This is why you must be a socialist

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.