Understand Capitalism To End It

The working class is that element in capitalist society that produces all wealth. It is the working class that feeds both itself and the capitalist class. The mission of socialism is so to organise production so that wealth can be so abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute’s necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of the brute’s mere necessaries of life. The Socialist Party has made this clear.

 The capitalist class misrepresents socialism as a scheme of society, whose adoption would destroy individuality. Socialism its apologists declares would degrade us all to one level regardless of individual aptitude or merit. Capitalism, on the other hand, exalts the individual. Whenever the position of a defender of capitalism against the attacks of socialism becomes desperate, he drags forth the inventor, the genius who has created the great machines, apparatuses and devices which make wealth and civilisation possible. Today the inventor is no longer an isolated being, developing himself and his ideas in some dismal science lab. The inventor is today the employee of a business or an educational establishment, where s/he specialises his/her abilities as a part of a chain of technical experts, men and women rarely heard of outside their own spheres, who, with the finest technology at their disposal, work in cooperative unison for the production of new products, and the improvement of old ones. The poor lone inventor like all myths, is adorned with the imagery of bygone ages. Like modern industry, modern invention is social. 

The inspired individual inventor had become as much of a myth as the entrepreneur and captain of industry who, it is alleged, creates the work of thousands of wage slaves. Today industry is so colossal, so complex and so complicated that it is an impossibility for one man to direct it. Office buildings of trained subordinates, junior and senior executive, in sales, R and D, human resources and other departments meet in frequent consultation to preside over the running and management of the corporations as majority shareholder indulges in first-class travel and the luxury of 5-star hotels around the world.

Capitalist society is built upon eternal war. War between competing capitalist and capitalist, war between capitalists on the one hand and the working class on the other. As capitalists are in one another’s throats at home, they are at one another’s throats internationally

Workers suffer the pains and outrages of capitalism yet by removing the system of wage exploitation upon which it is based, and substituting therefor a system guaranteeing to them free access to the fruits of their toil, workers could achieve their own emancipation from wage-slavery. Socialism does not consist merely in the overthrow of private ownership. If such overthrow of private ownership were socialism, then the present nationalised industries under State-ownership or control would be socialism. Obviously, that is not socialism. A limb of a human being is not a human being. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled, and administered by the people, for the people, and where accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at end. That is Socialism, nothing short of that. The only cure for capitalism’s ills is to eradicate the cause of the evil by making the machinery and technology of production and distribution common property, so that it may serve as a blessing, instead of a means to profit private individuals, as at present. With industry as common property, the hours of labour and the stress of working-conditions will be proportionate to the progress of invention and the general well-being of society. It has been estimated that four hours of labour a week would be ample to supply the needs of men and women under a proper social system employing automation and robots. 

There exists a growing tendency to confuse socialism with reform of one sort or another which compels the Socialist Party to draw clear and true the old line of cleavage between socialism and social quackery, between gradualism and revolution. It cannot be too strongly and repeatedly stated that socialism means but one thing, and that is the abolition of capital in private or State hands, and the turning over of the industries into the direct control of the workers employed in them and the communities they serve. Anything else is not socialism, and has no right to imposture under that name. Socialism is not the establishment of a four-day week, not the abolition of the gig-economy, not the enforcement of minimum wage laws. None of these, nor all of them together, are socialism. They might all be done by the present government tomorrow, and still we would not have socialism. They are merely reforms of the present system to patch up our economic servitude with palliatives. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. 

While not opposing any beneficial reforms or improvements which may be secured under capitalism, the Socialist Party steadfastly sets its face against taking time away from its main battle in the class war for the socialist revolution, in order to carry out campaigns for reforms. It refuses to be manoeuvred into abandoning its main demand – the social ownership of the tools and machinery of production by the producers, in order to fritter away its energies and resources pursuing amelioration's of conditions. The Socialist Party rejects the tempting bait to the working class away from our goal and side-track them into and blind alleys. The one demand of the Socialist Party is socialism, unadulterated and undiluted and the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class

And while rejecting any re-interpretation of socialism which would remove its anti-capital core, the Socialist Party insists that it still remains the most humanitarian movement on earth. More so than all the philanthropic and charitable foundations. The Socialist Party alone, carries within its principles the highest humanitarian hopes and possibilities of humanity. All the other movements are based on aspiration alone. The Socialist Party is unique as the only one which will make the realisation of those aspirations an accomplished fact. Socialism alone will supply the basis for any permanent improvement in the condition of mankind.

The Socialist Party looks forward to the day when the red flag flies over the ruins of capitalism’s institutions,  binding humanity with the bonds of cooperation.