The working class are “slave” class. We are the people who
produce the wealth capitalism. The urgent task still awaits us — the harnessing
of capitalism’s productive forces in the interests of all to banish deprivation
from the earth forever. For the Socialist Party, this is not a question of
techniques and technology of production, but of social organisation. Appealing
to the kind sentiments of the people that run a heartless system won’t get us
very far. People don’t get very far if they depend on the moral scruples of the
powerful. Humane principles are low priorities in the profit-driven society. By
and large, the capitalists from Wall Street and the boardrooms of the corporations
already know what they are doing. Many activists have begun recognising the
limits of lobbying or traditional protest marches. Those activities are always
necessary, and their importance should not be underestimated, yet they’re still
insufficient. Workers need to build electoral muscle, wresting political power
away from the ruling class. Only by mobilising to take power can we
realistically hope to overcome and dismantle the capitalist power structures.
Bourgeois thinkers assume that the triumph of capitalism
coincides with the highest attainable summit of human existence. These scholars
of history stubbornly refuse to learn from the past when the slow, steady
evolution of social conditions exploded at critical junctures into tremendous
upheavals which overturned the old order. History is full of such sudden
transitions and forward leaps. Capitalism which faces the same prospect as
Indian tribalism, colonial feudalism and chattel slavery. It has become
obsolete and opposed to progress. The major evils from which mankind suffers
are directly attributable to the outworn institution of capitalist private
property. The emancipation of mankind from poverty, tyranny and wars is
inseparable from the liberation of the means of production from the grip of
capitalist ownership and control. The capitalists are destined to be dislodged
like the feudal barons and the Southern slavocracy. Uprooting all the
abominations of class society, and cultivating everything worthy in knowledge
and culture taken over from capitalism, will be enjoyed in its finest forms
through the socialist revolution of the working people. Mankind cannot resume
its upward climb until civilisation is rescued from capitalist barbarism. The
duty of the Socialist Party is to foresee the rebirth of mass radicalism and to
prepare its advent by developing and disseminating the ideas of socialism. Our
immediate goal is the social revolution. The goal of the Labour Party is
legislative reforms. But we know that the promised reforms will not be realised
and that, even realised, they will only ameliorate the lot of one section of
workers at the expense of the others.
So, we only see one
solution: the revolution. We separate ourselves from reformists, for we believe
we must fight against everything that slows it down and all that could
reconcile us to the current order of things. We are above all socialists, i.e.,
we want to destroy the cause of all iniquities, all exploitation, all poverty
and crime: private property. We revolt against current society not in the name
of an abstract principles but for the effective amelioration of humanity’s lot.
The revolution we conceive of can only be made by and for the people, without
any false representatives. The salvation of the revolution lies in the
organisation of the working class. The basis of future organisations of labour
is the federation of associations. There will be trial and error. We will not
immediately fall upon a perfect system. There will be no divine inspiration,
but experience and agreements will tell the individual and the labour
associations what society has need of at a given moment. Thus understood, the
revolution obviously can’t be the work of a party or a coalition of parties: it
demands the assistance of the entire labour movement. The workers have no need
of chiefs: they are quite capable of charging one of their own with a
particular task.
When the unions demand improvements, salary increases,
reductions in working hours, abolition of work rules; when they go on strike to
defend their dignity or to affirm their solidarity with colleagues or fellow
workers, we have to say to them that none of this resolves the question. We must
promote a wider and effective need, for the revolution, for the abolition of
private property and government. We must do everything possible to broaden and
generalise the movement and give it a revolutionary content. But above all we
must support the workers, offer them our solidarity. To turn away from the workers’
movement would mean appearing to be friends of the rich. Even if the economic
effects of strikes are partial, transitory, and often non-existent or
disastrous, that doesn’t change the fact that every strike is an act of
dignity, an act of revolt, and serves to get workers used to thinking of the
boss as an enemy and to fight for what he or she wants without waiting for
grace from on high. A striker is already no longer a slave who
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