The Price System Has Outlived Its Usefulness

The Socialist Party differs from every other political party and organisation in that it has set up the abolition of the wage system as its standard. The Socialist Party is working on changing the basic foundation of the current social system. Its enemies are the capitalist class, and capitalist lackeys of every kind and stripe The State is the servant of commerce. A mere change of personnel does not satisfy us. There have been changes of politicians in the State machinery but the wage system has stayed. The exploitation continues. And it will continue, until the workers take control of the fields, the factories and the means of production, and abolish the wage system. We are wage-workers, wage-slaves, and we bear the weight of this system upon our backs. The abolition of the wage system is our organisation’s expressed goal, to which we must cling with determined conviction. Solidarity of labour is a prospect of which the employing class stands in dread.

 Capitalism rules unmercifully. Its convulsive grip and its terrible use are expressed in profit, poverty, and want. While the other political parties are occupied with reforms, the Socialist Party is set upon the overthrow of the capitalist system. The new society, of which we speak of, cannot be realised without a class struggle. Our organization promises nothing, but if our fellow-workers become its members the reward will be a new, free, and happy world, where there are no more classes, no more wage-worker, and no more idle parasites. A social system, which will not be led by the privileged but carefully guarded by society’s useful producers. A world in which everyone will have to do their useful social work if they want to live.

Let us organise, read, and learn, because we have no time to lose. The future belongs to the workers.


That form of social organisation known as socialism should not be-in fact, is nota hazy or nebulous conception. The working class is essentially a democratic class and in its new society the ownership and control of the means of life, must necessarily be democratic for to give an opportunity for a monopoly to reappear is unthinkable. Freedom of access to the machines and enjoyment of the full product of one’s toil must be the base of life. Participation in production will make the worker a joint owner and administrator with his fellows, not only in the industry in which he or she works, but in all industries - in all the wealth producing activities of humanity. The evils in society that compel organisation into socialist parties by the wage-workers are inherent in the capitalist system. They are its logical fruit. The philosophy of the Socialist Party is not the philosophy of salvation through physical force, but the philosophy of freedom through organised political power. It does not teach the doctrine of blood-letting and wide-spread misery, but the doctrine of human dignity and the abolition of misery.


As a changing mode of production operates to change all the institutions depending upon it, it is as well to recognise that production is the substantial foundation upon which any society rests. So that in any society that element only is necessary whose functions are essential to the prevailing productive system. In present day society, this element is comprised of every population which labors for a wage. Without the wage labourers our system of production could not endure.

A little consideration will satisfy even the most prejudiced that if the wage workers did not make and operate the tools of production, this system of production would go to pieces and our present civilization disappear.

The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses that afford shelter, the means of transportation on land, sea and air would all be out of reach, were not the hands of the wage labouring class busy in productive social service. Society does not depend upon the capitalist or the politician. It depends upon the workers. From the most primitive forms up to the present, human society has always depended upon the working class element. The workers have always constituted the social guarantee, and their efforts as producers is the price that humankind has paid for its existence, from the time when man lived precariously until the present day, when the question of sufficient to enable the race to survive has been answered by superabundant production.

The productive facilities and capacity must exist before an organised society is possible, which is to say that production is prior to and more important than politics. Politics is the handmaiden of industry. As the system of production changes, so do we observe corresponding social and political changes.

But by whom is the mode of production changed? Obviously by those who alone are competent to change it—the human productive factors, at the present time, the wage workers. For if this contention did not hold true, our philosophy would be at fault. If it could be proven that the capitalists, as such, have contributed to the change in the productive system, then they would have justified their existence in a social sense. But they have not done so. Every change effected, which has won social advantage industrially, has been due, to those actively engaged in productive work. The capitalist, as such, seized and fattened upon every invention, mechanical and administrative improvement. He has never contributed anything to human advancement. He is a parasite, and like all other parasites, he has no independent existence, but lives upon the constructive wealth-producing organism which the enthralled labour of the ages has built up.


The power of the capitalist class is a delegated power, which labour ignorance has invested in it. It has no power in itself. Labour is power, and, when conscious of its own interest and its social responsibility, it is the only power. Therefore, the Socialist Party depends upon education, not upon terror. Facts are its weapons, not bombs. It is busy teaching instead of intimidating. Its arsenal is lined with bookshelves, and not with gun-racks. Truth is its artillery, and justice its objective. The Socialist Party brings hope to the dispossessed and downtrodden, and promises the planet and the fullness thereof to those who make use of the one to bring forth the other. One for all and all for one.