined at least to die freemen.

Arrayed against us are all the powers at the command of the master class: their wealth, their media, their intellectuals. But on our side capitalism, which seeks to combat us, itself creates us recruits for our ranks, foments our revolt. Capitalism, whose upholders deny the feasibility of socialism, exists for no other end than to prepare the way for that society. Capitalism has gathered us together, educated us, drilled and disciplined us into a huge co-ordinated army of production, given us ideas and aims, interests and aspirations in common. It has brought the means of production, so to speak, under one roof and has developed their efficiency many hundred fold. It has organised them ready for our collective ownership, and has imbued us with the desire to own them, nay, has dictated to us the necessity of owning them, leaving us no alternative but to own them or perish.

The greatest obstacle in our path is the ignorance of our fellow slaves of their enslaved condition. But that ignorance is being steadily dispelled. We do not seek to accomplish the impossible, to get blood out of a stone, to better our condition within a system whose very existence predicates that our condition must grow worse. We seek only the possible and the only possible remedy. The wage slave’s salvation lies in emancipation and in nothing less. That is the aim and purpose of the Socialist Party.