Under the system of private property the welfare of the community and of the individual are at war; and the antagonism of interests leads every capitalist to sacrifice the common good to his private ends. Capitalism, or in other words the private ownership by a small minority of the land and all other things necessary to the life of the community, is the curse, the terrible sore. The reformists apply palliatives and soothing measures to this terrible social evil. That is are able to do; it is all can be done. It is true also these soothing policies often allay the pain just as the pain from a rotten tooth is allayed by the application of some novocaine. The tooth, however, still continues to decay until the pain becomes unbearable, the sufferer at length decides to remove the cause by means of the care and instruments necessary for that purpose; or in other words to completely remove the cause of discomfort by means of revolution,’ applied to social or political matters. The palliatives do not remove the cause of pain, they only temporarily abates.
The real indictment against our present industrial system is not that it involves an unfair distribution of the product, but that it mismanages, misdirects, and therefore unduly limits production itself. A huge waste of potential wealth undoubtedly exists yet second only to our waste of land is the waste of our mineral resources. We are socialists because we holdthat socialism will solve the misery of the world — give sustenance to the man and woman who is hungry give to little children the right to be born free. We believe socialism is practical. We see no way out save in a complete overthrow of the capitalist system. Anyone who casts a vote for the continuance of that system is as much of a murderer as if he or she took a gun and shot their own child. But we see all around us signs of the dawning of socialism, and with our comrades everywhere we will work for the coming of that better day.
The Socialist Party is opposed to militarism. We are the world’s peace party. Socialism and militarism are necessarily opposed to each other. Socialism is the common ownership of all natural resources and the application of all social forces in for the satisfaction of peoples’ needs. It, therefore, involves not merely co-operation between individuals and groups of individuals, but also co-operation between those in every land. This would ensure peace; because the chief essential characteristics of such global collaboration would be the conservation of wealth and the elimination of all forms of waste. In a system of universal co-operation for production for use, all destruction of wealth, all waste, would be sheer loss. And all war is waste. Under the present system of capitalism – with its class ownership and control of all natural resources and all means of production – with capitalist competition and production for profit, waste means gain for the minority, and is not only inevitable but necessary. And war, in such circumstances, is indispensable. Production for profit involves the production of a surplus of wealth – over which those who have produced it, and who most need it, have no control – over-production, the glutting of markets, commercial and industrial crises, bankruptcy and ruin. Production for profit stops the wheels of production, closes mills and factories, throws men out of employment, and produces widespread misery and want. Under present circumstances, therefore, the waste and destruction of war, with all its indescribable horrors, are blessings to mankind. Even if it were possible to eliminate war, therefore, under capitalism the horrors of peace would far transcend those of war. But it is not possible, because that very frenzy of production forces the competing producers into conflict with each other for the mastery of markets in which the surplus can be disposed of. So hideously, in the capitalist system, do all things work together to produce the conditions essential to capitalism that the very over-production of wealth which makes war and waste so useful also makes war inevitable.
The wars of to-day are essentially economic in their origin and their object. However it may have been in the past, and we are no longer concerned if they were previously dynastic conflicts between opposing royal families or between different religion, and so on. The real cause and object today is the conquest of commercial markets, securing trade routes or the acquisition of raw materials. That being so, it must be quite clear that capitalism and peace are incompatible, and that however sincere and well-intentioned bourgeois advocates of peace may be, their plans are foredoomed to failure, and world peace cannot be established while capitalism exists. It is idle and utopian to dream of establishing peace in the midst of capitalism. Pacifists talk of disarmament. But any person who has taken the trouble to understand the operations of the capitalist system must recognise that disarmament under capitalism is impossible. For sure there only a few who does not find the cost of armaments burdensome, or would not willingly seek some arrangement by which defence costs might be reduced. But, suppose some such arrangement were arrived at, and assuming, further, that, acting on that agreement, every country were to disarm. The causes of conflict still remain, and there is nothing in the way of any nation organising a predatory attack against its neighbour, and nothing can prevent its doing so. We are thus face to face with the inevitability of armament spending under present conditions.
Instead of preparing people for war we seek for them to establish the co-operative commonwealth.
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