The insanity of capitalism

 

In a sane society scientific research would be carried out to help humanity, not to feed the coffers of huge institutions or to increase the destructive capabilities of the armament industry. Science and technology can increase our ability to shape the world around us. In a sane society the introduction of new labour saving equipment would lead automatically to higher living standards and a shorter working hours. But not under capitalism. Until science is controlled democratically, by the vast majority in the interests of the majority, much of our human ingenuity will be wasted. The aim of the World Socialist Movement is the abolition of class rule and class conflict, with all their evil consequences, and the development of a  society in which the few shall no longer be able to enjoy luxury at the expense of over-work, want, and insecurity for the majority. So greatly have science and invention increased our productive powers that an abundance of all the good things of life for the whole population could be produced without subjecting any human being to drudgery or exhausting toil. The continued existence of poverty is due solely to causes which intelligent social action can overcome. To assure plenty, security, leisure, and freedom for all, it is necessary that the existing property system, the existing forms of economic control and distribution of wealth, be so changed as to adapt them to the conditions of modern life. Private ownership means power for the few and subjection for the many.

The Socialist Party does not condemn personal possessions as such. It condemns the private ownership of the socially necessary means of production, under which the workers are employed only on such terms to assure the income of the owners and are thrown out of work and into penury whenever the owners cannot profit by their labour. Only by the common ownership and democratic control of such productive wealth, doing away with exploitation and making the satisfaction of human wants the ruling motive in production, can the ideal of a class-free society be realised. The choice before us is either to permit the uncontrolled development of capitalism to concentrate all power in the hands of an oligarchy of high finance and reduce the people to abject servitude, or to remodel its economic life. In the name of freedom, in the name of civilisation , for the good of those now alive and of generations yet unborn, we call upon the workers as a class, and upon all men and women, to join us in winning the good new world which is within our grasp. If the workers are not class conscious, if they are blind to the class struggle, if they accept wage slavery as a finality, a socialist party party can do them no possible good; if they are class conscious and their eyes are open to the class struggle, and their conscious purpose is to abolish wage slavery, then they must join the Socialist Party. Let socialists everywhere not only preach the class war, but make every every battle of the workers everywhere in the militant campaign of emancipation. Socialists primarily concern themselves with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the collective ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution.

The success of the World Socialist Movement and the rapidity of its progress will depend very largely upon the method of education and the political tactics of the Socialist Party. Reformism creates illusions in the minds of the workers that a cure can be obtained from the ruling class. We say: workers reject this path of palliatives. Let us not waste time chasing dead-ends.

The systematic coercion of man by man is what  socialists seek to abolish altogether. The Socialist Party denies the necessity for the existence of classes; it wants to abolish all classes, all class distinctions. If the  people don’t hasten to act their future is lost, all is lost. Capitalism threatens to plunge all humanity into barbarism. The working class must save mankind.