Might we suggest you should spend a little time and thought
on the issues that affect you, as a member of the working class. Our purpose is
to gain your attention in order to state our case. Regardless of how enthusiastic
you are in support of a particular political party’s position and policies,
deep down you know that their success will not make any real change in your
conditions of life. All the election promises were designed to persuade you
that it meant something to you but, experience has taught you not to expect any
real change. These ‘changes’ have been applied to capitalism elsewhere
throughout the world and yet your problems remain those of the working class
internationally. It is true that these problems assume different forms in the
local conditions of their origin but all the problems of your class, including
those that you may feel are peculiar to your own circumstances, are duplicated
throughout the world of capitalism. Capitalism has provided us with ample
evidence that it cannot be operated in the interests of society as a whole. All
the schemes and plans of its political apologists have been tried and yet the
old miseries prevail, sometimes eased a little by the politicians’ schemes and
just as often aggravated by them!
Whether you are a factory worker or high-salaried “professional’
you are dependent on a wage or salary in order to obtain the necessities of
life. The recent US federal shutdown demonstrated that clearly. On the other
side of the social scale we have the capitalist class, the small minority of
people who own not only the means and instruments for producing wealth but the
very resources of nature which provide the ‘raw materials’, so to speak, of
wealth production. The members of this class do not have to work, they can
enjoy a life of wealth and privilege on the surplus value created by the
working class. This class owns, and by virtue of that ownership, controls all
the productive resources of society; whether that ownership is through the
medium of private or public companies or corporations or through the medium of
bond holding in state or municipal enterprises, the capitalist class are the
effective owners and controllers of the means whereby the rest of society
lives.
Under capitalism wealth is class owned and produced for sale
so that if you want anything you must have the money to buy it. This presents
no problem for those who own the means of wealth production since they get a
free income as rent, interest and profit merely because they are the owners. It
certainly severely restricts the choice of workers in jobs but at least they
have their wages. But what about those with no property and no job—workers who
are unemployed, sick, disabled or old? The government cannot really let them
starve and kill the goose that lays their golden eggs and must make some
provision for them if only to avoid bread riots
by providing those who would otherwise be destitute with an income
however low.
It is no part of the Socialist Party’s case for socialism to
suggest that the members of the capitalist class are simply greedy or evil
people: their greed is a vice of capitalism and is not peculiar to any
particular class. We do not condemn capitalists, we condemn capitalism as a
social system while recognising that it is an inevitable stage in the history
of our social evolution. Nor is our condemnation based simply on the facts of
its miseries—its poverty amidst organised waste, its degradation of human life,
its wars, crises and all its other social failings: our condemnation is based
even more on the fact that it has long since outlived its usefulness as a means
of developing society’s productive resources and now only blocks the way of a
sane alternative that can provide the material basis of a full and happy life
for all mankind.
At present all the values of the capitalist society in which
we live are being challenged even though despite the failures of capitalism
workers still doubt that socialism offers them anything better. They cannot imagine
a world that is essentially different from the present one. Luke-warm visions
do not raise consciousness. They cannot maintain the high level of commitment
needed to keep the movement going. Reformist gradualism is a roadblock to
liberation. The argument for radical, utopian visions is thus not just one of
principle, but also of effectiveness. Workers unified, in solidarity, working
together and voting together, can conquer. Divided and factionalised, our doom
is sealed. Building a movement for socialism now requires presenting a picture
of such a world, expressing socialist ideals to which future society can be
adjusted. The socialist form is not just the conquest of political power, but
also the socialisation of productive property and replacement of the anarchy of
the capitalist market by a rational plan of production and distribution which
will lead to the full democratisation of society.
The starting point of socialism is the elementary truth that
men and women working in organised co-operation can produce far more than
working in independent competition. The greater the number of co-operating
workers, the more complete can be the co-ordination of the labour process. Interposed
between that enormously amplified power are all sorts of social
obstacle—property rights, economic institutions, legal relations, frontiers,
states, traditions and superstitions. A socialist system of production will by
its superior efficiency. Capitalism exists today simply and solely because you
and your fellow members of the working class, who produce its wealth and endure
its miseries, permit it to exist. It is parliament that makes the law and it is
the law that says it is legal for capitalists to own Nature's resources and the
tools and instruments of production which the working class have produced. The
law further enshrines the right of the owners of wealth production to use their
property in their own interests— to produce wealth for sale and profit and not
for the satisfaction of human needs. When there is no profit in employing
workers, in building homes, in clothing or feeding the needy the law does not
require the owners of society’s means of production to provide these things nor
does the law ensure capitalism when its profit needs create the conditions for
crime, bad social relationships, violence and war. In fact the law is made to
suit the needs of capitalism and is relevant to the needs of the working class
only insofar as such needs are compatible with the requirements of capitalism
to disguise its function, keep down social discontent and prevent open
rebellion.
It follows that if we are to change things the working class
must organise for the purpose of making the means of production the property of
society to be used solely for the satisfaction of human needs. Given such a
change, all the complex mechanism of the present market economy could be
scrapped. Means of exchange, money, would no longer be required, hence wages
and social classes would disappear as would the need for banks, stock
exchanges, doles, most of the clerks, ticket clippers, insurance and sales
agents and all the vast hordes of people whose present function is necessitated
only by the existence of capitalism. All could then enter into the co-operative
and efficient activity of producing the requirements of the human family and,
freed from the obstacles which capitalism’s buying-and-selling imposes on
production, enough could be produced to satisfy the needs of all and all would
have free and equal access to the fruits of such production.
Conditioned as you have been to the vast complicated
economic arrangements required by capitalism, you are as staggered by what sounds like a staggering proposition. You
can accept that members of the working class can run this society from top to
bottom, can even formulate the tremendous mathematical data and technical
knowhow to build a computer or send a man into space and yet you are staggered
by the simple proposition that mankind can own in common the resources of the
world and can use those resources to provide for his and her needs without
markets, money and all the other useless and wasteful obstacles of capitalism.
Socialism is a feasible proposition NOW! Its introduction is
delayed not by the capitalist class but by your reluctance to look beyond the
narrow limits of capitalism that keeps that system in operation; your support
gives it its legality.
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