Take Their Power from Them

 

The vast majority of our population live by, or are dependent on, the sale of labour power to industries and businesses owned or dominated by capitalists. They own no tools of production. They own no property. labourers in all trades and occupations, and their dependents, including scientists, engineers, technicians, mechanics. The capitalists know better than anyone else that their “free enterprise” is not free at all, where the monopolies and corporations have destroy the last vestiges of the small independent producers. Capitalism produced small wars. Capitalism produces world wars. Wars can be postponed but they cannot be prevented. The grip of the capitalists by means of their ownership and control of the means of life, their domination of government to maintain their power to rob and rule can, must be broken. Working class power is the essential condition for far-reaching social change.

 The immediate aim of the Socialist Party is the revolutionary transformation of society culminating the creation of a class-free and state-free society in which the guiding principle will be ’From each according to ability, to each according to need’. The immediate goal of the Socialist Party is to transform an economy based upon private ownership of the means of production with the aim of maximising profits for the capitalist class into an economy based upon common ownership of the means of production with the aim of maximising the satisfaction of the human needs of the people. 

 Despite the tremendous power of technology large numbers of people still lack nutritious food, decent housing and many other benefits of modern civilisation, simply because capitalist relations of production restrict the truly useful application of the forces of production. The, first step of socialism is liberating the productive forces by expropriation of means of production, the industrial and commercial concerns, from capitalist class. As the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienating characteristics of capitalism will disappear. As  people gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour so their antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work will be overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will gradually disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities.

 The capitalist system of production and social relations is antagonistic by its very nature. The purpose and the motive power of capitalist production is the derivation of profits. Under the conditions of capitalism, science as well as technology, whether consciously or unconsciously, serve the interests of capitalist profit. ‘Machines are a means for the production of surplus value..’ ["Capital" Volume I]  Capitalism, in developing new technology, pursues the purpose not of developing the forces of production to satisfy the requirements of society , but of increasing the profits. Therefore, capitalism introduces a new machine only when the difference between the price of this machine and the cost of labour-power that it replaces is sufficiently large to secure an average profit and successful competition in the market. Unemployment, under capitalism, is the inevitable consequence of technical progress.

 The buying of intellectual ownership rights, patents, maintaining secrecy in scientific research work such are everyday facts of industrial reality in capitalism. Under capitalism, the adoption of technical innovation and invention is always below the potential the level of scientific and technical development possible. Under capitalism, this discrepancy between technical possibilities and their industrial application becomes particularly great. Capitalism clips the wings of scientific creativity and technological initiative.  Even when scientific achievements are carried into effect are resulting only in worsening the conditions of millions of toilers, hence the latter are bound to treat them with indifference and hostility. As was written by Marx, "Under capitalism, to be a worker engaged in production is not a blessing, but a curse." Capitalism has clearly destroyed all the hopes that were entertained for the possibility of a lengthy period of prosperity without crisis. The liberating influences of labour-saving robotics and automation has become the  source of poverty and destitution for millions of workers. Millions of workers are shut out from the process of production; they are eager to work but they cannot find it. Others are engaged in non-productive labour, the gigantic machinery for suppressing the masses, the manufacturing of public opinion, and, lastly, service industries catering to the luxuries and whims of the bourgeoisie. Hundreds of millions toil from morning till night in factories, mines, plantations, burning away their stamina in a few years, turning old at 40. Hundreds of millions in agriculture are labouring in the sweat of their brow, under conditions which exclude the application of science and modern technique, to eke out the most miserable existence.

The most appalling part of capitalism is in the manner of how science and technology plays a role in wars and in in the preparations for wars. Research institutions and laboratories engage in the study of deadly weapons of warfare, rather than serve the needs of humanity.

Capitalism is the economics of the asylum.