You need to be a socialist

Working people are being victimised by an array of absurd contradictions.

Getting something for nothing is what capitalism is all about. That is what capitalists do best. Indeed, that is all they do. Capitalists do not earn, or create, or build anything. They live by profiting from the work done by others. They live off the labour of the working class. The names these two classes bear tell the story. Workers work and capitalists capitalise on the work that workers do. Capitalism exists and can only exist as a system of exploitation. Capitalists are the exploiters and workers are the exploited. Capitalism condemns millions to lives of poverty and despair just to enhance the worthless lives of a few. It is not the welfare queens or the work-shy who bleed leech off others. It is the capitalist vampire that is sucking the working class dry.

Basic needs remain unmet while goods and products that could satisfy these needs sit in warehouses or storage lots, inaccessible to the working people who need but can’t buy them. Billions of dollars are being spent on armament industries while schools, hospitals, public transport and other social services are curtailed or eliminated for “lack of funds.” Workers have demanded too much improvement in the quality of the environment, too much job security safety, too much retirement protection, too much health care, too much equality, too much housing, too much pay, etc. Less pay for workers, less spending for job safety, less investment for pollution controls mean more profits for the capitalist owners of industry. Less spending for education and social services generally means more tax cuts for the capitalists, more money to invest in business expansion. Placing blame upon the greed of the workers diverts attention from the underlying causes - profit-motivated production and private ownership of the economy, policies which are fostering increased competition among workers for the limited number of jobs and social services capitalism has to offer. In this way, the ability of workers to mount a unified defence against enforced austerity is crippled.

Even when a capitalist economy is relatively healthy, the needs of workers are never met. This is so because the capitalist economy does not operate to meet workers’ needs. It operates for capitalist profit. That profit is generated through the exploitation of working people—that is, by paying workers wages that amount to only a fraction of the wealth they collectively produce. In a socialist economy based on common ownership of industry, the workers’ condition would be the reverse of what it is today. Production would be for social use instead of for private profit. Through elected delegates, they would democratically administer the industries and make all economic decisions. Resources would be allocated and production would be carried out on the basis of social needs and wants. A socialist economy would thereby free society of the limitations now imposed by capitalism. Such a society will not, of course, come into existence by itself. If the working-class majority is to become master of the nation’s economic forces, rather than its victims, workers must organise to wrest control from the capitalist class and to lay the foundation for a socialist society. Specifically, working people must break with the political parties of the capitalist class and organise politically around their common class interests. The Socialist Party goal is the transformation of the present economy into a socialist economy run by, and in the interests of, working people.