If you believe in the socialist vision, you must become part of the socialist movement

Society rests at present upon the basis of private ownership of the essentials of existence. The possessing class is able to dictate terms to the non-owning class. Because the owners are few and the non-owners are many they can only conserve their monopoly by manipulating the minds of the majority as well as the machinery of political administration. Any struggle to end the exploitation involved in this system must begin as a struggle to undo in the minds of the working class from the bonds woven by the boss and his agents with intent to keep the slave satisfied with his or her wage slavery. Therefore all revolutionary emancipation struggles must begin with is what is called “education.”

Socialism” means the will of the workers imposed as a system controlling all economic life in the interest of the workers—and to the destruction of every other class-interest. To understand socialism, one must necessarily understand the present social system; i.e., capitalism.

Under capitalism, society is divided into hostile classes: an owning capitalist class, whose members have ownership of the various parts of the instruments of wealth production.
This includes the land, the factories, the transport, the communications, the mines etc., upon which the whole of the people is dependent for their existence.

A working class, whose members possess nothing but their labour power, which is useless to the worker unless he can have access to the raw material and the machinery of production, which is owned by the capitalist class.

This being so, the worker, in order to live, must sell his or her labour power to the capitalist or capitalist concern. This labour power that the worker sells is used for the production of wealth, for which the worker receives what is termed wages. Wages are the price of labour power; that is to say, the capitalist will have to return to the worker the number of necessities he must consume while exerting his labor power. This amount will vary with the value of these necessities and the standard of living, but it will invariably be less than the amount of goods his or her labour power produces. This is a necessity, not alone of this system, but of any social system of wealth production in which only a part of the members of society are actually engaged in useful labor; so that when a person sells his or her labour power a number of hours for a certain wage, the amount of necessaries to produce the wages is always smaller than the amount of labour which the employer receives from him, the difference between what the worker receives as wages and what his labor power produces during his working time, constitutes the sole source of unearned income, i.e., capitalist profits. Here we see laid bare the secret and mysterious source of the wealth of those, who, without producing themselves, obtain possession of the wealth of society.

Capitalism had its beginnings in the development of industry and commerce. With the application of machinery to productive industry, a tremendous change has followed in the whole superstructure of society. With the development of the hand tool into the machine, the independent mechanic has been forced into the factory, divorced from the means of production, a dependent on the machine owner.

As the machinery increases in size and cost, so does it squeeze out the weaker capitalist, whilst the stronger ones unite into combines and trusts; so that we see competition increasing among the workers, whilst among the capitalists' combination is the rule.
Thus does capitalism go steadily onward; first an individual competitive state, then on to collectivism, less and less competitive. Surely this cannot last forever! A point is reached where it becomes unbearable for the workers. Collective labour and increasing competition among them clash with the collective capitalism and increasing combination of the capitalist. The contradiction must be abolished. The expropriators must be expropriated, the workers who collectively use the tools of production must also collectively own them. Classes in society abolished and a new order of society inaugurated in which poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality and slavery to freedom.

How will this transformation from capitalism to socialism be accomplished, and who will bring it about?

Socialists maintain that social progress since written history has always been through the struggle of classes with opposing interests. These interests to-day are represented by the capitalists, who are the rulers and the workers who are the ruled.

Hence, the next step in social progress must lie in the victory of the workers.

The capitalists, however, are powerfully entrenched behind the state, which is the powers of government; this includes the legal, civil, and armed forces; this is the political power controlled by the capitalists in their interests, viz., to preserve their ownership in the means of wealth production. But in the hands of the class-conscious workers, these would be used as an instrument for their emancipation.

Therefore, to accomplish their universal freedom, the workers must be organised into a political party of their class with a full knowledge of their conditions, and the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, viz., the emancipation of the workers from slavery and establishment of a new order of society based upon the ownership of the means of wealth production, by and in the interest of the whole community. With this object in view, we solicit the support of all members of the working class. Our slogan must be: "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains, a world to gain."