Bringing it Together

Standing in the way of social progress is the capitalist class. The ruling class control the destinies of millions of others around the globe. In opposition to this minority is the vast majority of the rest of the population. In the final analysis, the conditions of life for 99% of the people cannot fundamentally improve without the overthrow of the ruling class. The capitalists are a powerful enemy and it will require protracted efforts to overthrow them. This class is the enemy of the revolution and the vast majority of the people. These capitalists live off the exploited labour of others. The vast majority of people belong to the working class. The working class produces the wealth appropriated by the capitalists and its basic interest lies in the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production.

Socialism means a class-free society, and a classless society means that a privileged minority of the population are not in a position to enjoy the national wealth, while the majority live only on their labour to produce it. It means especially that privileged individuals who do have excess income cannot invest it in the instruments of production with which others work, thus reducing them to a position of fixed subservience. It means an end of rent, profit, and interest on stocks and bonds, an end of “surplus value,” an end of the exploitation of labour. To all those other cultural goods of which we have been speaking, this economic change was regarded by socialists as pre-requisite and fundamental. Socialism means fewer officials than capitalism, not more. It is capitalism, with its huge bureaucratic organisation of administrators, directors, managers, under-managers, foremen, sales managers, advertising agents and production experts that outweighs – at the expense of the ratepayer – the official against the operative side of industry.

Socialism has a future and Marxism retains its validity. Revolution does not fall out of the sky. It requires organization–an organization committed to this goal. After we have overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism. It will put an end to the exploitation of man by man. It will bring freedom to all those oppressed by capital and open up a new period of history for people. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. Industrial democracy will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all. The growth of socialism is the promise of freedom. What the people want they can't have. The trouble is that they have been too patient and too modest, but one of these days they are going to realise that this earth is theirs, and then they will take possession of it in the name of the humanity. Politically the people are not yet ready for socialism. They do not understand that the capitalist system is not capable of feeding, clothing, or sheltering them. Because of this political backwardness they are capable of seeing only their immediate ills, and hence are capable of making only immediate and emergency demands. Because of the political backwardness the struggle for socialism is small and isolated. The burning problem of the day for millions is to construct the bridge between the present political backwardness of the masses and the socialist revolution. But they can see the surrounding plenty. They can see the fertile fields full of crops. They can see the packed warehouses, the idle machines. And they can see just as clearly the empty plates at their dinner table. They can hear their children crying for food. They can feel all the horrible misery of the rotten conditions, the shame and degradation in which they are compelled to live. We are convinced that in spite of all the difficulties the ideas of socialism will continue to grow in strength, that socialism will conquer. The workers are in the majority, and their interests are in line with Socialism, which may, therefore, be realised as soon as they desire, and are resolute enough to put their desires into practice.

Capitalism has only known how to cause humanity misery and unhappiness; socialism will establish peace and harmony among men and women. Socialism maintains and proves that there is only one solution to the social problems as it presents itself in capitalist civilization: it’s that all the centralized labor instruments, such as the railroads, factories, textile works, mines, large farming properties, banks, etc, become common property and be given over to the associated workers, who will operate them , not for the profit of a few capitalists, do-nothings and thieves, but for the benefit of the entire community. This transformation of capitalist property into common property will create social well-being. The anarchic production of capitalist civilization , which only knows how to engender the poverty of the producers with its overabundances of merchandise and its periods of overwork and of unemployment, will be replaced by nationally and internationally regulated production, calculated according to the needs that are to be satisfied. Industrial inventions and improvements, no longer serving to enrich a few individuals, will increase the means of leisure and enjoyment of all members of society.

Socialism is international, just like capitalism. But whereas the internationalism of the bourgeoisie is continually frustrated by the mutual competition of national capitalisms, the internationalism of the workers is nourished and perpetually strengthened by the active solidarity of the interests of all the workers, regardless of their nationality. The situation of the workers is identical in its essential features throughout all capitalist countries. Whilst the interests of the bourgeoisies of different lands unceasingly conflict one with another, the interests of proletarians coincide. the social revolution cannot count upon success unless at the outset it involves, if not all, then at least the major capitalist countries. For this reason, from the moment when the workers begin to become aware that their complete emancipation is unthinkable without the socialist reconstruction of contemporary bourgeois society, they take as their watchword the union of the workers of the whole world in a common struggle for emancipation.