The more a person considers the present social system, and the facts of working-class existence under capitalism, the more its realities show that the root-cause of the many’ evils of to-day is nothing else but the class-ownership and control of the means of living. There are sufficient resources in the world to provide adequately for every human being on earth. But out of that class-ownership spring the wage-slavery of the overwhelming majority of mankind, their exploitation, misery and poverty, and the innumerable evils that arise from this system of production for profit.
The workers are a dispossessed class; and though our labours of brain and brawn produce the colossal wealth of the world, we do not own or control the means and instruments of production, nor the products of our toil. As wage-slaves we can only purchase to the degree represented by the buying-power of our wages or salaries. Our chief function in life is to work and to produce a surplus-value for an idle and parasitic class of exploiters. We own but one thing—our ability and power to produce wealth by the use of our physical and mental energies. And those we have to sell for wages. We work to live. We live to work.
Capitalism is a “buying and selling system.” with production of commodities for sale in the market, in order to realise a profit,. And the workers’ one commodity—their labour-power—is bought in just the same matter-of-fact way as as any other product on the supermarket shelves. They sell their labour-power because they needs must, in order to live. They are “employed” to function as human wealth-producers—as producers of surplus-value.
The parasitic class that lives on our labours look on us as the human source of their wealth. Their machinery and “labour-saving” devices are operated by our class for that purpose. Without our efforts their machinery would not function, the commodities would not be created nor distributed to the markets of the world.
Surplus-value is produced by the workers in the factories and fields. But it is only realised on the sale of the commodities in the markets themselves. And markets must be found. The most frantic efforts are made to find or create them.
Our masters, owning the means of living, own and control our lives. We are employed as creators of surplus-value: a value over and above what is given us as wages. Out of it, “Rent,” “Interest” and “Profit” go to the respective recipients. It means that a gigantic system of plunder has been in operation, and robbed the workers, who not only have produced the value represented by their wages, but a huge surplus-value also. The wages-system is nothing else but an organised system of legalised robbery.
Look at the widespread poverty of our class—in a great degree chronic; the slums with their misery and disease; the social curse of employment or unemployment, and the terrible results of malnutrition, diseases, etc. Consider the colossal waste of human life in capitalism’s frequent wars, with their untold suffering and miseries for the working class. Capitalism, as a social system, creates incalculable waste in many spheres.
Can we content ourselves with the continuance of such a pernicious system, when we:, its wage-slaves, suffer so from its effects ? Is there any reason why we should tolerate its patching-up by petty reforms when we could, in truth, rid ourselves of the root-cause of its evils? It has blighted the world, and been the cause of infinite death and destruction.
Capitalism is indeed the enemy of the workers. It robs us of freedom, happiness, and life in the fullest sense. Wage-slavery, and the resulting poverty of the workers, must be abolished, and, to achieve these things, capitalism must go!
Our masters, having control of political power, are, through it, able to dominate our very lives. Only by our capture and control of that power can we, as a class, overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. To do that the majority of the working class must first understand their slave-condition ; must earnestly desire the overthrow of capitalism, and the triumph of the Socialist Commonwealth.
Nothing could withstand the organised might of a working class the majority of whom were fully bent on establishing socialism .
Full of socialist knowledge, and intensely conscious of their class-interest and aims, they could and would by their immense unity of purpose capture the key of the position: Political Power.
Thus would they smash the pernicious system that is indeed their enemy, and proceed to usher in the Socialist system of society which will liberate all mankind and bring to every nation Freedom, Happiness and Peace.
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