This is the way forward – Let us take it

Capitalism, with its anomalies and insecurity, breeds many brutal and inhuman ideas. Race hatred is one of them. A fierce class war is raging throughout the world. All capitalist governments are openly fighting the battles of the exploiters. The capitalists are using the present economic crisis to increase their power of exploitation and oppression. The struggle of the workers, even for the most elementary needs, is met today with suppression.

Capitalism is rife with divided interests. The working class, who depend for their living upon selling their mental and muscular energies, should ignore them all, save one. That one is their own interests as the exploited class. When they have come to grips with that, they will get down to some fundamental questioning of society.

The Socialist Party is the advocates of the greatest social transformation of all time, from capitalist competition and production for profit to socialist co-operation and production for use. It is impossible to imagine that a society, based upon wage-slavery for the bulk of the population can be developed into the new system without a campaign of education and persuasion. It has consistently opposed a palliative movement of reform, and proposed a persistent active effort of the workers towards the great goal of socialism. The strategy of the Socialist Party is the conquest of political power to enable the transformation of competitive production for class profit to co-operative production for communal use without passing through a period of internecine bloodshed and civil war. The Socialist Party is an uncompromising working class political organisation. It is fighting the battle of the wage workers of the world and stands for their welfare without qualification or evasion. Its demand is that all the means and instruments of production and distribution shall be used for the benefit of the actual producers of wealth. The capitalist government of America protects the rich and assists them to rob the poor and toiling masses. And that is the fight, the only fight that you as a worker should be interested in, the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class for political power and the ownership of the machinery of production. It is the age-long class war

The Socialist Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and policies which all may understand. It is an honest and direct expression of working class interests. It was not framed merely with a view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues. There is no attempt to compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce. The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its aim is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit, and the common ownership and operation of all industries. It demands by peaceful, legal, and constitutional methods that wage slavery be entirely abolished. As long as workers confine their political activity voting for the candidates of capitalist parties capitalism is safe. Isn’t it about time that you realized that you can get nothing worthwhile under capitalism? All you can get under capitalism is unemployment, starvation, high cost of living, slum tenements or shanty-town shacks, poverty, misery, disease, and war. The only way in which you can put an end to this profit system which keeps you in poverty, misery, and degradation, and gives all the good things of life to the rich, is to conquer political power for your class. This is not an easy task. The capitalist government is a machine which holds the workers by force. It is the instrument by means of which the capitalist class is enabled to maintain itself as the ruling class in society, even though they are a small minority of the population. Don’t let yourselves be fooled by political promises any more! You will only be betrayed again. There is only one way out of this misery, poverty, and exploitation — you must overthrow the capitalism. Under the present capitalist system of production commodities are produced for profit and not primarily for use. Too long we have stood the misery the bosses have forced on us.

Most people realize the capitalist system fails to supply the needs of the vast majority of the human race, and that it must be overthrown before the workers can have freedom. But there is considerable difference of opinions as to the means by which this can be accomplished. Some advocate armed insurrection, or military action; and some revolutionary industrial unionism. The Socialist Party suggests the ballot. The system must be changed. That is the only way — there is no other. The capitalist system is based upon the production of commodities for profit — for the profit of a small group who own the means of production, and who do no useful work. This means exploitation, wageslavery, and misery for the masses who do all the useful and necessary work. The only way out is to introduce a system of society in which production is carried on for use, for the benefit of all.

Look ahead. What are the prospects which confront us if the capitalist slave-drivers remain in power? Nothing but new wars, slavery, poverty, starvation, and perpetual oppression. The threat of global warming means the spectre of starvation haunts the entire world. You’ve still got a job. But how long will it last? We've got a job today. We may not have it tomorrow. The bosses have plenty to eat. It isn’t THEIR business that we can’t earn enough for a decent living. It isn’t THEIR business that our children have to go to school hungry. NOTHING IS THEIR BUSINESS EXCEPT MAKING MONEY! They are trying to make even bigger profits now. Now the bosses see their chance to break up the unions. They want to grind us down still more. They intend forcing lower wages and longer hours on us.

When we can convince a majority of our fellow-workers that the putting into practice of our principles will bring about an era of industrial freedom — the only true freedom — then we know our goal will be achieved. It cannot be gained until we do this. We do not believe in minority rule of any kind, no matter by whom. We do not believe in dictatorship, whether of the plutocracy or the misnamed “dictatorship of the proletariat.” We have been for centuries and are now suffering from dictatorships, and we want to help abolish them from the face of the earth. We subscribe to the right of a majority to decide under what kind of system we shall live. Any other method means chaos. Our business is to do our part in convincing the majority that they must use their organized industrial and political power to achieve their freedom. We believe in using every effort to overthrow the present economic system called capitalism. We believe in using every effort to capture the political power of the state to be used in overthrowing this system. We believe in it because we also believe that the peaceable method of the ballot is the most efficient method; that it is real “direct action.” We refuse to allow ourselves to be moved from our position by a few romanticists who think they can “create” a revolution by following the methods of those in other countries where the industrial environment and institutions of government were very different.

Let us proclaim our solidarity with the Workers of the entire world! Let us resolve to join hands and march shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters. Capitalism is international. The class war is international. The labour movements of all countries must unite to wage the class war on an international scale. Long live the international solidarity of the workers of the world!