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Thursday, April 16, 2020

How the Socialist Party has the answers

Whatever changes or reforms the ruling class may decide to introduce, the duty of the workers is to organise politically for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. They must refuse to be side-tracked by reformers. The workers of all lands are wage slaves. They have the same miserable lot, of whatever nationality they may be. Workers are only allowed access to the instruments of labour in order that they may produce more wealth than they have returned to them in the form of wages, hence they are exploited—robbed. And as a natural consequence they try to lessen the extent of that exploitation by struggling for increases of wages.

We in the Socialist Party are out for the abolition of the wages system—the result of the private ownership of the means of life. We want the workers to grip the fact that it is just this— the way in which these means are used against our class by our exploiters—that causes all the misery. We desire the overthrow of the capitalist system, and in its place the establishment of socialism. We wage war against CAPITALISM, and therefore are out to rid the world of it. We want the abolition of the system causing the class division. We desire the speedy overthrow of the bloody system that is built up out working-class slavery and exploitation. We are out for SOCIALISM! Then production for the use of all will take the place of the pernicious production for the profit of a few, and a new era will open up for mankind. 

Mere protest against international warfare will not prevent its occurrence. War after war will and must be waged while capitalism lasts. Why? Because under capitalism it is the conflict of capitalist groups that starts the war machinery, and the battle field is the arena where is decided what fails to be decided in the political arena.

When the world's workers are educated in economics and socialist principles, and organised for the capture of political power, we will soon annihilate capitalism root and branch. 

Because the capitalist class desires good and faithful servants, cheap, docile, and ignorant wage slaves. And to get them there is no better preparative than religion.

While the workers' head is full of such notions as God, the Devil, and the Hereafter, to them their slave condition on this planet is a minor affair. The look upon their revolting conditions as heaven-sent and unchangeable. That their lives and destiny should be controlled in just the same way as the machine which they are compelled to tend gives them no food for thought. The ownership by a small section of society of the economic resources of the whole community, "always has been and always will be"—in their mind.

The Socialist Party, however, has analysed society from top to bottom. We know and understand the laws of the development of the social organism. Religion we explain as having its origin in ancestor worship, and owing its development to the changing economic conditions, which will also be responsible for its disappearance in the future. The poverty and degradation of the working class to-day he knows is due to the private ownership of the means of life.

Socialists suggests to you that instead of thinking about "changing your heart," you should consider the alteration of the basis of society—to establish in place of the present system, one based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth.


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