Capitalist production is concerned with the realisation of a
profit, not the satisfaction of human needs. No profit — no production, is the
criterion, though millions of people are ill-clad, ill-housed and ill-fed. This
is something we have said many times, and there are plenty of examples to
support our claim.
We need a society which is concerned with the interests of
all its members, an alternative to the present world where resources are
monopolised by a privileged elite. The Socialist Party seeks a world which is
held in common and at the free disposal of all humanity, where the alternative
to commodity production for the market is the production of useful wealth
directly for human need. The transfer of the world into the hands of all
humanity and its conscious democratic control for the human interest is the
political aim of the Socialist Party. Our job is to explain to thoughtful and
involved individuals that only socialism will liberate mankind's ability to
produce a world of abundance.
The capitalist or employing class lives by exploiting the
workers; this means that out of the whole product of their labour, the workers
receive only a part, and not a large part. Generally speaking, they get
sufficient to enable them to work and to bring children into the world who will
carry on when they are worn out—just like horses, with the one great difference
that a horse costs money and must be fed and tended even when temporarily not
required to work, while men cost nothing and can be laid off when work is
slack, because their employer is under no obligation to keep them, and knows
that they can be replaced at any time. In any industry, therefore, the
employers are primarily interested in the exploitation of their own employees.
Their interests are served by having production as high, and wages as low, as
possible, even to the extent of injuring the health of the workers. An
individual employer does not have to consider the health and fitness of future
generations, and in consequence physical deterioration has been the lot of the
workers in every land under the present system of society. No modification of
capitalism can alter this condition of affairs. The solution is to abolish
capitalism. Capitalism is only one of the forms of society which have evolved,
and socialism must succeed it if poverty, privilege, slavery, are to give way
to comfort, equality and freedom. Buying and selling of the necessities of
life, should be abolished and a system of free distribution adopted. In a world
based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, production
would be merely a technical problem — and we already have the technology to
meet the task. With the fetters of profit-making removed, today’s potential
plenty would be made a reality.
The essential facts are very simple. The land and the
instruments of production are owned and controlled by a comparatively small
number of persons. The workers, therefore, can only obtain a livelihood as the
beasts of burden, the hirelings, of these capitalists. It further follows that
the more of the good things of life the workers can make the fewer labourers
need the exploiters hire. It is therefore not lack of necessaries, but the
worker’s ability to produce more than is in demand, that enables the
capitalists to create that powerful means of keeping the workers poor, the
unemployed.
There is, however, one outstanding feature common to all
countries irrespective of their size and population. And that is the existence
in each nation of a fortunate, privileged minority who never have to contend
with problems of poverty or large families because they own and control the
wealth of the world. They became rich through the efforts of the working class,
and irrespective of their sexual or biological habits, and they will remain in
this same economic position until their employees realise the true nature of
the system that enslaves them. When this time arrives the age of scapegoats,
red herrings and political hypocrisy , no matter how it is sliced, will be at
an end. And you can be certain that men and women who have finally obtained
their emancipation and freedom, and have become the common owners of the
world's wealth, will also have the intelligence to control their numbers
according to the desires and requirements of a socialist society.
Remember the next time someone tries to tell you that world
poverty is caused by over-population. Tell him or her it’s caused by
capitalism’s profit motive.
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