The Socialist Party's Solidarity

 “What matters whether you give the food and clothes to the slave direct, or whether you just give him enough in wages to purchase the same?” - John Adams

We, slaves as we are, have to emancipate ourselves. It can be done. It must be done. It shall be done. The Socialist Party is not, and does not pretend to be, a capitalist party. The Socialist Party is not a capitalist party, nor a reformist party, but a revolutionary party, to take control and possession of the means of wealth production, abolish wage-slavery and emancipate all workers and all humanity. People are as capable of achieving their industrial freedom as they were to secure their political liberty. The capitalist system is no longer suitable to the needs of modern society. It has become a fetter on the forces of progress. All the wealth the vast army of labour produces above its subsistence is taken by the machine owning capitalists, who also own the land and the mills, the factories, transport and mines, the forests and fields and all other means of production and transportation. Hence wealth and poverty, millionaires and beggars, castles and hovels, luxury and squalor. The capitalist parties can do nothing. They are an iniquitous part of the foul system. They have no remedy. The Socialist Party is the only party that is organised to abolish industrial slavery, the prolific source of the evils that afflict the people. The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. It will remain hostile to all other non-socialist parties and would rather die than compromise. There can be no common interests between those who own the machines, factories, mines, mills and land, with the workers who do all of the producing. One class does all the work, produces all, suffers all the hardships necessary to accomplish the task. The other class owns, but does not know, nor cares to know, how to produce wealth. Capitalism is based on the robbery of the workers. Those who own industries but do not work in them, pay wages to the workers and keep profits to themselves. But both, profit and wages, are only the product of labour. Wages are part of the total product paid to labour. Profit, generally the biggest part, capitalists appropriate to themselves and call it their “legal share.” We would lose our chains, our miseries, but gain the world for all the workers, a world fit for men and women to live their lives in freedom 

The working class must be emancipated by the working class. Society must be reconstructed by the working class. These are the principles and objects of the Socialist Party. The workers of the world must organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system. The present social system has rendered the many subservient to the few. It has disinherited the great majority. It prolongs their lives of misery. It makes one dependent upon his or her master’s caprice. It creates jealousies, hatreds, and injustice. Our political institutions are destructive and reactionary to protect the self-seeking, dishonest, and tyrannical, ever ready to repress and oppress those willing to resist. Our social system continually drives men and women into poverty.

The economic emancipation of the working class will be achieved only by the transfer to common ownership by the working people of all means and products of production and the organisation of all the functions of social and economic life in accordance with the requirements of society. The modern development of technology in civilised societies not only provides the material possibility for such an organisation but makes it necessary and inevitable for solving the contradictions which hinder the development of society. This radical economic revolution will entail most fundamental changes in the entire constitution of social relationships. By eliminating the class struggle, by destroying the classes themselves; making the economic struggle of individuals impossible and unnecessary, by abolishing commodity production and the competition connected with it; briefly, it puts an end to the struggle for existence between individuals and classes.

Without falling into utopian fantasies about the future, we can already now foretell the abolition of the state, as a political organisation opposed to society and safeguarding mainly the interests of its ruling section. The socialist revolution simplifies all social relationships and gives them a purpose, at the same time providing each citizen with the real possibility of participating directly in the discussion and decision of all social matters. This direct participation of citizens in the management of all social matters presupposes the abolition of the modern system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular legislation.

 In exactly the same way we can already now foresee the worldwide character of the impending economic revolution. The contemporary development of international exchange of products necessitates the participation of all countries in this revolution. That is why the Socialist Party acknowledges the global character of the present-day working-class movement and proclaim the principle of international solidarity of producers.