Our Commandment - Thou shalt not be stolen from.

Socialism stands for the abolition of robbery and the abolition of poverty. We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the capitalists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these property monopolists as speedily as possible. Socialism promotes peace, solidarity and goodwill among all peoples. No other political influence has operated half so powerfully to eradicate racial animosities and national rivalries. As socialists we have no quarrel with the workers of any nation on earth. There is ample room for all in the world, it is only the conduct of industry for profit-making on behalf of the plutocracy that makes each nation fight every other nation. Stop this, and begin to produce for use and there is harmony for all.

Socialism does not seek to destroy but to construct, to build fine homes. Socialism does not aim at making people the slaves of governments, but to surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free citizens. Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor. Socialism is the recognition and adoption of the principle and practice of association and co-operation. Socialism gives each of us the responsibility of being our “brother’s keeper.” If a child, woman or man is hungry, socialism says there is something wrong in our social system, and upon us all individually and collectively rests the responsibility of righting the wrong. If a city contains one slum dwelling or a number of such, socialism says to each of us raze the slum to the ground and let the sun shine. If men or women are over-worked, and so prevented from fully sharing in the joys of life, socialism bids us to immediately lessen the toil. Socialism does not seek to destroy individuality, but to make it possible for each person to develop his or her faculties up to the highest possible pitch of perfection.

Men, women and children are dying by millions because they are barred from getting life’s necessaries. This in the midst of an abundance of wealth the like of which the world has never known before. Our principle is one of  comradeship based on the socialisation of the means of production and distribution and the complete emancipation of labour from the domination of capitalism. For the working class capitalism means a growing insecurity of their existence, of misery, oppression, enslavement, debasement, and exploitation.

The capitalist mode of production, because it has the creation of profit for its sole object and is based upon the divorcement of the majority of the people from the instruments of production and the concentration of these instruments in the hands of a minority. Society is thus divided into two opposite classes, one, the capitalists and their accomplices, the landlords and bankers, holding in their hands the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and being, therefore, able to command the labour of others; the other, the working-class, the wage-slaves, the proletariat, possessing nothing but their labour-power, and being consequently forced by necessity to work for the former. 

Private ownership of the means of production has today become the means of expropriating workers, and small farmers, and enabling the non-workers – capitalists and large landowners – to own the product of the workers. Only the transformation of capitalism’s private ownership of the means of production – the land, mines, raw materials, tools, machines, and means of transport – into common ownership, and the transformation of production of goods for sale into socialist production for use, managed for and through society, can bring it about that the great industry and the steadily growing productive capacity of social labour shall for the hitherto exploited classes be changed from a source of misery and oppression, to a source of the highest welfare and of all-round harmonious perfection.

This social revolution means the emancipation not only of the workers, but of the whole human race, which suffers under the conditions today. But it can only be the work of the working class, because all the other classes, in spite of mutually conflicting interests, take their stand on the basis of private ownership of the means of production, and have as their common object the preservation of the principles of contemporary society.

The battle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a political battle. The working class cannot carry on its economic battles or develop its economic organisation without political rights. It cannot effect the passing of the means of production into the ownership of the community without acquiring political power.