We socialists know what the matter is: it’s capitalism; and we know what the cure is: it’s socialism. Capitalism is a thing, a system; it’s the organization of society under which we all live. And it’s wrong, fundamentally wrong. It is a system of competition for wealth, for the necessities of human life, and, a survival of the old struggle of the jungle, it forces the individual to . be selfish, and rewards him for beating and abusing his fellow man. Profit is made the aim of all human effort, not use, not service. The competitive system sets man against man. It puts a premium upon hate; and love— the love of a man for his neighbor — is abnormal and all but impossible. The system crucifies the prophets and servants of mankind. It rewards greed the most, honours the ruthless, and advances the unscrupulous.
Our appeal to the workers is do not to vote for ourselves. All we ask is that you think, organize, and go into politics for yourselves. We aren’t contesting elections to win office; not yet. We want a majority of socialists, not of votes. There would be no use getting into power with a people that did not understand. The cooperative commonwealth can come only when the people know enough to want to work together, and when, by working together to win, they have developed a common sense of common service. We ask men and women to sacrifice the present for the future, to ‘throw away their votes’ to mark the rising tide of protest and build up a party that will represent them.
Socialists are the inheritors of a civilisation and all that is good in it — art, music, institutions, architecture, not one of these should be lost. And violence would lose us much. The people haven’t all they need, and yet there’s an abundance, a surplus. The hitch is in distribution. The capitalist, producing, not to supply the demand, but to get his profit. The capitalists can’t govern themselves. They can’t control prices, because they can’t control their own nature, which is bred under the sordid profit system. Socialism will be an entirely different system. It will produce for use, not profit. With socialism, all industry would be intelligently managed and freed from the brutalising temptation of profits. It’s the profit system we want to abolish. We want the producers to get all they produce. The producers are all who labour in any productive way, mentally or physically. We would get rid only of the capitalists, stockholders, and financiers, who rake off fortunes for themselves and leave property in machinery and wage-slaves to keep their children in idleness, or vice, a curse to themselves and a burden on mankind for ever and ever and ever. We take away all incentive to steal and graft and finance and overproduce and shut up the shop sudden. We all would do our work, as most of us do it now, without the incentive of a fortune in prospect. Wouldn’t a fireman save a child’s life if he didn’t get a salary? Men and women are better than we are led to believe; they are less selfish than your ‘economic man.’ We have heroes of altruism under the present system. Socialists don’t propose to substitute altruism for self-interest. The capitalist system levels most men down now? It takes all the individuality, all the courage, self-respect, liberty, and beauty out of the great mass of mankind. There would be emulation after competition is abolished. Men and women would vie in skill and service, and that would produce individuality and character, though of a different sort. We would level up, not down. We would let humanity develop naturally. If we took away the fear of starvation on the one hand and on the other the tremendous rewards for crookedness and exploitation; removed all incentives to base self-seeking, and arranged things so that the good of the individual ran, not counter to, as at present, but parallel with, the good of society, why, then, at last, human beings would stand erect, frank, free, friendly, and happy.
How do socialists account for war, for example, and graft; political corruption, ignorance, child labour, crime, and poverty? Some men prosper off others. We see the majority of men and women working for the few. That’s what we call wage- slavery, and it is slavery. The employer say they might quit work; that the boss will let them go. But the fear of starvation is the boss’s slave-driver. They don’t dare quit. The wage-slaves work in competition, and they produce goods that they need but haven’t enough money to buy. That’s poverty. And the measure thereof is the riches of the exploiters of labour, industry, and finance. And the other cause of poverty is the waste of competition and the artificial halt of production — to keep up prices and profits. Petty and professional crime are a result of poverty; high crime springs from wealth-seeking. The poor aren’t poor because they drank; they drink because they are poor. Child labour is simply the meanest form of the exploitation of human beings by human beings, and, as I showed, is due, not to any inherent cruelty in the employer, but to the system of which he also is a victim — the capitalistic system which puts profits first and children. Take a willing worker, overwork and underpay him, keep him on the verge, and then when he and his kind cannot consume what they produce, discharge him. He leaves his family to hunt a job, and, finding none, tramps or commits a crime. His children suffer, go young to work; they learn that their father is a bum or a crook. They are discouraged. The father drinks; they drink. Their children are, the best of them, perhaps, criminals, and the others, vagrants. It will stop by abolishing the cause — poverty and riches.
Socialism is the cooperative control and the democratic management of the means of production. Socialism is the next natural stage in the evolution of human society; an organisation of all men into an ordered, cooperative commonwealth in which they work together, consciously, for a common purpose: the good of all, not of the few, not of the majority, but of all. With socialism people would exercise their abilities for the common good and their own greater satisfaction. Art and culture will become common. All will have leisure. The schools will teach liberty and the trades, justice and democracy and work, beauty, truth, and the glory of labor, efficient and honourable. The arts will thrive, as they always have, in a free, cultivated democracy. There always will be some work less attractive than other kinds. Machines will do the dirty work.
Socialism does not abolish private property, except in the means of production. We want all men to have all they produce, all; we are for private property; it is capitalism that is against it. Under capitalism only the few can have property. We do not preach hate. We are opposed to classes. We teach the worker not to strive to rise out of his or her class; not to want to be an employer, but to stay with his fellow workers, and by striving all together, industrially, politically, learn to cooperate for the common good of the working class to the end that some day we may abolish classes and have only workers — all kinds of workers, but all producers. Then we should have no class at all, should we? Only men and women and children. Socialists are only preparing the minds of our fellow-workers for it
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