Capitalism has Failed

Glaring proof of capitalism’s legalised robbery is the fact that after 300 years of marvellous technical achievements and tremendous increase of wealth produced by the working-class, it has still left them in a condition of poverty and insecurity. Once working people comes to understand the wages-system and recognises it as the cause of their predicament, they will come to understand that all these fine sentiments about “liberation. freedom and independence, peace and social justice” are but so many sound-bite slogans to hide the brutal facts of their thieving system.  In the French Revolution it was “Liberté, égalité, fraternité ” which fooled the destitute masses into fighting the feudal enemies of their enemies, the rising capitalist class, with the result that down to this day the above mentioned fine words mock the poverty-stricken French workers. It is certainly remarkable that it should still be possible for politicians to find listeners to these old outworn hollow phrases.

What has been the result of all these revolutions, past and present? What cause have they served? Have they rid the world of poverty, insecurity, class-conflict and war? What problem have the wars and “liberations” in the last 300 years solved for the mass of the people—the working-class? Have the unspeakable tragedies, the untold ruins and rivers of blood and tears been justified that accompanied “national liberation” down to this day? Has the fundamental status of the world's wealth-producers as mere objects of exploitation been altered or even advanced one iota towards one of free men and women? Is it no longer a condition of the workers’ very existence that they have a job in some profit-making enterprise? Have they even secured the miserable enough right to work? 

Enough has been said on the preposterous Bolshevik claim of having inaugurated a new social order, a “people’s democracy’’— this swindle is now too obvious and well known. But how little “freedom, independence and democracy” mean to the working-class under capitalism even in the “free world” countries: the U.S., Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, is shown by the fact that the status of the workers there is likewise that of property-less wage-slaves, dependent for their very means of existence, on the precarious chance of securing a job with some employer. Such a status does not and cannot make for the enjoyment of life. Work under such circumstances can never be identified, as it ought to and will be under socialism, with real satisfaction and pleasure; it is only done to keep the wolf from the door. And wherever people have to work for wages, to make profit for an employer, any accident, illness, or other physical or mental disability—not to mention the factor of age—becomes something akin to a family catastrophe. The employers, even of the Welfare State, will quickly make you understand that they are not a welfare institution; but mean to make the concern for which they have hired you, pay—the shareholders want their loot all the time.

Unfortunately, in so far as workers have not become altogether apathetic towards politics, they are, despite all the disillusionments, failures and frustrations, still place their trust in leaders and fall for the day-to-day affairs that invariably are only concerns of their enemies: the capitalist class. The Left, far from getting the workers interested in and educated to socialism,  are busy assisting and strengthening the capitalist state. The fact is that rulers and leaders all stand for the appropriation and accumulation of wealth by a world privileged class, wealth that is produced by and filched from the mass of the people through the modem wages-system. Meanwhile  national liberations and revolutions have always meant the exchange of one bunch of exploiters for another, while native rulers of backward countries have often proved worse tyrants even than the foreign exploiters and oppressors they ousted. Neither the frequent frank and outspoken confessions in avowed capitalist publications of the shocking features of modern society, nor the evident humbug and hypocrisy, the lying, deceit and cant of political leaders seem to stir working people to intelligent action in opposition to the horrible system they all serve and want to perpetuate.

 Capitalist spokesmen can insult the workers by telling them to their face with brutal bluntness that they are nothing but HIRED objects to make profit. We ask, where is the difference between the cultured and the uncultured slaves, as far as enlightenment on their social position and a sense of human dignity is concerned? With all your greater experience and opportunities, you have not yet learned that it is the damnable system of capitalist exploitation that is the cause of your and their misery and degradation! 

The Socialist Party hope that the truth we keep hammering home, namely that all the freedoms in capitalism put together still leave the mass of mankind shackled and unfree, will soon be comprehended in wider circles and that the workers will at last strive for the ONE FREEDOM: the emancipation of the working-class of the world from the thralldom of the exploiters of labour.