Give the World a Future

  We all suffer under capitalism. The capitalist class benefits from the misery of countless numbers of people. This exploitative and oppressive system, where profit is the master, has strangled our entire social system. Exploitation, injustice, racism, national chauvinism and war – these are the face of capitalism today. Whose is the fault? The capitalist class, and all who uphold the capitalist class and their accursed social system. Thus while the rich proceed with their schemes for the aggrandisement of their class, the working class are betrayed by the politicians who spend their time in political intrigues for personal profit. Capitalism has no sympathy for your deprivations and misery. Capitalism, in fact, requires it. The situation cries out for change, for a new, more rational social system – socialism. Our message is clear. Working people have the power in their hands to forge a new socialist society and they alone are capable of running society in the interests of the great majority. End capitalism and class exploitation. Away with palliatives of any sort, and on with the revolution.

 Capitalism is a system based on the private property of the means of production from which profit is made through the exploitation of labour. “Prosperity” under capitalism can only mean that private industry is making enough profit. The capitalist system is incapable of maintaining systematic improvements in the standards of living of the world’s working masses and preserving democratic rights (where they exist at all). Capitalist society is now a reactionary social system.  The workers must answer with the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Only the working class can take humanity out of the chaos of capitalism, by making the world socialist revolution.

Workers don’t need a crystal ball to see their future. The employing class and their state, in their never-ending greed for higher profits, are willing to make misery for working people. The working class, if it were united,  could if it wished turn this planet into a storehouse of plenty for all. The problem is that people accept capitalism and its logic and therefore see no alternative to the current misleaders who defend that system at all costs. The answer to poverty is not a welfare state and better social services but a new society which will have real solutions for all our problems, a new society based on human needs, not profits. Using all the resources of society for the benefit of all would ensure the advancement of living standards for everybody.  

Faith that capitalism can be reformed is prevalent. Reformists would provide the workers with new masters instead of the old ones, good humane masters instead of the bad, rapacious masters of today. The workers would have no control or direction over the means of production. Above them stands the commanding state bureaucracy of managers.

Reformists show little sense of the realities of capitalism with many believing that the growth of the welfare state will turn into a mixed or socialistic state as time goes on. A brazen attempt to save the profits of Big Business by reducing its taxes and cutting down the already meagre social programmes is being made by many governments. As revolutionaries who are loyal to our class, we support every effort on the part of workers to better their situation. However, we want to use the opportunities to explain the need for a socialist revolution. The real freedom of the workers consists of their control over the means of production. The essence of the future free world community is not that the working masses get enough food, but they direct their work themselves, collectively. The real fight for liberation has yet to begin.

Socialism, and socialism alone, explain this and the many other contradictions in capitalist society. The abolition of the capitalist system and the wage slavery upon which it is based will put an end to the misery of the millions and nothing else can do it. The socialist movement has this end for its aim. Wage slaves, male and female, the victims of the capitalist system, must be aroused to the consciousness of their class interests and their class power, industrial and political. Great as the task is, it must be accomplished, and by the working class itself. Little help will come from without. All hope and all of the powers necessary to realise it lies within it. The slumbering masses must be stirred, the apathetic and indifferent must be awoken, to be educated, the contented must be roused to discontent, and all must have their eyes opened and be made to see and feel the pressing need of a united working class for the overthrow of the present exploiting the brutal system.

The Red Flag (music)

 

Who We Are

 

Workers are wage slaves who survive only by selling their labour power to the capitalists. Capitalists own the means of production and pay workers for their labour power. But the working class produces far more wealth than it receives in income. The difference is the source of capitalist profits. The capitalist tries to drive down the wages of the worker. The worker is employed only as long as he or she helps create profit for the monopolies. When the capitalist has problems maximizing his profits, he does not hesitate to throw workers out into the street. The capitalist system exploits the working class and creates the poverty and economic insecurity of society as a whole. The capitalist system is a system of economic anarchy and crisis. Capitalism is plagued by periodic economic crises which are built into the economic system. 

There is only one thing that will cure the world of wars, of poverty, of  insecurity and that is industrial democracy - socialism. Industrial democracy means the rule of the workers as opposed to what we have known all our lives-the rule of autocracy, or the rule of the capitalist few. Capitalist rule has brought poverty and despair to the productive many, and luxury and power to the unproductive few. The profits of the big corporations swell bigger than ever.  

The capitalist world heaps misery upon misery upon the backs of the working people. For countless millions, life today is hunger, toil and anxiety. Everywhere the capitalist rulers look for remedies. But they can find none. To-day all the shams of capitalism are exposed.  We are living under a system which is clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but only brings poverty, hunger and misery to the working people. It inflicts draconian cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class.

Events have emphasised the need that working people have for an alternative to their misery. Working men and women who try to find an answer to the hardships of present-day conditions are faced with a hard task.  Everywhere, rising prices, falling wages, the uncertainty of a job, months or even years of unemployment; wars and ever-new threats of war.  The armaments industry profits from wars of unparalleled brutality.

 Capitalism is responsible for the deliberate destruction of the environment. The profit motive is incompatible with safeguarding the world’s natural resources. So long as it is profitable, environmental destruction is perfectly ’logical’ under capitalism’s business model, the process of capital accumulation. Our ecological problem is not limited resources but the waste of resources. The anarchistic system of capitalism wastes a great amount of social wealth. 

 

All these are the daily conditions of life now. The root cause of all this is capitalism’s quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human concern. The capitalist system has concentrated the ownership of the tremendous productive forces in the hands of a small group of big corporations.  It is marked by a basic contradiction: production is social, involving the coordinated and interconnected labour of millions of workers, but the control of this social labour and its product is private. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful, irrational and increasingly unproductive. The situation demands a new, more rational system of economic organisation that will utilise the productive forces for the benefit of the vast majority of society.

The greatest need of to-day is a clear understanding and positive mapping out of the path to travel. In the existing movement, there is no direction, no preparedness or unity. If the

 workers do not awaken in time a terrible fate awaits us all. Capitalism cannot be reformed. The only solution is to end it and build a new social system. Socialism will provide a society planned for the majority rather than for profit.

Our vision is of a world movement which does not claim a monopoly of correct ideas but which brings together all the initiatives which exist in society and builds them into a coherent whole. The task is to abolish capitalism and bring about a socialist society. We are under no illusion about the difficulty of overturning capitalism. The ruling class will not give up its position easily. The socialist society of the future will draw its strength from the new organisational forms thrown up in these mass struggles and will learn from the experience.

Watchword of Labour (music)

 

Workers’ Revolution is the Only Solution

 

If working men and women understood what socialism really meant they would rush to join the World Socialist Movement BECAUSE SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY HOPE IN THE WORLD FOR THE WORKING PEOPLE. Socialism is the international movement of the working class to abolish the wage system. It is a revolutionary movement OF THE WORKERS, BY the workers and FOR the workers.

The person who works for wages is a slave, in fact,  worse than a slave, for a slave can always look to a master to feed, clothe and house him or her. The wage-worker is forced to get a job – to sell one’s working strength to a boss or beg, starve or steal. Men and women can never be free or independent as long as they have to beg the idlers for a chance to work. The man who owns your job owns you. And we workers make everything in the world. There is nothing fine, valuable, beautiful, or useful that is used by men and women, no matter who they are, that is not made by the hands and the brains of workingmen or women. But we are not permitted to enjoy these things. The bosses claim them all. They only give to us (in wages) enough to eke out a poor existence. The whole secret of our slavery lies in the fact that a few people OWN THE FACTORIES, the MINES, the LAND and the TRANSPORT.

Socialism proposes that the workers who operate the industries shall OWN them collectively – that men and women shall work for themselves and shall own the things they make without DIVIDING UP with any idle property owners. Socialism proposes that the workers themselves shall be the collective owners of the MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. This is socialism in a nutshell. Socialism is the movement of your class, the WORKING CLASS to free themselves from wage-slavery.

Marxism teaches that the revolution against capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of the old world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves.  It has never been part of our argument to think you could overthrow capitalism over the head of the working class. Marxists also we recognise that in the modern world it is impossible to organise a revolutionary movement solely in one country. If we disagree with other parties, we have to say so! We have to make it clear why we disagree so that working people will know the difference between one party and another. Nothing is worse than blurringthe  differences when they concern fundamental questions.  Our Declaration of Principles is not dogma but a guide to action. We know where we come from and e intend to maintain our continuity. Socialism is the society of the free and equal and its democracy is the rule of the people.

The Communist Manifesto says:

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”

Every benefit for one class must be made at the expense of the other class. From this antagonism existing between capitalists and wage-workers arises the class struggle which is a part of the socialist philosophy embodied in the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party is the party of wage earners, organised for the overthrow of the wage system. It is OF, BY and FOR the working class alone and it ceases to be a socialist party the very moment it pretends to represent the members of ANY OTHER CLASS.  Remember that the interests of wage-workers and capitalists are absolutely opposed.  Our party rests upon the class struggle as a condition of its existence. Unite with your fellow-workers into one great organisation of the workers. Alone we can accomplish nothing; united the world is ours.

The aims of socialism are always in the interest of the working class. The business of socialists is to abolish a society that is based on the wages system. Socialism stands for common ownership. It means the overthrow of the wage system. This is the real essence of socialism. The sole end and aim of business are PROFITS and MORE PROFITS.  Profits are the cause of poverty. And socialists propose to abolish poverty. This is why every working person ought to be a socialist.