Only Socialism

 

Liberal progressives  are openly committed to the support of capitalism and the rule of the capitalists. The left is openly committed to the appeasement policy of the “lesser evil.” 

We are taught that working class progress no longer lies along the path of class independence and class action, but in the practice of tying the workers movement to one capitalist politician as against another.  The capitalists always defend their class interests. If the labour movement does not fight as a class, capitalist reaction will surely triumph. It is the time to dedicate yourselves to the revolutionary socialist principles and to the struggle for socialist freedom. Turn your back on the base falsehoods and cynical treachery of left-wingers who try to treat you like robots and not like revolutionary socialists! Unite in battle against capitalism. The World Socialist Movement appeals to you to join it and thereby to engage in  the noble fight for working-class emancipation and socialist freedom. We have the right to call upon you to enter our organisation, for we have never flinched from the struggle against capitalism and never forsaken the principles of socialism.

We charge against the prevailing social system that by it the workers are robbed of the wealth that they produce. Internationalism is an essential part of socialist principles. Workers, as Marx said, have no fatherland. We have to translate the slogan ‘Workers of the world unite’, into a reality.

The ground is being ploughed ready for the seed of socialism. Let those whose hands are scored with toil go forth boldly and scatter the seed. Amid scenes of chaos and disaster let us keep alight the torch handed to us by the comrades who in the past nobly played their part.

We have now our opportunity. Let us make the most of it. It is not anti-social for the working-class to aspire to bring about the common ownership of the means of life. It is right. The movement to which we have the honour to belong is approaching a stage in which incessant political activity will be the order of the day.

Much will be expected from the exponents of the cause. They will, however, be encouraged and stimulated by the response they receive.

Conditions existing in the capitalist world leave no option to the working-class : they are called upon by history to emancipate mankind or perish. Whether the time be long or short before a conscious democratic effort is made to transform the system by those to whom the change means so much, it must eventually come.

In times like the present, men’s minds ripen quickly; reality provides an unanswerable argument. “The capitalist class are their own grave diggers”: they are compelled to set in motion those forces that bring about their elimination as a class: they are compelled by the laws inherent in their own system to place in the hands of the proletariat the means of freeing him and all society from economic bondage.

Though capitalism may change its form and give rise to social structures which differ in many respects, yet at rock bottom it remains the same. Its pillars are wage-labour and capital: these are the constants of capitalism, which is based upon the exploitation of wage-labour.

With the establishment of socialism, this exploitation will cease. Man is to-day exploited by man, because the means of wealth production are owned by and operated for the profit of a relatively small section of the world’s population. The masses, without any ownership in the means of production, are obliged, in order to get a living, to work in factories, in mines, on railways, etc., so that the owners thereof can reap profits.

The Socialist Party knows that the ills from which the workers suffer, degrading poverty and the multitude of other evils that accompany it, are due to the present system of society, the roots of which are wage-labour and capital.

Cut Away the Roots

The World Socialist Movement, therefore, wishing to put an end to these evils, logically urges upon the workers the need to abolish capitalism, roots and all, and replace it by a new social system, the basis of which is the common ownership of the means of life by all society.

It will be seen at once that in a socialist society man could not exploit man, because no single person or group of persons would own the instruments for wealth production. The ownership of all these things would be vested in all society.

Of course, with the abolition of private property, capital and wage-labour will disappear. Production will proceed, not to satisfy the profit-making lust of capital, but to satisfy the wants of man.

With socialism, man will enter a new life. No longer exploited by his fellow, no longer grubbing to make ends meet, he will be free. As never before, he will harness nature to satisfy man’s wants. Thanks to the high stage of efficiency industrial technique has now reached, plenty will be assured to all.

When socialists advocate the abolition of private property, capital and wage-labour, up goes the cry: “Would you deprive of ownership those people who have laboured so hard to build up their businesses?”

This is Capitalism

The question itself is an anachronism today. In the early days of capitalism, when the capitalists, the “captains of industry,” worked side by side with the men they employed, there might have been some truth in the statement that owners of industry worked hard to build up their businesses. But that was long ago.

Capitalism to-day is not the capitalism of the small trader. Present-day capitalism is large-scale industry, growing ever larger. In growing it becomes more and more impersonal: the worker-owner of yore is replaced by the absentee shareholder and by the bureaucracy of the State.

The first point, then, that the WSM makes is that capitalism ignores present-day realities.

Secondly, not socialism but capitalism is the great expropriator. Capital has already deprived of ownership the vast majority of the population. Even in his day, in 1848, Marx was able to answer this self-same question by showing that for the masses private property had been destroyed. Since Marx’s day, the tendency has continued; capital becomes concentrated into fewer hands. Periodically we are able to see this closely: when small businessmen are driven out of business by big trusts. How many small capitalists have such firms as giant corporations reduced to the ranks of the working-class ?

It is worthwhile thinking for a moment about how businesses are built up. Certainly big businesses are not usually built up by the labours of the capitalists.

Big businesses are, of course, built up by the exploitation of workers. Proof of this can be seen all around us. Who would say, for example, that the shareholders (the owners) of the railways have built them up and make them work ? Long ago, Engels pointed out that the capitalist class has ceased to contribute by its labour to production. Frequently the capitalist never visits the works in which his capital is invested. No longer does the capitalist even figure as a supervisor—his place has been taken by “well-paid” managers—members of the working-class. The role the capitalist plays today is of a parasitical character. He appropriates the profits produced by the exploitation of wage-labour.

 

 Fortunes come to the capitalists, not because they are intelligent or hard-working, but simply because they own, and because masses of people, without any means of life, are driven to work to provide profits for the owners.

 

 

 As with the passing of time, small-scale industry counts less and less, and the struggle becomes one between a capitalist-class who do nothing towards production, and a working-class who do all the work and run industry from top to bottom.