A Letter To A Worker

 

Nationalism has nothing to offer you—except a change of masters. Your problems will still continue, will still confront you—worrying you and causing you many a headache—while the present system of society lasts. To solve those problems—which never leave you, be you in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales or any other part of the world—you’ll most certainly have to struggle. But let your struggle be one against the real origin of your problems, against the system of capitalism, and against those who support it. Struggle against the system which condemns all workers, regardless of the place of their birth to a life-time of toil and poverty, from cradle to grave ; struggle against the wealthy few who, because they own the factories, mines, railways and all of the means and instruments for producing wealth, compel you—because you own nothing—to labour for their benefit.

As socialists, we recognise that the task before all workers is not to win this or that skirmish or gain a few concessions which the capitalist class can well afford; our objective in the class war is to win it. In other words, no answer short of social revolution will do if the problems of the working class are to be abolished from the face of the earth.

Your struggle, in common with the struggle of workers everywhere, to be successful must be a revolutionary one. Your aim? To take from the capitalist class its ownership of the means of production and make them the common property of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. When you’ve achieved that—when you’ve won that revolution — living will really be worthwhile then, it will be a joy and an adventure. As all workers learn through struggle, unity is strength. But unity is not just achieved on a national basis – capitalism is a worldwide social order and workers of all lands have a common interest in joining together against the common foe. There can be no room for nationalist notions if we are to fight and win against the international ruling class.

As Marxists, we fight for emancipation from a system which turns useful work into wage slavery. Your real enemy is the present system, which produces commodities to sell on the market with a view to profit. Capitalism, with its hideous contradiction of mass poverty amid the potential for plenty, is your real enemy. It persecutes you at every level, advertising itself as a world of plenty and then rewarding the wealth producers with deprivation. For too long workers have suffered under this rotten set-up, when the means are at hand to create a society of production for need in which we can all give according to in abilities and take according to our self-determined needs.

The Socialist Party takes the side of the robbed against the robbers. For it is only through the conscious solidarity of workers, that the system of legalised robbery will be compelled to make way for the reign of a united humanity.

Socialism is more than simply a great idea; it is an obtainable alternative to the chaos of the system which puts profit before use. Then things will be produced because people need them and not in order to sell for the purpose of making a profit; then poverty will disappear, insecurity vanish, and wars will be nothing but memories. 

That will be Socialism—so, speed the day!