The need for revolution

The world about us is falling to pieces. 

The younger generation understand that the environment is collapsing, but they do not know what to do about it.
 
Marx and Engels defined socialism as the rule of working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation is not socialism but state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist but another form of state capitalism. For sure, an improvement on capitalism with no welfare, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is still not socialism. If we want a class-free society, we have to create a new model of economics.

The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth. The greater the grip capitalism has, the more intense is the poverty of the many and the more marked are the riches of the few. How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who runs the machines, who build the factories and the houses, who create the whole of the wealth, receive barely sufficient to maintain themselves and their families yet those who do not get involved in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to satisfy their every comfort, and luxury? To every observer it is obvious that the life of the workers is one of penury and of misery. 

The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a subsistence wage. In return for this wage, they create value far in excess of the value paid them as wages. The difference between these two values is taken by the employing class, and constitutes the source of profit, interest, and rent. These three forms of exploitation are the result of the unpaid labour of the working-class. So long as the capitalist system of society it will not be possible for the workers to do little more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming more and more limited by employers intent to defeat the working class. 

The Socialist Party is convinced that by laying down a clearly defined body of principles in accord with essential economic truths, and by consistently advocating them, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, but marching uncompromisingly on toward their goal, they will ultimately gain the confidence and the support of the working-class. Men and women of the working-class, it is to you we appeal. To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members.

Socialist internationalism arises from the practical experience of the workers who felt that they had to cooperate with each other across frontiers and boundaries in order to defend their interests, their wages and their working conditions. The day-to-day experience of someone standing at the factory bench next to a foreigner who, often through necessity, undersold his or her labour, brought an understanding of common interests, an instinctive kind of internationalism. Socialist internationalism is solidarity that transcends borders. Socialist internationalism is anti-patriotism and of anti-nationalism. The whole wide world is our fatherland, our motherland, our homeland. We shall neither keep ancient nationalities nor constitute new ones. For sure, workers of a particular nation in order to throw off the yoke of the ruling class must be organised nationally yet it will be unable to attain its full emancipation until there has been effected a global uprising of the workers of all lands. Any social revolution must necessarily be worldwide. 

Fellow-workers must not think so much of their country as of their solidarity with the workers of all countries. Socialism is concerned about the transformation of nation-states to a universal commonwealth.