For the enjoyment of all, Not the enrichment of a few

On the battlefields of the class war, the Socialist Party is an exemplar of fraternity, combativeness, incorruptibility and uncompromising hatred of exploitation and injustice. What passes as socialism has dwindled into a group of non-influential sects, abandoning whatever original socialist principles they held. Socialism disappeared as a serious political force.

Among the more significant traits of the world's workers' movements has been the persistence of its unexpected developments that often confounded its critics, confused its friends, and baffle its own leadership. Momentary lulls in the class struggle obscure the emergence of new features. Even in the most placid and passive periods, the struggle does not completely vanish.

False theories produce failed results. For example, many so-called socialists preached the idea that the way to achieve socialism was by a gradual transformation of the capitalist governments and industry, bit by bit. When they had the opportunity after being elected, they declined to take control of industry and place it under the control of the workers. Instead they strengthened capitalism when it was weak, so that they could, according to their illusion, gradually transform capitalism into socialism. They became physicians to capitalism instead of its undertakers. In one unanimous voice, labour union officials proclaim undying devotion to the capitalist social system. But in their capitalism, mills are made of marble and machines of gold. It is the steady uninterrupted rise of living standards; it is the perpetual growth of union power; it is ever-expanding democracy; more security, more rights for the common man and woman. They demand so much of capitalism that it irks the capitalist class. Some politicians, businessmen, or economists gingerly suggest that perhaps in some unknown future we must adjust to economic down-swing or that the possibilities for progress are somewhat limited. Labour leaders denounce such pessimists for lack of confidence in the American way of life. They support capitalism because they expect so much from it but they understand this much: what they get will ultimately depend upon how hard they are ready to fight in strikes and in politics. The labour leader, full of faith and optimism in capitalism will travel willingly alongside the reformist parties on the road to a fictitious future. Working people have been deliberately disarmed and emasculated in order to keep them perpetually cowed and at the mercy of their masters. The Labour Party must be judged not by the pretentions of its spokesmen but by its actual and effective contribution to the well being of the people. While pretending to be protectors of our welfare, they have betrayed workers' trust and have sacrificed the happiness of millions to bloat the pockets of a few capitalists

The ideal of world socialism that inspired and aroused so many was corrupted into the theory of “socialism in one country” which resulted in the defeats of the workers of the world. Socialism is more a more advanced economy than capitalism. It must develop and extend the international division of labour already achieved under capitalism, thereby giving greater well-being to the people of the entire globe. With socialism, we will not go backward into a self-contained, national economy, as “socialism in one country” proposes, but to even greater internationalism. Workers must reject the concept of “socialism in one country” put in its place the original idea of world socialism.

The ruling class has always spread the idea that they are indispensable. The more redundant they have become, the more insistently they try to preach this illusion upon workers’ minds: “How lucky you are to have us on your backs to direct you. You couldn’t get along without us.” In reality, the employing class live on the toil and produce of their workers and couldn’t exist without them but to maintain and uphold their exploitation, the bosses are forced to twist the real state of affairs into its opposite. The capitalists, in order to justify their existence, declare that they alone are competent to rule the state and control industry. They maintain that workers are wage-slaves by nature and therefore cannot assume commanding positions in political matters and economic life, without overturning the foundations of civilisation. The opposite is true. The capitalist class possesses its present power, property rights, and privileges as a result of long outgrown historical conditions. This class of parasites no longer performs any essential functions in modern society, any more than the appendix performs any useful function in the human body. Society does not depend today upon the exploiting class but upon the working people they oppress. If these workers put down their tools, then production stops. But if every share owner were to die or be dispossessed tomorrow, the workers in the factories would continue to turn out products. The worker who now operates a lathe can direct a machine shop tomorrow and an entire industry the day after. This has been done under capitalism by a few individual workers who ascend higher in the social ranks, break away from their original class, and,, become managers and executives themselves. What is done by isolated individuals under capitalism can and will be done collectively by organised workers inside socialism, who will own, organise and operate industry by means of democratic councils. They will then produce not for the enrichment of a few but for the enjoyment of all.

The capitalist rulers try in every way to keep the workers down and to lessen their self-confidence. They want to prevent the workers from understanding their own organised power and from developing their capacities as a class to rule and reorganise the world. The feudal kings and nobles once regarded the rising merchants as contemptuously as that bosses now treats the workers. Kings and queens and their loyal court asserted that the Divine and hereditary right of managing state affairs and deciding great economic questions belonged to them alone. The merchants and manufacturers were supposed to be fit for nothing but store-keeping and servility. That did not prevent the representatives of capitalism from demanding and winning supreme economic and political power. Likewise the plantation-owning Southern slave-holders thought themselves superior to the Northern industrialists and financiers . These very capitalists crushed the slaveholders in the Civil War.

Let the organised workers take power and they will learn the art of governing and technique of economic administration no less easily then the capitalists. And they will make social advances that the capitalists never dreamed of.