Capitalism is the Common Cause of Our Misery

The Socialist Party strives for a world where all members of various communities manage social and economic life.  Each community would coordinate with every other community on a regional and global scale. We believe it will take a social revolution to win. Allocation of public and consumer goods would operate according to calculation in kind, that is the measurement in real quantities. Markets and money prices would be replaced by a system of stock buffering and control to ensure against shortages of consumer goods. Needs would be calculated by direct records of demand from community stores and workers would supply according to pull production responding to consumption. Community councils could prioritise needs when goods are scarce by needs-testing, a points system or even a lottery.

State capitalism is capitalism by the state and for the state. It is capitalism by the government and for the government. It is thus capitalism by the ruling classes and for the ruling classes. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. The abolition of the State is a necessary precondition for the emancipation of the working class. The first act of the coming revolution which wants to overcome class division is the abolition of the state. The community has to organise production. Government ownership is no better for the slave than private ownership, and it seems as if under government control the workers are in a more absolute slave position (if possible) than ever, bound by rules and regulations and subject to more direct coercion than ever before. National ownership or control is only a more complete development of capitalism and is generated by the commercial jealousy of one section of the capitalist class against another, socialists realise that nationalisation of industry will not remove the slave system under which the working class is compelled to live. Capitalism is to make profits, regardless whether under nationalization or not. Nationalisation would operate and does operate the same as the big chain stores or trusts, to eliminate useless labour and make bigger profits. What about the workers? Would it give better wages or fewer hours and more employment? If the mines were nationalised operating staffs would be greatly reduced and more machinery introduced. The same applies in all industries, it is simply the concentration of labour in the most efficient way. Under private capitalism, the workers must sell their labour power to live and under nationalization, which is state capitalism, they must sell their labour power and be subject to the laws of capitalism, a struggle for existence and hired and fired to suit a capitalist state.

The workers are a slave class; they are as much slaves as their progenitors, the chattel and the serf, but in place of previous methods the worker receives his subsistence to-day through a money payment, he is a wage slave. To the chattel slave, his/her whole labour appeared to be given gratis, to the wage worker his/her whole effort appears to be paid for. Behind this payment lurks the secret of modern methods of exploitation: ever since the dawn of slavery human energy has sustained a set of unproductive idlers out of the wealth produced beyond that required for the sustenance of the producers. As with the slave of ancient society so with the modern wage slaves, the wealth they produce is the property of the masters. Its proportionate increase is enormous owing to the increased powers of mankind over nature’s materials. This surplus over and above the value of the workers' wages is called by the socialist “surplus value." Out of this surplus, whether its form be rent, interest, or profit, its owners have to meet the expenses of their profit-making system, i.e., wars, pauperism, crime, etc. Fellow-workers, heed not your masters' canting cry about “burdens," they are his, and in order to economise as far as possible he would have you think them yours. 

  For Marxists there is no amount that the worker ought to receive, nor was the non-receipt of the full value produced, ever offered as a justification for restitution or for the struggle to rebuild society. Exploitation to the Marxist is not something “wrong,” and therefore to be condemned. Exploitation in various forms has been the necessary basis of different social systems. The need for it is passing, and only that fact calls for and justifies our efforts to establish socialism.  Many misunderstand the Marxian doctrine of the increasing exploitation of the workers. Marx did not assume and build hrs theories upon the inevitability of increased poverty. The change he had in mind was the worsening position of the workers relative to the wealth and power of the capitalist class. What he argued was that the productivity of the workers' increases more rapidly than their real wages. Marx explained that the workers' position gets worse, even although his or her real wages may not fall, but actually rise.


The Socialist Party was born in revolt against the horrors of poverty. It gets its whole philosophy by analysing the modern economic system in search of the cause of poverty. Its aim is opposed to capitalist business and capitalist politics as light is to darkness. This principle no professional politician will adopt. A lot of make-believe capitalist sympathy has been slobbered over the working class recently as a result of the revelations of some of the horrors of working-class existence. That the capitalist may make a genuine effort to improve these conditions is quite possible. But even if they do improve the workers' conditions; if they stable them in palaces and harness them in golden chains, what then? Evolution has given us the possibility of producing by work, as distinct from toil, wealth in such abundance that the amenities of civilisation shall be the portion of all, without stint – is that not worth fighting for? True the world is vain, evil, ugly. But these are mere accidental phenomena, only forms and appendages of the world. Its eternity, truth, goodness and beauty is substantial, existing, positive. Its negative is like the darkness which serves to make the light more brilliant, so that it may overcome the dark and shine more brightly. The spokesmen of the ruling classes are not open to such a sublime optimism, because they have the pessimistic duty of perpetuating misery and servitude. Why fritter your time away on matters that leave you bottom dog. Recognise the real and ultimate contest must be between masters and slaves. In numbers you are overwhelming, armed with the knowledge of your usefulness as a class, no power can withstand you.