Capitalist
rule forces the masses of people to compete with each other for
survival. The unity of the workers of all minorities and
nationalities can and will be built not in competition over the
division of the pie but in the common struggle to take the whole pie
and the means to continually enlarge it. For the working class, the
fight for equality is not a fight to “suffer equally under
capitalism” but a crucial part of the struggle to end capitalism
and the misery it causes to people. Working
people who try to find a clear way through the hardships of
present-day conditions are faced with a hard task.
On
every side is confusion. Rising prices, falling wages, the
uncertainty of a job, or the deepening misery of months and even
years of unemployment; wars and ever new threats of war — all these
are the daily conditions of life now. Amid
all these ills there is no guidance or help from the old sources to
which the workers used to look. The trade unions have little to say,
engaged mostly in desperate endeavours to keep their membership from
disappearing. Politicians are ready to make all kinds of promises for
a beautiful future time when they shall be the government.
The
capitalist world sinks ever deeper into its many crises. It heaps
torment upon torment upon backs of the toiling class. For countless
millions of human beings life today is a means hunger and unbearable
wage-slavery. Everywhere workers look anxiously for remedies. But
they can find no way out of the blind alley. We are not fooled by the
sloganising of the Left that the working class is in a revolutionary
upsurge. The mass of people are not revolutionists as yet. But nor
are our fellow-workers entirely docile. There often comes signs of
fresh hope. We see all around signs of the dawning of the new day of
socialism, and we shall work for the coming of that better day for we
see no way out save in a complete overthrow of the capitalist system.
A father who casts a vote for the continuance of that system is as
much of a murderer as if he took a gun and shot his own child.
From
all quarters of the globe comes cries of distress. Poverty and low
wages, and unemployment, are driving millions to despair. Now they
are once again at the cross-roads. Only
the conversion of private property in the means of production –
land, mines, raw material,machinery, transport and communication –
into social property, and the transformation of the production of
goods into socialist production, carried on for and through society,
can bring it about that the great production and the continually
increasing productivity of social labour may become for the
exploited classes, instead of a source of oppression, a source of the
highest welfare and of all-sided harmonious development. This social
transformation means the emancipation, not merely of the worker, but
of the entire human race which suffers under the present conditions.
The
Socialist Party proposes no new class privileges and exclusive rights,
but for the abolition of class rule and of classes themselves. It
struggles in the present society, not only against exploitation of
the wage-workers, but against every kind of exploitation and
oppression, whether directed against gender or race.
The
greatest need of to-day is clear understanding of the present
conditions and positive marking out of the path to travel. Where can
it be found? Through
all the unrest and discontent of present times at home and abroad
there is only one party that is consistent and unhesitating, that has
exposed the confusion of shams and lies and stood firmly by the
struggle of the working class. That party has been the Socialist
Party. When the Labour Party and the capitalist politicians were
prattling on about improving conditions by reforms, the Socialist
Party declared that capitalism had out-lived its usefulness and the
time was now for a socialist revolution. All sorts of politicians
proclaim a new world, a new heaven upon earth. New cults and idols
are held out before the workers, all shams to conceal from the
workers their growing enslavement and hide from them the issue of
Revolution. Alone the the Socialist Party asserts that capitalism its
continuance would only mean growing chaos, and that the only path for
the workers was the path of the workers’ revolution. Workers
are beaten down because they were divided and uncertain, of their
path, because they are duped by the trickery of fake leaders in
alliance with the capitalists. The capitalist bear down upon the
workers and leaving a trail of want and misery.
The
struggle of the working class against economic exploitation is of
necessity a political struggle. The working class cannot effect the
change of the means of production into the possession of the
collective society without coming into possession of political power.
To shape this struggle of the working class into a conscious and
united one, and to point out to its inevitable goal, this is the task
of the Socialist Party. In all lands the interests of the working
classes are alike. With the world trade and the global market, the
condition of the workers of every single land always grows more
dependent on the condition of the workers in other lands. The
emancipation of the working class is therefore a task in which the
workers of all countries are equally interested. Recognising this the
Socialist Party declares itself at one with the class-conscious
workers of all countries.
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