Our Capitalist Foe

What stands between the liberation of the millions of exploited working people and the continued rule of the bourgeois dictatorship is the absence of understanding and awareness among our fellow-workers. The focus of our party must be directed toward the development of education and enlightenment. As our fellow-workers imbibe the lessons and climb the ascent to class-consciousness, they will apply this consciousness and experience to the problems of their existence, the practical result will be: concrete political organisation of the working class.

The capitalist understands one thing very well. He knows what his class interests are and how to protect them. He may be a fool but he knows that so long as he can maintain the organisational, political and social integrity or unity of his class on important matters and at the same time impregnate his workers with the belief that they are incompetent and impotent, he and his class are secure. Thus the ruling class puts forth the claim, in one form or another, that it has the right to rule, to govern; to own, manage and control. The claim look very impressive because his class has had an appreciable degree of success, and success can be glorified and sanctified, particularly by chicanery and trickery. The first aim is to obscure and conceal the real situation. He will never admit that political power has any class meaning or content. The existence of classes has or should have no connection with the nature of the state and the role of the government. He may speak of those who have wealth and those who do not. He attempts to explain it by differences of fortune or misfortune, of frugality or profligacy, of ability or the lack of ability, dismissing the embarrassing matter of inheritance by designating several millions for the establishment of a “charitable” but astutely also a tax exempt foundation. His aim is to conceal the fact that political, social and economic power are in the hands of a small minority. Any attempt of on the part of ordinary people to achieve and assert political power is resisted because he knows that political power is indissolubly related to social and economic power. Of course, to see that no steps are yet taken by workers in the direction of political power is beside the point. The ruling class know that even a little learning by the people is a dangerous thing and may result in progressively increasing demands. Such development would expose and lay bare the basic evil of a dictatorship exercised by a small minority, not by virtue of service to society but solely for the protection of the capitalist.

 Our capitalist fully realises the elementary knowledge that the government is not or should not be a neutral body sitting above capital and labour, impartially adjudicating the disputes which arise between contending classes or groups. He knows only too well that that it is the cloak of capitalist democracy under which the ruling class exercises its dictatorship over society. The people may vote, but the bourgeoisie rules.