Class Conflict

There is no need for the food we eat. or the clothes we wear, or the houses we live in, to be restricted by the size of our pay. There is no need for the output of factories and farms to be restricted by having to make a profit. The productive resources are sufficient to make it possible to abolish buying and selling and thus money and to go over to free distribution of the things people need. The world's resources are not used to provide abundance because, being privately owned or taking the form of state and municipal capitalism, they are restricted by the limitations of production for sale at a profit. Modern technology cannot be used to serve human interests until the Earth, and all that is in and on it has become the common property of the whole of mankind.

Socialism will be a world community without frontiers. Based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where goods will be produced, not for sale or profit, but solely for people to use. Within this framework, we can end once and for all the problems that are built-in to capitalism — the problems of housing, education, transport, health, pollution. racism and the others the orthodox parties and politicians are forever promising to solve. We can create a world of plenty where, as free men and women, we can co-operate to produce an abundance of wealth to which we can have free access according to our needs.

The only barrier to the immediate establishment of Socialism is that most of you, for various reasons, would not accept that it is really practical and prefer to keep capitalism in being in the vain hope that it can be made to serve human interests. Even though the politicians share the responsibility for keeping capitalism in being, it is no use you blaming their failures on dishonesty or incompetence since it is capitalism itself that sets the limits to what they can do. The national and local governments you elect have to work to a set of priorities which lay down, as we have shown, that profit must come before human need. We suggest you stand aside from the petty squabbles of rival leaders (which is about all conventional politics amount to) and realise that if this world is to be improved it can only be by the actions of ordinary people like yourselves. First, however, you must understand what socialism means and how it can be established.

Trying to reform capitalism in this way has proved time and again to be futile. Capitalism is a class society that can work only for those who live off rent, interest, and profit. Capitalism simply cannot be made to work in the interest of the other class in society (there is no middle class), those who have to work for an employer in order to live — the working class properly called. It is to you. our fellow wage and salary workers, that this statement is addressed since it is you who in the end are responsible for the continuance of capitalism and its problems.

Socialism is a society based on the common ownership by the population as a whole of the means of production (land, industry, transport, etc). It will be a money-free society because this means that what is produced is also commonly owned and so the question that arises is not that of selling it but how to distribute directly among those who already own it in common, i.e. the members of society.

Separate enterprises with their own accounts which they have to try to at least balance won’t exist, not just because money and what it reflects (capitalist economic value) won’t exist but because, all industry being commonly owned, wider considerations such as pleasant working conditions and not harming the environment, will be able to be taken into account. Individual productive units will of course have to keep records of the materials they use and try not to waste them, but these records will be kept in physical amounts (tonnes, kilowatt-hours, metres, labour time, etc) not money. Similarly, hospitals, schools, etc will be built and maintained out of the physical resources available to society. Calculation in socialism will be calculation in kind.

Why cannot capitalists provide plenty for all? Why is wealth piled up on one side and poverty on the other? Why are “boom” years followed by years of “depression”? Why are people pitted against other people,  class against class, nation against nation?

Because the very root of capitalism is wrong.
Because the basic idea of capitalism is unsound.
Because the foundation of capitalism is illogical.
Because the capitalist system is founded on a CONTRADICTION.

What is this contradiction?
It is the system in which the man who owns the tools of production does not work them and the people who work them does not own them.
This is the basic contradiction of capitalism.
The product no longer belongs to the producer – the worker. It belongs to the capitalist owner of the machinery. He sold it for the best price the market would pay. And he gave the worker the smallest wage he would work for.

The less the wage for the worker, the bigger the profit for the capitalist.
The bigger the wage for the worker, the less the profit for the capitalist.
The capitalist was interested in longer hours, speed-up, and low wages?
The worker was interested in shorter hours, easier work, and high wages.

Capitalism created a class of owners pitted against a class of workers – at war with each other – engaged in a CLASS STRUGGLE with each other.

The capitalist owner of industry has only one reason to run his factory – profit. Under capitalism, the needs of the people for various goods are not the PRIMARY purpose of production. The capitalist will just as soon make bombs as medicine.  All he asks is: “Which will pay more?” The fact that the millions of people depend upon industry for food, clothing, housing, furniture, transportation, communications, and amusement is of interest to the capitalist only as the “market” in which he can realise a profit. He is the dictator over his plant. He can run it or shut it down as he pleases. If there is profit in production he hires men, works overtime, night shifts. If profit falls off, he throws his workers into the street. His only god is the Almighty Dollar – the sacred word is, “Dividends.” That is why capitalism is more destructive than all the earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, cloudbursts, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions ever visited upon earth from the beginning of time.

Capitalism kills and cripples millions in its wars and civil wars, in hunger in industrial accidents and disease, in malnutrition and child labour, in poverty and crime. It destroys the wealth of society and wastes the labour potential of millions of idle hands. Capitalism pits worker against worker in bidding for a job. It pits capitalist against capitalist in fighting for profits. It pits workers against capitalist in a class struggle. It pits capitalist nation against capitalist nation in war. It pits producer against consumer, landlord against tenant, farmer against city dweller, white against black WHY? All in the mad race for a crust of bread, for survival, for security. In an age when plenty is possible for all.

It is the system of COMPETITION – It is the system of dog eat dog, of each one for oneself and the law of the jungle. And in the mad scramble of capitalism, the era of potential plenty is trampled afoot. Capitalism stands before us indicted as a system of criminal madness, dripping with blood. And the capitalist class stands before us as over-lords in control of a system heading towards destruction.

When a majority of us are equipped with socialist understanding, we can use our votes to win control of political power so that class property rights can be ended and the means of production belong to the community as a whole. If you agree with us. we invite you to join us. You would be protesting against capitalism and its parties. Please get in touch with us. We urgently need your help in convincing more and more of our fellow workers of the need to organise for world socialism, the society of abundance.