Knowing Some Marxian Theory

 

Capitalism arises out of the exchange economy, trade, buying and selling in the market. The rising merchant class spread this system over the entire globe and created the world market. Everything becomes a commodity, a useful article produced not for consumption by the producer but for sale on the market. The capitalist mode of production, based on the monopoly and private ownership of the means of production, is distinguished from all other past and future modes of production by 1) wage-labour; 2) commodity production, and 3) surplus value. Capitalism can be characterised by the fact that by and large all human needs can be bought and sold in the form of commodities. Among other commodities, the worker sells his labour-power to the boss who employs him. Now by capitalist law, whatever the worker produces belongs to the employer, who in return pays the worker only part of the value of his product in the form of wages. The value retained by the capitalist in this exploitive process is called surplus value. Under capitalism the class struggle centres on the relative portions of the value produced by the worker that goes to the worker in the form of wages and to the capitalist as surplus value.

 Marxian Theory can be well compared to a triangle, with the Labour Theory of Value, the Theory of Surplus Labour, and the Materialist Conception of History as its three sides.

The whole capitalist world is in a crisis. Everywhere society is in chaos and ferment, shaking up the thinking of millions of workers and impelling them on the road of struggle against the system which oppresses them. The shibboleths of nationalism and religion are being revealed as capitalist snares to increasing thousands of workers, who are groping for a solution to the problem of existence. Socialism is our only hope. Marxism is the study of human society which offers the key to understanding the development of society and projects the direction in which it is moving – must move if it is to survive. It is the theory and practice of working-class action, of social revolution. 

We have said many times that studying the past is meaningful as it enables them to better orient the work of socialists in the present and directs their hopes for the future. Socialists did not invent human aspirations for a just, egalitarian and free society; men and women have cherished this dream for a very long time. What the historical materialism of Marx and Engels did was to take these aspirations and shape them into a revolutionary goal. They learned the laws governing the evolution of class society so as to use this understanding to achieve the better society towards which mankind works towards. Socialism is a word that came into general use in the third decade of the 19th century, and it has always been understood to signify opposition to capitalism. The adjective "scientific" is used to distinguish this socialism from the schemes of these Utopians and idealists, socialists who based their plans for a new state of affairs upon abstract principles, rather than upon the logic of the historical evolution of society resulting from the friction conflict between rival classes. Vain are the hopes of industrial peace. Like snow upon the mountainside, they will vanish before the sun of economic heat. In every country, capitalism begets its gravediggers. In its endeavour to increase its profits, it will force the workers to take up a militant attitude upon the industrial, political and educational fields, and progress will be accelerated until the workers of the world will unite and their emancipation be accomplished. 

Marxist socialists insist on democracy - real democracy - in the transition to socialism and the full participation of working people. If any government remain in the hands of the few, they will inevitably use and abuse their position (and incidentally create an ideology to justify it) to further their own elite interests against those of the class they are supposed to represent. Marxist socialists, beginning with Marx and Engels have always supported democracy as against any form of despotism. Thus they have supported republicanism against monarchism, capitalist democracy against capitalist dictatorship. But they always recognise the limitations of these.

In the past internationalism seemed a utopian ideal. Now for the workers around the world, it is a vital economic necessity.

The New Emancipation

 

The choice before us is either to permit the uncontrolled development of capitalism to concentrate all power in the hands of an oligarchy and reduce the mass of the people to abject servitude, or to assert the ability of society to control and remodel its economic life. There, however, is a great danger that, for lack of a clear view of the problem as a whole and of a far-reaching programme of basic reconstruction, false steps may be made which will bring new evils into existence. The only safety for the rise of a popular workers movement is to be free from all political and entanglements with capitalist interests, and be equipped with a sound understanding of economic tendencies and social forces, clearly conscious of the final goal, and using all proper methods of action to achieve the aim. There must also be a strong, clear-sighted and independent political party, international in scope, and a strong and united union movement, the economic organisation of the working people.

The first principle of such a movement must be the wholehearted dedication to the methods of democracy. No dictatorship nor leader, whatever its avowed purpose, can be trusted to bring liberty, plenty, and peace. The appeal to revolutionary force must be repudiated. It is unnecessary and unjustifiable in any country where orderly and peaceful methods of democracy are available. In the name of freedom, in the name of political honesty, in the name of civilisation itself, for the good of those now alive and of generations yet unborn, we call upon the workers of the city and country as a class, and upon all men and women, to join us in winning the good new world which is within our reach.

Wake up! For centuries you have been robbed, enslaved, and brutalised, but the time has now come to change all this. The time has come for you to work for change and an economic revolution. Stand shoulder to shoulder, united on the platform of the Socialist Party, which advocates the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. No matter what the interests of workers may be, no matter what their colour or nationality they should stand together. Our masters take advantage of our ignorance by appealing to our prejudice. Working men and women are beginning to understand that they have common economic interests. No matter whether Chinese or English, White, Brown or Black, Catholic or Protestant, the interests of those who toil are identical in the social sense.

What does socialism mean? It means economic liberty, political equality, and social freedom. Socialism points out the economic basis upon which democracy must stand in order to achieve liberty. It proclaims all liberty to rest back upon economic liberty, and all individuality to be rooted in economic unity. It affirms that there can be no liberty save through association; no true commonwealth save a cooperative commonwealth. It makes clear that democracy in the state is but fiction. United by patience, goodwill and courageous comradeship, we shall conquer capitalism and make the world a fit place for free men and women to live in. There is no power in capitalism, that can prevent a united and harmonious socialist movement from building the cooperative commonwealth.

There are plenty of liberals and progressives who call for reforms. Socialists – real socialists – have a different job: to bring to the fore the necessity for world socialism before mankind’s hopes of peace and security can be achieved.  It is for the Socialist Party to do all in our power to win over our fellow workers; to place no obstacles in their way of understanding socialist ideas; to sympathise with and support them in the economic struggles in which the class war involves them; until they recognise that their efforts are futile unless its object is emancipation.

Rally to the red banner of world socialism, the symbol of working-class revolt and all the world shall yet be free. The material achievements of the past century out-rival those of all preceding ages, and now for the first time in history it is possible to produce wealth in abundance for all. It is possible to abolish poverty.

The Aim of The World Socialist Movement

 

The emancipation of the working class knows no slogan with the word "wage" other than “abolish the wage system.”  The programme of revolution is revolution. Palliatives are props to that which the revolution intends to overthrow. Goals determine methods. The goal of social evolution is the final overthrow of class rule, its methods must fit the goal. Capitalism is the last expression of class rule. The economic foundation of class rule is the private ownership of the necessaries for production. The social structure of class rule is the political State -- that social structure in which government is an organ separate and apart from production, with no vital function other than the maintenance of the supremacy of the ruling class. The overthrow of class rule means the overthrow of the political State, and its substitution with world socialism, under which the necessaries for production are collectively owned and operated by and for the people.

The Socialist Party hates the iniquity of the capitalist system, but pities the perpetrator and bends his efforts to remove the conditions that made the iniquity possible -- the Socialist Party, accordingly, attacks the evil at its root. The non-socialist hates the perpetrator and visits punishment upon him, yet cultivates the social conditions that bred the iniquity -- the non-socialist, accordingly, waters the roots of the iniquity itself.

The Socialist Party holds capitalist society responsible for the billionaires, not the billionaires for capitalist society; the non-socialist holds billionaires guilty and acquits capitalist society. A socialist expresses no such individual malice or personal hatred.

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 state of society in which the few shall no longer be able to enjoy luxury and ease at the expense of over-work and insecurity for the majority. So great 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. 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.

The Socialist Party does not condemn private possessions as such. It condemns the private ownership of great socially necessary means of production, under which working people are employed only on such terms as assuring an unearned income to the owners and are thrown into idleness and want whenever the owners cannot profit by their work. Only by the socialised 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 achieved. The interest of the wage-workers, demands this change.

Across the undeveloped and developing world, small farmers are steadily losing ground. They are exploited by the capitalist groups which control the transportation and marketing of their produce, by those from which they must purchase farm machinery and supplies, and above all by those which control money and credit. Year by year many thousands of them lose the title to their land and either sink into being hired farm labourers or else give up farming altogether and seek employment in an overcrowded urban labour market.

 Meanwhile, multinational corporations and operated by wage labour, are growing at the expense of the small-holder farmers.

The same forces are at work invading the trade of small retailers and merchants, crushed by the same power which exploits the wage workers. Although their immediate interests may conflict with those of the wage workers at some points, they coincide with them at many others. In the long run, they all have a common interest in changing the basis of our economic system.

 The overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of socialism, that, and that alone, is the worker's hope. Political freedom must rest on the possession of the earth.

Gerrald Winstanley in his “The New Law of Righteousness,” denounced the private ownership of the land:

“And let all men say what they will, so long as such are rulers as call the land theirs, upholding this particular propriety of mine and thine, the common people shall never have their liberty…”

 

For the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class

 

Misery and discontent, by themselves, will not move the people. Socialist education and action are what is needed. If misery were sufficient to build a revolution, surely here were misery enough. But misery lacks that sufficiency by many a length. Misery is not enough; it must lead to discontent. Discontent is not enough; it must be enlightened on the causes of its misery, and the cure. Enlightenment is not enough; it must be organised to effect the revolution. There is misery aplenty in the world today. No need to wait for more. Education and organisation are now the needs of the time.

The fundamental principle of the Socialist Party is that freedom for the workers is not possible while the system of wage slavery lasts. Hence socialism has for its mission the overthrow of the capitalist system of private ownership of the machinery of production and the establishment of common ownership in its place.

The theory put out by reformists that socialism can with safety depart from the hard and fast line of its ultimate goal and follow the lure of "something now" has been a self-defeating strategy. History bears testimony to the fact that the fate of the movements that followed reformist opportunism led to their demise.

We are told that before the final overthrow of capitalism, which is the constant demand, there will be many immediate demands -- shorter hours, higher wages, better conditions, etc. Does it not follow that this political party will and must have an immediate demand platform?

No; it does not follow.

The reasoning that, until the "constant" demand of labour, the overthrow of capitalism, is attained, "immediate" demands are bound to appear on the platform of the true political party of labour, proceeds from a confusion of the term "demand" as used in the two instances.

The overthrow of capitalism - that is a DEMAND - it is THE demand - it belongs in the platform of a truly socialist party. Reforms are intermediate stepping stones, to be discarded soon as possible in the onward march. They have no place on the platform.

The demand is ONE -- it is the proclamation of the goal. The so-called "immediate" demands are legion. The specification of them, or of any of them, is superfluous.

The importance of the distinction lies in its practical bearing. The moment things that are not in the nature of a demand, because they are not the goal, are raised to the dignity of a "demand," they are apt to be and generally are, confused with the goal itself. A political party that sets up "immediate" demands by so much blurs its constant demand or goal. The presence of these "immediate" demands in a socialist platform reveals pure-and-simple politicians -- corruption, or the invitation to corruption.

Only the economic organisation may and must reach out after crumbs -- "improved conditions" -- on its way to emancipation. The very nature of the organisation preserves it from the danger of "resting satisfied." of accepting "improvement" for "goal." The economic organisation is forced by economic laws to realise it can preserve no "improvement" unless it marches onward to emancipation.

Otherwise with the political organisation. It must be "whole hog or none." The very nature of its existence -- itself only a path clearer for the economic organisation, and only a temporary means -- renders the political organisation prone to "rest satisfied" with incidentals and "improvements."

No socialist is a "state socialist." "State Socialism" is a contradiction in terms. We shall either have socialism -- and that means that the State shall have vanished; or we shall preserve the State, and then we shall have no socialism. Socialism and the idea of "lessening poverty" are contradictions in terms. If the best that could be done with poverty was to lessen it, Socialism would lack a foundation. Socialism's aim is, indeed, great; the aim, however, is not to "lessen," it is to "abolish" poverty, that is, involuntary poverty. Material conditions have changed so radically that, so far from insufficiency, there is today the material possibility of abundance for all. The mechanisms and the methods of production are such today that the leisure, the freedom from arduous toil for the necessaries of life, the emancipation from the clutches from the fear of want, all of these prerequisites to mental and spiritual expansion, one-time enjoyable by some, are today possible to all. Today, all statistical researches combine to demonstrate, people can have an abundance at their disposal with no more exercise of physical energies than is requisite for health. Under such material social conditions, Socialism spurns the goal of "lessening poverty" like a miserable reform, as a betrayal of mankind's opportunities.

If the aim of socialism were to be made the getting of "something now" and socialism later, socialism would have to be sacrificed to any sign of progress. Hence for a Socialist to preach "something now" discredits socialism, and only helps to prepare the workers as voting sheep for capitalism, when capitalist parties, by "stealing," by taking up the "something now" demands, promise their immediate realisation. The only something worth striving for now by socialists is the laying down of as solid a foundation as possible for the conquest of capitalism. The sufferings of a ruled class change, they are not abolished by a change of rulers. Let not socialist efforts be turned away from the practical to the sentimental. The world is ripe for the socialist cooperative commonwealth.

Revolutionising

 

Capitalism has fulfilled its economic mission: the World is now ready for socialism. Wage slavery and oppression is inevitable lot of the working class -- under capitalism. Working-class advancement is only possible when the working class, acting in conjunction with industrial evolution, rise en masse, economically, politically and socially, for the overthrow of capitalism.

Capitalism does not consist merely of the private ownership of the necessaries for production. If such ownership were the determining feature and quality of capitalism, then capitalism reigned in the days of serfdom. The serf owned his tools, the feudal lord owned the land -- two necessaries for production. Yet that was not capitalism. Capitalism is that social system under which the tool of production (capital) has grown to such mammoth size that the class that owns it rules the land and sea like a despot, inaccessible and undethronable by economic competition, and steadily swelling the number of its slaves, the wage slaves, thereby itself recruiting the forces that will overthrow it, and push civilization onward to socialism -- That is capitalism, not anyone or set of seemingly capitalist manifestations.

So with socialism. It does not consist merely in the overthrow of private ownership in any or all of the necessaries of life. If such overthrow of private ownership were socialism, then the overthrow of the one-time private ownership of military forces, and the present state-ownership of the same, would be socialism. Obviously, that is not socialism. A limb of a human being is not a human being. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled, and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at an end. -- That is socialism, nothing short of that capitalism answers its critics with labels, slurs and innuendo, not fact, reason and logic. Socialists wear these labels proudly, knowing that they are badges that attest to capitalist intellectual bankruptcy. The tendency to confuse socialism with reform of one sort or another -- an attitude assumed, on the part of its unwise friends, to make it "respectable" and palatable to capitalistically trained minds, and by its enemies, on the other hand, to sap it of its essence and run it into the ground -- compels the Socialist Party again to draw clear and true the old line of cleavage between socialism and social quackery, between reform and revolution.

Socialism means but one thing, and that is the abolition of capital in private hands, and the turning over of the industries into the direct control of the working people. Anything else is not socialism.

Socialism is not the establishment of laws on working hours, not the abolition of sweatshops, not the enforcement of the food laws. None of these, nor all of them together, is socialism. They might all be done by the government tomorrow, and still, we would not have socialism. They are merely reforms of the present system, mere patches on the worn-out garment of industrial servitude. Socialism is the common ownership of production which would bring in its wake all the other improvements in conditions.

Therefore, while not opposing any reforms or improvements which may be secured under capitalism, the Socialist Party steadfastly sets its face against taking time away from its main battle, for revolution, in order to carry on the struggle for reform. It refuses to be manoeuvred into abandoning its main demand -- the tools of production for the producers -- in order to fritter away its energies chasing ever-elusive immediate demands. It turns its back to the tempting baits dangled before the noses of the working class to lead them astray into side issues and blind alleys. The one demand of the Socialist Party is socialism, unadulterated and undiluted -- the unconditional surrender by the capitalist class of the machinery of industry.

So many critics of the socialist goal instruct us that the fundamental error of socialism consists in thinking that human nature can be revolutionised. Socialism does not think that human nature can be revolutionised; socialism does not aim at revolutionising human nature; socialism builds upon human behaviour. It is not human nature that socialists seek to revolutionise, we seek to revolutionise human thinking. Socialists know that the moment when men and women are rid of the ignorance which capitalism instils them full of, the moment when men and women have been revolutionised to the point of realising that the parasites of the capitalist class, crawling over mankind is not inevitable and can be gotten rid of, in that moment socialism will assert itself and wipe the capitalists off the face of the earth. We will tear down the deathtrap of capitalist society.

The only cure is to eradicate the cause of the evil by making the means of production common property, so that it may serve as a blessing, instead of a means of competitive destruction and thieving profit to private individuals, as at present. With technology common property, the hours of labour and the stress of occupation will be proportionate to the progress of invention and the general well-being of society. Benjamin Franklin, even in his day, estimated that four hours of labour would be ample to supply the needs of all mankind under a proper social system employing machinery.

Socialism will not abolish private ownership of household and personal possessions, namely, because these are not engines of social production, and confer no exploiting powers. They confer no arbitrary powers over the lives of others. These are not wealth sources, they are not concerned with production. It can exploit no one by retaining them. Society could have no interest in depriving any individual of them. Hence people will be allowed to keep just as much of their private property under socialism as they were under capitalism. Nay, more, for socialism will multiply a hundredfold each person’s power of acquiring, this sort of private property.

The capitalist apologists sneer at socialism as visionary, unattainable, and without any immediate social value,  judging the world from the limited horizon which they afford, they fail to perceive that socialism is the only vital economic, political force of modern times. The day will come when we see the international flag of socialism waving over the ruins of capitalism, and binding humanity with the bonds of cooperation.

 

Invention and Innovation

 

When a social system such as capitalism has outlived its usefulness, efforts to improve it are a waste of energy and only postpone the desirable features of the improvements sought after.

 Marx said:

"Although the Liberals have not carried out their principles in any land as yet completely, still the attempts which have been made are sufficient to prove the uselessness of their efforts. They endeavoured to free labour, but only succeeded in subjecting it more completely under the yoke of capital; they aimed at setting at liberty all labour powers, and only riveted the chains of misery which held them bound; they wanted to release the bondman from the clod, and deprived him of the soil on which he stood by buying up the land; they yearned for a happy condition of society, and only created superfluity on one hand and dire want on the other; they desired to secure for merit its own honourable reward, and only made it the slave of wealth; they wanted to abolish all monopolies, and placed in their stead the monster monopoly, capital; they wanted to do away with all wars between nation and nation, and kindled the flames of civil war; they tried to get rid of the state, and yet have multiplied its burdens; they wanted to make education the common property of all, and made it the privilege of the rich; they aimed at the greatest moral improvement of society, and have only left it in a state of rotten immorality; they wanted, to say all in a word, unbounded liberty, and have produced the meanest servitude; they wanted the reverse of all which they actually obtained, and have thus given a proof that liberalism in all its ramifications is nothing but a perfect utopia."

The "sacredness of property" is one of the most favourite mystifications of the capitalist class. Socialism, say they, violates this sacredness; "the safety of property is the cornerstone of civilisation," etc., etc.  Capitalism violates The property of the working class, the product of its labour, does not remain in its hands to enjoy; it is stolen from it by the capitalist class. Thus at the very root of capitalist production there is violation of the sacredness of property: the wealth the capitalist class lives on, and thus the existence of the capitalist class itself, is a flat denial of the property's sacredness. This wrong is upheld by the whole property-holding class.  The capitalist class care little how the working class is robbed as they are the beneficiaries of the theft.

We are living in a time when the comforts of life, and all the material wealth needed to bring happiness to every human being, can be produced in abundance. There is no need whatever for one human being to go hungry, homeless or naked. Mankind's inventive genius has developed the tool to that point, and guided the natural forces to that degree, that abundance is possible to all. But between that abundance and its enjoyment an obstacle is interposed. That obstacle is the modern social system, capitalism, and its defenders and beneficiaries are the capitalist class. Thwarted from accessing this  abundance of wealth which the capitalist class forbids them to touch, workers young and old, male and female, black and white, instead of fighting the capitalist, with wealth and freedom as the prize at stake, fall to fighting each other; and the stakes in that conflict are: death to the loser; poverty, misery and wage-slavery to the winner. This has for a result the survival of the slave. A more brutal and demoralising spectacle cannot be conceived.

The capitalist class misrepresents socialism as a scheme of society, whose adoption would destroy individuality! "Socialism," it declares, "would degrade us all to one dead level regardless of individual aptitude or merit. Capitalism, on the other hand, exalts the individual, promotes his rights and duties, and all else that appertains to him and his happiness. Down with socialism! Up with capitalism!"

Capitalism is a fraud within a fraud. Proclaiming itself individualistic, it organises collectively in order to promote the aims of a few. Socialism, on the other hand, is genuineness itself. Believing that industry is collective in organisation and operation, it proclaims itself in favour of collective ownership and control. With freedom from the economic pressure due to the capitalist control of industry, such as socialism alone can provide (since it is in accord with evolution), individuality will achieve proportions hitherto unattained.

Whenever the position of a defender of capitalism against the attacks of socialism becomes desperate, he drags forth the inventor. "What are you going to do with the inventor, the man whose genius has created the great machines which make wealth and civilisation possible? Are you going to despoil him - to rob him?" To this the socialist generally retorts by showing that it is capitalism that robs the inventor.

 Times a-changing, so much so that it may be said that the individual inventor had become as much of a myth as the individual captain of industry - who, it is alleged, directs the work of thousands of wage slaves. Today industry is so ramified, so colossal, that it is an impossibility for one man to direct it. Corps of trained subordinates, executive, engineering, and other boards meet in frequent consultation to devise ways and means for the safe conduct of the consolidated industries over which they preside.

And so it is with the inventor. Invention has become social in scope and methods. With the various branches of industry so closely related, the mechanical changes in one branch of production must be considered in their relation to other branches. The result is that today the inventor is no longer an isolated being, developing himself and his ideas in some dismal garret.

The inventor is today the product of a scientific school or a great establishment, which, while specialising in his abilities, has given him a well-rounded education. The inventor is today a part of a corps of technical experts, men rarely heard of outside their own spheres, who, with the finest mechanical equipments and extensive chemical laboratories at their command, work in cooperative unison for the production of new and interrelated inventions,a nd the improvement of old ones.

The inventor today is one of a multitude of workers who are asked to drop suggestions for improvement into boxes placed about the factories in which they work; suggestions that have, in the aggregate, produced new types of machines and so transformed the original inventions as to make them entirely new creations; suggestions that have immensely enriched the capitalists to whom they were given, while the reward of the workers making them was a few paltry prizes, which are far from being commensurate in value which the things they are supposed to represent.

The poor lone inventor whom socialism would rob is a myth, and, like all myths, is adorned with the poetry of bygone ages. Like modern industry, modern invention is social. And, since the social characteristic of industry demands the social ownership of the means of production and distribution forming its basis, so does the social nature of invention demand the social ownership of its creations.

Unite for Socialism

 

Mankind is literally in a race with catastrophe. The climate crisis and the terrible threat of environmental destruction are the warnings history is giving us to build a new society.  Join us in the great cause of human liberation-and to save civilisation from disaster.

 Socialism is a form of society in which the land and the technology of production are owned collectively. In short the industries, being administered through the socialist associations of these producers, who today are wage workers. This precludes the existence of political government. The Socialist Party wants to focus the working class's attention on where political power is situated in order to remove the economic power of the employers to exploit and pursue commodity production for profit. In a socialist society, we shall be able to enjoy the material well-being our productive capability makes possible. We shall be secure, healthy, happy human beings living in peace, harmony and freedom, in marked contrast to the capitalist jungle of strife, misery and insecurity in which we live today.

The task confronting workers is to organise their political forces into a Party of their class, and to consolidate their economic power into One Big Union -not to demand higher wages, but to demand the abolition of the wage system and affect an orderly socialist reconstruction of society.

It is a historic fact that the unions were born out of a hard, bitter, often violent, struggle between capital and labour. The focal point of this struggle was the division of labour's products into wages and profits. As long as the capitalists could deal with workers individually, the workers were pretty helpless. It was to end this woeful helplessness that the workers combined into unions.

Exploitation did not cease and the struggle over the division of labour's product continued unabated. The unions only enabled the workers to resist partially these encroachments of capital. The capitalist owners of the means of social production, acting under the compulsion of the profit motive and of competitive necessity, strove constantly to keep wages as low as possible and to get even more production out of the workers. The workers, on the other hand, driven both by sheer necessity and by normal ambition to rise above a state of chronic want, resisted and sought to force wages up. But it was like dividing an apple into two parts. If one part was larger the other had to be smaller -- and this was the case whether the capitalist "apple" was big, as in boom times, or small, as in periods of depression. The class struggle, therefore, has been inherent in and inseparable from the capital-wage labour relationship.

Despite the indisputable conflict of interests between labour and capital, trade unions have accepted capitalism as a permanent system. Instead of concentrating on building a classless society, they limit their aspirations to a vague "fair day's wage for a fair day's work." The rest has followed logically. Under capitalism, labour -- or labour power -- is a commodity, a mere "means" of production that the capitalist buys in the labour market just as he buys raw materials in the raw materials market. Now, note this: Acceptance by present-day unions of the capitalist system as a finality means also acceptance of the principle that labour is doomed eternally to this commodity status. Corruption has followed inevitably. Most union leaders started out as sincere and honest men, but the harsh realities of capitalism quickly disillusioned them. The more hopeless the plight of the rank and file appeared, the more the union leaders turned to feather their own nests. Careerists and opportunists rose to the top, exploiting the workers' instinct for solidarity to promote their own bureaucratic interests.

In the new society, production and distribution will be socially controlled. There will, accordingly, be no further need for the tricky means of exchange, inflatable money, required by the capitalist system of private control over production and distribution. A basically simple and entirely feasible method of free access will deliver to every person the full social equivalent in goods and services of the work he or she has performed. And there won't be any danger of chiselling or shortchanging because social control of the economy will be democratically exercised by the workers themselves. We must organise politically to contest the politicians committed to continuing capitalism, to educate for the need for socialist change and to openly and painstakingly gather our forces in as peaceful a manner as possible.

No faction of the capitalist parties will represent workers' interests. For too long workers have relied on capitalist politicians to be their spokesmen. A political party that expresses our collective class interests,  aimed at a socialist goal- that is a weapon that we have only begun to be built. The job of educating and organising is immense. But any postponement of the task is a postponement of the only solution we have -- a reconstruction of capitalist society along socialist lines. There are no other ways out and no one but the workers to do the job.

The working-class answer must be to scrap the whole capitalist system. Not sometime in the future, but now. We must build a movement that will give the workers control of the economy. Production for profit must be replaced with production to meet people's needs. The capitalists should no longer control the things that we need in order to live. Workers must rely on their own strength. No one else will save them. For too long, workers have trusted politicians who are working for the capitalists' interests? Maybe you've heard many negative things about socialism. If you have, it's because the capitalists don't want people to know that there is a better and fairer way for society to be organised. They don't want socialism because socialism would mean that they would have to give back all the wealth they've made off the backs of working people. So they spread a lot of lies and confusion about socialism. If you want to know what socialism is really about, get in touch with the Socialist Party.