Reformists
are those who say they are fighting for the workers, but whose aim is
limited to reforming the system in order to preserve it. The
principal promoters of reformism are paid handsomely for carrying out
the dirty work of the class they claim to oppose. Many working people
in every corner of the world know that they can solve the fundamental
problems of their class only by making proletarian revolution and
winning the fight for socialism. The capitalist class live in great
splendour by exploiting the working class through the daily robbery of
the enormous wealth the workers produce. In contrast to this, intense
exploitation, oppression, poverty and misery characterise the lives
of the working class.
What are the fundamental criteria for the
existence of capitalist production? How do we recognise it?
Capitalism is a system of commodity production, production for the
market mediated by a system of monetary exchange, and it is a system
in which the actual producers do not own the means of production
necessary to turn out a usable product. These means of production are
owned by a class of capitalists who buy the labour-power of the
producers, paying them only a certain portion of the total value they
produce. The most developed and typical form in which producers are
paid is by a money wage. The capitalist class, is a small class
composed of those who own and control the financial institutions and
means of production–the land, raw materials, machines, mines,
mills, factories, farms. The working class, is made up of those who
are deprived of the ownership of the means of production and
therefore are forced to sell their labour power as a commodity to the
capitalist class. The working class participates directly in
production, transportation, communication, service, agriculture, and
commerce. It is the class which creates the wealth of society and
from which the capitalists extract surplus value. The working class also encompass the reserve army of unemployed,
including old and disabled workers and semi-permanently and
permanently unemployed workers forced to live on public assistance.
Because of its organised and concentrated character at the centres of
production, workers are the only class able to mobilise and wage the
class struggle against the ruling class. It is the only thoroughly
revolutionary class, ideologically, politically, and
organisationally. The working class is the most progressive and most
revolutionary class ever known in history and stands in the centre of
our epoch of the world proletarian revolution. It has the power in
its hands to forge a new socialist society out of the ruins of the
old capitalist one, and it alone is capable of running society in the
interests of the great majority. Working people are the “only
consistently revolutionary class because, whether or not they
realises it, their social problems cannot be solved short of
socialism. They also play a key revolutionary role because of the
organisational skills acquired as a result of its collective
experience in factories and with mass production. The world's working
class has “nothing to lose but its chains and a world to win.”
Through its own emancipation, it will break the chains of capital
which bind the exploited people of the whole world.
We
know that the day is not far away when workers will find their way to
the politics that will sweep from the earth the system which has
caused them so much suffering. They will find this task not in the
“politics” of the boss parties, but in the party of working class
revolution – the Socialist Party.
Socialists
understand that the ills of the capitalist economic system will not
be eliminated short of the destruction of capitalism. Only the
removal of the material basis of man’s exploitation by man, can
actually permit us to wage a winning struggle.
What
the working class lacks more than anything else is a sense of itself
as a class, and of the inherent contradiction between its needs and
the needs of the capitalist class. It is precisely this class
consciousness which socialists must strive, above all else, to
instill in the working class, this consciousness of itself as a class
is what can lay the actual basis for a firm and relentless struggle
against capitalism. It is
abundantly clear that the class struggle has been relegated to one of
several movements of mass resistance the women’s movement, the
anti-racist campaigns, the environmentalist movement. We will
continue to engage with these struggles, help them by linking them up
with our fight for socialism.
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