Build a Better World

Socialism has been attacked and incriminated at all times. Socialists are reproached with every kind of wickedness; of the tendency to do away with property, marriage, family, to pollute everything that is sacred. Invent lies in every way you can; throw mud and something will stick. Foremost is the malicious claim that the socialists intend to divide all property. Everybody who owns anything must give up what he owns; this whole mass has to be divided equally among all the people, and each person may use his part just as he likes. After a while, when some have used up their allotted part and a new disproportion of property has arisen, a new division will be made; and so on. Especially the money and the land are to be divvied up. Just reflect how the railways should be shared? Who should have the rails, or a locomotive, or a carriage? And since everybody would have a right to demand an equal share, all these things would have to be dismantled.

Socialism is a necessity to save mankind. Under slavery the worker is the property of his master just the same as cattle. Under serfdom the worker had to serve the Lord of the Manor with his time and kind. Under capitalism the workers are technically free. No legal pressure compels them to sell their labour power. we can take a job where we like and when we like. It is the commodity market which subject us to the changing conditions of the labour market. However, the disappearance of all legal protection corresponds to this legal liberty. If, for causes usually independent of their will, the owners of the means of production cannot employ the available workers, these workers are doomed to starvation.

Whoever declares oneself an enemy of socialism declares to be an enemy of common interest, an enemy of society and humanity. Socialism teaches the way in which at a future time people will try to establish justice and a more equal condition of life for the whole community; while the owners of small property are being robbed of the little they own. Socialism, far from intending to abolish any property to-day or to-morrow, only predicts that there will be a time, not suddenly provoked, but brought on by historical development, when the working people will insist upon their right to the product of their own work, against the privilege which property enjoys with regard to the work of others.

Imagine a world in which we had no fear of changing climates, rising temperatures and sea levels, mass species extinctions, or the obscene inequality we see today.

Imagine a world in which everyone had enough, but no one wanting too much. Where the same opportunities are there for everyone. Imagine a world in which we had no wars over resources. 

Does this sound like a Utopian dream? Maybe it does, but it is no more impossible than expecting the world we live in now to provide for all the people. We owe our children that we leave them a better, more decent world for they to leave their children.

The working class, nourished by its misery, vitalized by its aspirations, is raising the revolutionary standard of international socialism, and in due course of time the hour will again strike for change and the socialist movement.

Capitalism uses a new and much more efficient method than the lash of the cat-o’-nine-tails to make the workers toil. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms. As we work, we create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances the bosses cannot spend them. So there proves to be no more market for that commodity we are hired to produce; no more profits can be gotten so the free boss lays off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled. Capitalism, greedily demanding more and more profits, puts faster machines into the shops which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. More workers are thrown on the streets. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will misery be done away with. The society of socialism alone can eliminate the terror of poverty. Capitalism will be replaced by plenty for all. To help bring this about all workers should join the Socialist Party and help fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.