Socialism - Speed the Day

While to-day, in the domain of natural science, the theory of evolution is generally accepted as the basis of research, the reverse is the case in the field of political economy. The reason is that natural evolution can be “squared” with individualism, but social evolution cannot. Social development along evolutionary lines must, if logically and persistently traced, demonstrate more clearly that all men and women are social products and economic positions, therefore, merely the result of necessity and not of choice.

While orthodox political economy at the bidding of the possessing class, is at all times concerned to prove that capital and wage labour have existed through all history, the historic and economic teachings of Karl Marx, particularly the “Materialist Conception of History” and the “Theory of Surplus Value,” supply ample evidence that capital and wage-labour are conditions of a social system of production forming but a comparatively small link in the great chain of social evolution.While a number of bourgeois writers contributed considerably to the records of the history of primitive accumulation, it was left to Marx and his life co-worker, Engels, to point out its significance from the working-class stand-point. It was they who laid stress upon the fact that  this accumulation spelt the creation of the proletariat and of capital itself.  

The proofs adduced by Marx in support of his contention that the origin and rise of capital can be traced, distinctly and indisputably, to robbery, fraud and violence, form only a small part, and by no means the most important one, of his profound investigations into social wealth production. The portions of his work describing so lucidly the process of the reproduction and accumulation of capital are for the purposes of proletarian enlightenment of even greater importance. Marx’s evidence as to the reproduction and accumulation of capital bears out completely his theories of Value and Surplus-Value. According to them only two factors exist in wealth production – natural objects and social, co-operative labour. Capital is part of the social wealth, of which the workers have been robbed and which is invested by its owners for the purpose of further robbery.

Social, co-operative human labour applied to natural objects being alone necessary to produce wealth, it follows that the reproduction and accumulation of capital – a portion of social wealth – can exclusively be traced back to the exploitation of human labour.

The development of capitalist production causes ever-extending co-operation and productivity of labour, resulting in a gradual cheapening of human labour-power. Hence the proletariat, who alone produce all wealth, grow increasingly poorer, since their sole source of income is the sale of their labour power; while the idle owners of the means of production are accumulating more and more social wealth.So soon as it is conceded that to-day social labour applied to natural objects is the only source of wealth, the claim to the means of production – capital in present-day Society – by its capitalist owners can only be sustained on the ground of heredity or privilege.

Capitalism, the ownership of the world by a small propertied class, is driving the people of this planet along the path towards ruin. The plight of the people will worsen due to competition, strife, bloodshed and a growing poverty. The hope of humanity and the path to progress lies in the revolt of the wage-workers against the employing class, the capture of political power and the appropriation the means of production from the owning class. This great change means that the people will own the world in common, produce wealth in common, possess in common all wealth produced, and by common agreement distribute that wealth to the common advantage. This is a big task for the workers, but one forced on us by the worldwide misery. This next form of human society is called socialism/communism. It is our determined intention to do all in our power to spread the principles socialism throughout the whole of the world. We make it quite clear as to our exact aim and object. We are socialists and by Socialism we mean, the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system, and the conducting of all production and distribution relationships on a co-operative basis, making for the socialist co-operative commonwealth.

Capitalist society  cannot assure an existence to the makers of its wealth. The private ownership of the instruments, together with the results, of production, has shown that if social development is to proceed, Socialism must be instituted, i.e. a system of society wherein all those who labour shall jointly possess and use those things which are necessary to satisfy the wants of all.

The main reason so many seekers after socialist knowledge remain reformers is that they do not realise that man is a social product and that wealth production throughout human history has been based on co-operation. With a thorough grasp of these primary socialist principles no proletarian can remain in ignorance of the meaning of social evolution and revolution. In his efforts to trace the history of man as a social product he will discover the fact that society is an organism with its own laws of development and that the various stages of such development are determined by the evolution in the tools of production. And in his endeavour to gather evidence of the existence of the co-operative principle in human society, the worker will learn that the condition of the wealth producers depends entirely upon the ownership of these tools of production, that is, upon whether they are owned by the users, or by another class, to whom such ownership gives the power of exploitation and domination. He will also come to realise that a change in the ownership of the means of production cannot be brought about by any evolutionary process, but, on the contrary, must be accomplished, by the propertyless class, by a political revolution.

Capitalism involves the sale by the worker and the purchase by the capitalist of his or her value-creating power – the source of the wealth of capitalist society. Socialism therefore — a society wherein we have the free and equal association of the wealth producers, operating the means of production they commonly own, making everything for use and for use alone — is the next stage in social progress. Onward! Haste the day!