The Socialist Catalyst

 We know that socialism is necessary to the emancipation of working people. Capitalism has reduced the workers to a condition of wage slavery. The capitalists get the profit, grow rich, live in mansions and penthouses, own yachts and private planes, choose judges, buy up the media and bribe polititians. To speak of democracy is a mockery. In every land capitalism rules. Freedom in socialism is the only thing worth striving for. To work for wages, no matter how high, or how short the work-day, is to acknowledge a master. Without socialist freedom civilisation will crumble and die. Socialists will work together to build a new world out of the rubble of the old. Poverty is civilisation’s greatest crime. And this crime cannot be atoned for by charity or philanthopy. It is not “charity” we want. It is justice

The capitalists claim to riches is fraud, hypocrisy, and false pretenses.  The capitalist’s income is simply pure robbery. Not a penny of it does he produce. It is all taken from those in whose sweat and suffer in the fields and factories. There is a cause for poverty, and that cause can be removed. As long as the few own the sources of wealth, the many will be condemned to work for them and the the few will accumulate up millions and billions more. Capitalism dooms the world to more inequality.  Religion and race, national independence and patriotism, are now, from the worker’s point of view, just so many ruling-class devices useful for the purpose, among others, of stirring up hatred when and where they may want it.   Socialism alone is worth struggling for. That is the message of the Socialist to all the working-class dupes of the closely-allied superstitions of religious, racial and patriotic rivalries.

Socialist ideas are developing and in due time the cooperative commonwealth will arise. Working people are mustering their mighty forces for political and economic change. Liberation from the chains of wage slavery is our aim. Organisation is the demand of the day. Working men and women, this is the day for you to realize that your interests are the same, that divided you are helpless.

United political action will place the working class in control of the State, and the abolition of capitalism will inevitably follow. In the socialist future workers will be their own masters and enjoy all the fruit of their toil. Resolve this day to  abolish the wage system. The Socialist Party is the party of the working class, the party that stands for economic equality and industrial freedom, the party of progress and civiliSation. This is the day to hold aloft its banner and proclaim its principles. The future is for socialism and humanity. when the exploitation of man by man ceases and society is organized upon enlightened mutual interests of all, democracy will dawn, war will cease, poverty will be in the past, and the dawn of a new civilisation will light the world.

Work is necessary, but it need not be a burden on our backs. We can organise it so that it it transformed into free cooperation. Automation can reshape workplaces and play a key role in ending the degradation of wage slavery and returning the dignity of work. Robots can replace drudgery. Technology can usher in a post-scarcity age of abundance.

We point out first that the working class are poor and a subject class because the capitalist class have political power and own and control the machinery of production and distribution. The cause of working class poverty is not the existence of certain defects in the political machinery by which capitalism is administered. Therefore, no political reform (proportional representation, for example),no social reform, and no accumulation of such reforms will remedy the problem. If the whole of the reforms advocated by all the reform parties, from Conservative to Communist, were put on the statute book, the working class would still be a subject class and still poor. Therefore, the Socialist Party advocates socialism, and seeks to organise the working class on a socialist basis.

We point out that the only method of achieving socialism is for a socialist working class to gain political control. Anyone who urges the working class to put political power into the hands of persons and parties seeking election on a non-socialist programme, and therefore unable, even if willing, to use their power for any other purpose than the administration of capitalism, is acting directly contrary to the interests of the working class. All the reform parties have in this way acted contrary to working class interests.

The development of capitalist industry constantly produces new social problems for the workers and aggravates old ones, and in the interests of the capitalists themselves these evils, which are merely the effects of capitalism, have to be palliated by various reform measures. The capitalists have to pass these reforms for two main reasons: loss of efficiency and loss of political support. If allowed to work unchecked, capitalism would produce such worsening in the conditions of the workers that they would, on the one hand, lose efficiency as profit-producers, and would perhaps, so the capitalist thinks, on the other hand, show their discontent with intolerable conditions by interesting themselves in socialism or by riot and revolt which, though suicidal for the workers, would be troublesome and costly for the employing class. Incidentally, common sense suggests that the development of a strong socialist movement would cause the capitalist to fall over each other in their anxiety to make concessions in order to persuade the workers that socialism is unnecessary and capitalism not so bad after all.

In short, the Socialist Party opposes the parties which preach reform because there is no way of achieving socialism except through the making of socialists and their organisation into a political party which will gain political power for the purpose ot introducing socialism.

Trade unions are chiefly concerned with the defence of the workers in their direct relations with the employers. They can, when market conditions are favourable, bring a certain organised pressure to bear on the employers to resist a decrease or secure an increase in wages. This is a definite, if limited, gain to the workers concerned.

Therefore, we support workers in their efforts in this direction, at the same time drawing their attention to the limits which capitalism imposes on all such activities.

 

 We point out in particular that every increase in wages or reduction in hours or curtailment of output gives the employers an added inducement to introduce more labour-saving machinery, thus in creasing the number of unemployed and the consequent competition for jobs.

We point out also that the workers should always keep the control of policy in their own hands and not give power to their leaders to negotiate in secret and settle on their own terms. But emphasising once more that no action of this kind, however well organised, can solve the real working class problem of abolishing capitalism, and, further, that the employing class always have it in their power to starve striking or locked-out workers into submission if they deem it worth while to do so..