Class war will only end with socialism

The many problems of capitalism can only be solved by a universal remedy. The workers who produce all wealth are poor in the midst of plenty. We say that the only remedy suggested, so far, that has stood every sort of criticism, is socialism.

All our means of livelihood are privately owned, and all of us workers are liable to be sent packing whenever our hirers can find a cheaper substitute. How long are we going to stand it? Why should we not own our own means of livelihood? Why should a relatively small and parasite class dictate to the vast mass of people when they shall work and when not? Let us take possession of the things that are vital to our very existence. We make them, we operate them, we repair them and renew them. We do everything but own them. Without us the whole of the machinery in the world, beautiful as it is, clever as it is, ingenious as it undoubtedly is, is so much junk. Let us make the land, the factories, the machines and the tools of production, common property, and then perhaps, instead of new technology making men and women into paupers, we shall welcome every machine that lightens labour, for it will bring us ewer working hours and increased leisure. The system where the means on how all live are commonly owned and administered, is called socialism. That is what we are aiming at, and we want fellow workers workers to say definitely they want it, and are prepared to help get it. Will you be one?

Capitalism, administered by workers, differs in little from capitalism administered by capitalists. Fellow workers must learn that it is not the individuals, it is the system that is at fault. They must grasp this fact and hold on to it, that changing the name and not the thing achieves nothing.

In nature parasitism on the part of certain organisms is known to possess what is termed “survival value,” that is, this feature plays a successful part in the struggle for existence. Not so in human society. Parasitism in human society owes its success to the fact that those who practise it control the means of enslaving their victims while at the same time permitting them sufficient to keep them from dying and so ensure an abundance of material to serve their needs. Though there are two classes in society—a slave class and a parasitic class—and though one class occupies what is termed a higher social rank, it is not because of its biological fitness to survive, measured by nature’s laws, but merely because in the course of the development of society certain individuals have seen their opportunity to relieve themselves from the necessity of providing a living by their own efforts, and in the course of time to improve the opportunity by introducing the necessary legal sanction in accordance with the degree of development.

Mankind’s conquest of its environment has made possible a remarkable increase in the productivity of every kind of material wealth. But hand in hand with this development has gone an appalling increase in the differences of prosperity and well-being. This concentration of wealth into the hands of a relatively small section of the human race has meant the demoralisation and degradation of literally millions. It is quite true, as history will testify, that the emphasis upon luxury, idleness and extravagance has been just as demoralising to those who hold the wealth, but such an outcome is only in keeping with a system where slavery is practised. Degeneration is the natural corollary of a parasitic mode of life.

 

The Socialist Party has consistently maintained that the Russia Revolution accomplished the overthrow of the absolute monarchy, and was a revolution only in the sense that the power of the landowners was shattered, and the obstacles to development along capitalist lines were swept away. In the early days of the Bolshevik regime, the “Communist” Parties in this and other countries claimed that Russia was the first country to achieve socialism. Whilst due credit should be given the Bolsheviks for their intentions and some of their actual achievements, we explained this mistaken assertion —even at the risk of antagonising would-be supporters who failed to grasp the real significance of Russian events.

Our standpoint has been amply justified by the evidence  and the “Communist” Parties do not as often make this untenable assertion, realising, perhaps, that conditions in Russia could not be cited as an advertisement for socialism. There is, however, one erroneous and harmful assertion that is still being spread about, namely, that in Russia the working class was supreme, or, in their own vague phraseology, that there was a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”