The capitalist system is doomed.

“The monopoly of land drives him (the worker) from the farm into the factory, and the monopoly of machinery drives him from the factory into the street, and thus crucified between the two thieves of land and capital, the Christ of Labor hangs in silent agony.” Ernest Jones, Chartist

The Socialist Party appeals to you, fellow-workers, to rally around the only banner that symbolises hope – the banner of Socialism. Cast off all your old political affiliations, and organise and vote to reconquer society in the interests of its only useful class – the workers. Let your slogan be, the common ownership of the means of life. working people are not content to remain wage slaves of the capitalists and refuse to accept the burden of the economic crisis created by the capitalists themselves. Do not forget for an instant that the great struggle in which you are engaged in is a class war and that the lines must be sharply drawn in every battle, whether on the economic or the political field. The slavery of your class is responsible for your chains and not until your entire class is emancipated can you escape from the grasp of your capitalist masters. As far as this struggle is concerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad worker. Every capitalist is your enemy and every worker is your friend.

You have got to stand and act as one. Solidarity is your salvation, and socialism points unerringly the way. The class-conscious socialist movement scorns all compromise. The Socialist Party is pursuing its object and come what may, it will press on and on until the goal is reached and labor rules the world. The days in which we live are indeed pregnant with great possibilities. The working class is charged with the gravest responsibility of the ages. The history of the working class has been a history of unremitting struggle against exploitation and oppression by the capitalist class. Under the rule of the present capitalists, there can be no freedom for the workers – only freedom to be exploited as wage slaves. But where there is oppression there is always resistance and the working class has never been cowed. It has always struggled militantly to throw off the yoke of wage slavery.

The Socialist Party is the only party that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that avows itself the party of the working class and the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the means of production, the toiling class will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. The Socialist Party is absolutely the only party which faces conditions as they are and declares unhesitatingly that it has a definite and concrete plan for dealing with capitalism. The Socialist Party is the party of the workers. The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation. the Socialist Party demands the overthrow of capitalism. The most promising fact in the world today is the fact that labour is organising its power; its economic power and its political power. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for.

We demand the means of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand the complete rights of all the people regardless of race, colour, or nationality.  We demand complete control of industry by society; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. The Socialist Party is determined to work co-operatively for the socialist commonwealth.

If the workers do not wish to emancipate themselves, if they are content to remain mere commodities for the  profit-extracting processes of the rich, then industrial action may perhaps make their masters adopt gentler methods of treatment; but if they wish to be no longer mere clay for the extraction of surplus-value, but living men and women, rejoicing in the freedom of their lives and the fruits of their labour; then they must apply their political strength, so as to splinter the system.

 Workers have but one commodity to sell, that is, their power to labour. The value of this power, embodied in their brains, nerves, muscles, etc., depends upon the value of the necessary elements of their subsistence. The cost of the food, clothing, and shelter, etc., that the worker must have in order to go on working are reflected in the wages that they receive. In the long run and on the average, they cannot accept less without causing their energy to deteriorate and become unsaleable. They cannot get more, because there are machines on the one hand and unemployed workers on the other ready to take their places.

With the workers, the existence of economic law is not a matter of speculative theory; it is a painful, everyday experience. If there were no economic forces operating according to some discoverable law, nothing could prevent the workers from claiming what wages they fancied, and the same would apply to the capitalists in fixing their prices. Nothing would be determined; all would be chaos; but human beings cannot exist on chaos and such a state is simply inconceivable.

At first sight, the realm of exchange presents an appearance of anarchy. The fluctuations in prices, including wages, are occasionally so violent that they seem capricious to the superficial observer.

In the same way, superstitious sailors, even today, attribute storms to spirits, etc., but for every wave, there is a corresponding trough and the general level of the ocean remains unchanged. So with the world market. The rise in prices at one time encourages greater production till the market is glutted; then, with the consequent fall in prices, the less economically conducted concerns go out of business. Always there is going on a ruthless, blind, automatic selection of the fittest types of machinery and organisation for the production of the wealth, with the result that the social powers of production are greater today than ever before in human history.

How are these powers controlled? They are in private hands, in spite of their social character. Consequently, they are only set into operation for the production of private profit. There is no organised social plan. Competition asserts itself at every turn. Even the narrowing of the circle by the concentration of capital, the forming of world trusts, international combines, etc., only makes the struggle fiercer.

The larger the output, the greater the importance of minute economies; yet the conflict in the market is as nought compared with that in the factory. If the capitalist is an anarchist in the realm of exchange, he is a despot in that of production, which is carried on amid the smouldering revolt of wage-slaves needing but little to fan it into open flame; but this revolt, again, is for the most part blind. It is only against the effects of the system, because the workers have not yet learned to understand the cause, i.e., the system itself.

Hence their efforts at improvement take the form of demands for higher wages and shorter hours, valuable enough if other things remained the same. Capitalism, however, constantly develops a greater power of exploitation. No programme of reforms can alter that. The workers cannot interrupt the development of industry; they can only take advantage of it by obtaining control of it through the common ownership of the productive forces themselves, but that would be socialism—and “the end of all things.” That at least is what those who pretend that “there is no capitalist system" would like us to believe.