Socialism - Claiming What is Ours

While you and your neighbours may be worrying about how to feed your families a decent meal, capitalists are always telling us that prosperity is just around the corner for you while they themselves are busy raking in profits at a terrific rate. We are told employment at an all-time high and the stock exchange is at an all-time high. But our pockets are empty and we are borrowing and increasing our debt just to get by. We know much better today than ever before what the needs of mankind are. The religious preached feeding the hungry and quenching the thirst of the thirsty, clothing the naked and so forth.  The means to fulfil these needs for every human being are not only to hand now, but have been to hand for years. Nevertheless, the poor are still with us, and very little is being done to comfort them. It’s not because the food isn't or there are shortages of houses. There is no longer any need for material scarcity whatever. This reverses the basis of text-book economics — economics was always described as the science of scarcity. The difficulty is a political-economical difficulty and not any material difficulty.

Modern wars are part and parcel of the capitalist system. The capitalist economic system must continually expand or suffer from trade slumps and recessions. Each capitalist nation is continually driven to seek new markets, new sources of raw materials and new areas for investment. The capitalist needs to expand continually makes of each a competitor. It has come to be regarded as a commonplace among socialists that war is inevitable under capitalism; that the fundamental class antagonism through which capitalist exploitation is carried on engenders a whole series of antagonisms, including that competition for markets for the surplus product, which is the ever fruitful and inevitable cause of rivalry and war under the capitalist regime.

There can be no end to war without an end to capitalism. Permanent peace is only possible when planned production for use has taken the place of competitive production for profits. Planned production for use on an international scale means a world socialism. Today, the capitalist drive towards war is assuming irresistible dimensions. The nature of capital accumulation cannot be changed. There is only one way to prevent war and if it breaks out to end it, namely, by the overthrow of capitalism, the real root from which war springs. Around the globe, the World Socialist Movement has always been fighting for peace between the peoples of other nations. Its energies have been directed towards the elimination of the causes of war. The interests of the working class are bound up with the maintenance of peace.

It is a never-ending class war between the owners of the means to produce wealth, on the one side, and the owners of the labour-power, who can only earn wages by enabling these owners to produce at a profit, on the other. If one should ask, who will win the class war? We, the workers, will win! To help prepare the conditions for that victory and to hasten its advent is the task of our party. There are no short-cuts to the Social Revolution. The revolts of rage and impatience only play into the hands of the ruling class, as all experience has shown. Unorganised wage-earners cannot build the co-operative commonwealth. State-ownership and control still leaves the wages system being maintained. Production will not be socialised until the wage-earners themselves are prepared to undertake administration and distribution, on communal lines, for the benefit of the entire population. World socialism is the goal of humanity. It is the only way to have peace and security. The yearning of the peoples of the world for lasting peace on earth and good will among men can be fulfilled only through a social system based on human needs.