Wake up! wake up!

 

Society contains many contradictions which have arisen as a result of the fact that production has a social character under capitalism while ownership of the means of production is in private hands. The interests of the capitalists and of the working class are irreconcilable. Exploitation and economic anarchy with its the recurring crises of the capitalist mode of production oppress the working class and working people in a thousand different ways. The continual attacks of the  capitalists on working people meet resistance in fierce and bitter economic class struggles. This resistance limits the extent to which the capitalists can increase the rate of exploitation, and trains the working class in battle. Capital must accumulate in order to survive. It grows by keeping for itself the surplus value produced by workers after they have reproduced the value of their labour power, their wages. Surplus value is the source of all profit. The unending search for surplus-value, for profit, is the motive force of capitalist production. 

Capitalism can produce only for profit. It is forced constantly to seek new ways to achieve the maximum profit. Competition between rival capitals (which still persists in modified form in the monopoly stage of capitalism) ensures the destruction of all capitals which do not conform to the blind laws of capitalist production. The  capitalists must continually try to raise their rate of profit by cutting the labour costs of production. The capitalists cut their costs of production mainly by stepping up their already vicious exploitation of the working class. They cut their wage bills by reducing wages and sacking workers. They also make the remaining workers work longer hours and they increase the intensity of labour. Capitalists also reduce their wage bill by buying more advanced machinery in order to produce the same goods with less labour.

Working people are highly socialised. Working alongside one another in their work-places, making the products the capitalists sell for profit, workers learn through their own experience the need for organisation and cooperation. Clearly, the products could never be made if the workers themselves were disorganised and did not cooperate with one another. Similarly, workers gain through their own work experience an understanding of the need for a sensible approach to solving problems. Clearly, the products could never be made if clear-headedness on the workers’ part didn’t exist. Of course, in a capitalist society such as our own, these qualities of organisation and cooperation are used to benefit not the workers, but the capitalists. The capitalists use these qualities of the workers to make huge profits and, in the process, keep workers in a state of near or actual poverty. These qualities, however, are very important for a revolution and building a socialist society after the capitalist society is destroyed. Moreover, since the workers are the ones who are directly exploited by the capitalists, they have the most potential for seeing most thoroughly the absolute unjustness and insanity of the capitalist system. Thus the working class also has the most potential for seeing the need to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with a new system – socialism – that will benefit not a handful of capitalists, but the workers and the masses of the people. Also, in building the mass movement of all sections of the people to overthrow the capitalist system, the workers have the greatest power to cripple the capitalists. If the workers don’t work, the capitalists don’t profit. Finally, as the only thoroughly productive class in society, as the only class which produces and distributes the things necessary for life, the working class is the only class which literally holds in its hands not only the ability to destroy the old, rotting capitalist society but the ability to build the new, healthy socialist society. 

The working class, the sleeping giant, is already beginning to stir, and when it fully awakens, when it recognises the great power it has in its hands, the whole world will shake. It is only a matter of time.