The Hope and the Challenge

Recessions are an inherent feature of capitalism and cannot be ended without eliminating the root, the capitalist system. The anarchy of production and crisis will not be eliminated without putting an end to the capitalist system. The motive of capitalist production is the securing of maximum profits. Production of goods is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism, as is employment. The capitalist class organises production for the purposes of increasing profits. When conditions are such that profits can be increased by increasing production, the capitalists does so, and when conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production to keep up the price, then that is what the capitalist class does. Thus if it serves to increase profits to increase the numbers of workers in production, then this is done; but if profits can only be increased by intensifying exploitation, getting more or the same amount of work out of fewer workers, then this is done instead. These fundamental features of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.

All the capitalist parties are dedicated to the continuation of the capitalist system of wage slavery. The working class must prepare through the course of this and other struggles for putting an end to the capitalist system. The reason for the treachery and betrayal of the “friends” of labour is not simply the cowardice and spinelessness of various individuals. The workers can never rely on the labour leaders because their entire position depends on the maintenance of the capitalist system. The socialist struggle is to build the unity of the class against the class enemy, fighting against the class-collaborationism and reformism. The workers can and must fight the encroachments on their employment conditions, but they cannot restrict themselves to addressing only the symptoms; they must in the course of combatting the encroachments prepare for removing the source of the disease, the capitalist system of wage slavery. It is the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression, the system of wage slavery, that is the source of all the problems facing the working class. It demonstrates the urgent necessity to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism through revolution. Social revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity in order to avert the dangers facing working people to prevent their immiseration and destitution.

So widespread is the chaos across the world that it cannot do other than create the possibility of revolutionary activity. The position of capitalism is extremely precarious. No one is more conscious of this than the financiers and statesmen themselves. The capitalists would very much like, if they could, to clear up the mess that their system is in—but they cannot. It is in this context that we are attempting to develop our socialist analysis. Exploited by the relations of production under capitalism, the working class has a direct interest in the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, the system in which the working class owns and controls the means of production and collectively shares in the products of its labour. The working class, created by capitalism, is also the destroyer of capitalism.

The Socialist Party is the party of the working class, in fundamental opposition to all other parties. It declares that the social contrasts of increasing wealth in the hands of the rich, side by side with the increasing misery and poverty of the people, cannot be eliminated within the framework of capitalism. It proclaims that the organisation of the economic life of the whole world, the abolition of war, the end of the capitalist dictatorship and the building of socialism, are impossible, unless the working class overthrows the capitalist class. The Socialist Party therefore is the deadly foe of capitalism and capitalist parties. We do not intend to appeal to emotion. We hope to present a few facts about the class question that every worker should know. We appeal to workers to use their reason. History is full of examples of the decline of civilisations. All of us have read about them. But we can do nothing about the past. That is history. The period in which we live is different. We can do something about it. Human beings can actively intervene and change the course of history. We need not become fatalists and assume that barbarism will follow the present period. That can happen only if the workers do not understand the system, they live in and do not organise to do something about it. The starting point is understanding the present system.