We declare that the Socialist Party have earned the right to be listened to, for of all sections of the working-class movement we have been true, whilst the concept of socialism has been distorted and used as a cover to march our class from one swamp to another, their labour-power bought and sold like merchandise, their children snobbishly belittled. We still propagate that you, our fellow-workers must abolish the wages system, must fashion a society to your needs, a class-free society, where mankind passes from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.
The Left has kept the workers' attention fixed upon questions of taxation, banking reform, nationalisation, and a thousand and one other things in which the remedies proposed would bring no appreciable improvement in the general position of the workers. The idea of a living wage regulation is well over a century old but surely that would be an issue worth fighting on? "Socialism" for the Left is a vast and complicated system of state ownership, in which nationalised banks, money, and other trading impedimenta would flourish in a "step by step" advance to socialism where wealth produced, distributed, and enjoyed communally, without the intervention of money, credit instruments or any of the other rubbish essential to a trading world. First of all we take it that, broadly-speaking, a living wage means a wage on which people could live with a certain amount of comfort: pay the average rent demanded, get a sufficiency of nourishing food, have the small luxuries necessary to make life worth living, be able to give their children the necessary education and leisure, and be able to take an annual holiday to freshen and rebuild a jaded physique. Once such a wage was conceded the employers would immediately receive an extra impetus to look around for ways and means to lower production costs. Machinery that low wages now render unnecessary would be introduced, fresh machinery invented, waste as far as possible eliminated, industries amalgamated to cut out waste connected with competition. The result of this process (a process that is always going on but receives an extra push now and again) would be a reduction in the numbers of workers employed and an increase in the already huge quantity of unemployed. A small group of workers would be more comfortable at the expense of greater misery for the mass. In other words attempts at bettering the conditions of the workers, while retaining the wage system, act, as a rule, as incentives to the capitalists to lower production costs by methods that worsen the general conditions of the workers. The only, and the simple, solution is the introduction of socialism
Many on the Left advocate international co-operation within the framework of capitalism. The Socialist Party knows that such an achievement impossible. The nationalistic capitalism of any particular country is composed of the capitalist activities of individual capitalists or groups of capitalists within that country. The fierce competition between capitalists compels them to secure as great an amount as possible of commodities, and to find ever-increasing markets for the transforming of these commodities into cash. Without such markets, the surplus value produced by the workers could not be converted into profits. Within each capitalist country, the sum total of this production and scrambling for markets is identified as the capitalism of the country from which it emanates.
The whole of the exploiting of labour power and the grabbing of markets by, for example, American, German, or British capitalists, is recognised as American, German, or British capitalism. Thus we see that behind the separate entities of American, German, or British capitalism (or whatever nationalist capitalism it be) are individual capitalists who must ever maintain competitive equality or supremacy—or be ousted from their privileged positions as capitalists.
The expansion of individual capitalism within a country, therefore, brings an expansion of that particular country's capitalism. his law prevails in all capitalist countries with the result that the capitalism of such nations finds itself in fierce competition with the capitalism of other nations. As long as we live in a society wherein there exists commodity production, and the urgent capitalist need to sell widely the commodities produced, there can be no possibility of removing a world-wide scramble for markets. Many may indeed be sincere in seeking of a New Order that has no place for market-grabbing, but they have failed to learn that this can only be done by establishing a social system in which commodity production and commodity selling cannot exist.
Modern nationalism manifests itself as the political expression of a rising capitalist class when it considers itself grown up and able to run its industries, banks, etc., without the aid of "foreign" capitalism. This enables the native capitalists to enjoy all the profits instead of sharing it. For any socialist, it is his or her duty to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another and to refuse to participate in them. Is the Britain of the ruling class worth defending by the workers? Has the worker to-day – a wage-slave earning but a bare subsistence wage – anything to fight for? As it is the country is being conquered by the operations of the international capitalist. The British worker is to-day the employee of a multinational whose shareholders is global.
Were China to conquer India or France to conquer Britain, we would be ruled by no more alien class than rules us to-day. Our condition is such that we have no guarantee from week to week to earn our livelihood. Millions of us are living in a state of semi-starvation, living in always changing. In the slum districts the conditions are such that crime is at a premium, and virtuous living at a discount, so much so indeed that it is a constant surprise that the results of these conditions are so good. The worker to-day has nothing to fight for. The interests of the master class are not our interests. National prestige is not our prestige but is used to force from other nations commercial treaties and conditions which in the end prove adverse to him.
What the socialist has to realise clearly is that the interests of our fellow workers in other lands are nearer to his than are those of the master in our own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity. From the capitalist-class of every country, the worker is divided by a gulf of class antagonism which can be bridged only by the absorption of the capitalist-class in the working class, the result of the coming social revolution.
When the capitalist-class fully realises that they can no longer depend upon the working-class, when they find that the workers have at last come to understand their class position and that they have no reason for fighting in their master’s interests against those with whom we hold no personal quarrel, he, the capitalist, will see that it is impossible to appeal to nationalist prestige, to patriotism, and all the rest of the phrases used of old, and then it will be impossible to make war in so light a spirit, or to raise questions likely to create a tension between the ruling class of different nations. It is for the worker to see that his or her position demands that he or she should fight only for class emancipation and that nothing, internal reform or national strife, should draw themselves away from the determination to fight for the realisation of the socialist society.
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS! YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN.
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