Distract, Divide, and Conquer

 

When we can convince a majority of our fellow workers that putting into practice of our principles will bring about an era of industrial democracy — the only true freedom — then we know our goal will be achieved. It cannot be gained until we do this. We do not believe in minority rule of any kind, no matter by whom. We do not believe in dictatorship, whether of the plutocracy or the misnamed “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

We have been for centuries and are now suffering from dictatorships, and we want to help abolish them from the face of the earth.We subscribe to the right of a majority to decide under what kind of system we shall live. Any other method means chaos. Our business is to do our part in convincing the majority that they must use their organised political power to achieve their freedom.

The Socialist Party has often been vilified by pseudo-revolutionists who hope they can “create” a revolution by following the methods of those in other countries where the industrial environment and institutions of government were very different.We believe in using every effort to overthrow the present economic system called capitalism. We believe in using every democratic effort to capture the political power of the state to be used in overthrowing this system. We believe in it because we also believe that the peaceable method of the ballot is the most efficient method; that it is real “direct action.”

Workers have but one enemy, the capitalist class. The only war worth fighting is the class war, the war of the workers against the robber class. The abolition of the profit and wages system is the only fight that will benefit us. We are oppose  ALL armies and ALL wars  because they always have been, and always will be, the weapons of the ruling class to keep us in wage slavery. We object to having single working person sacrificed to the interests of the capitalist class.  We have to fight the class struggle because nothing other than the class struggle can solve the problem of war and peace. The Socialist Party rejects  nationalism as a reason for  workers to go to war.

We judge any action taken by the wage slave fraternity from the standpoint of working class interests. The class struggle is the guide to tactics and to policy. We approve of those acts that aid in the fight against capitalism and condemn those that strengthen the power of labour’s enemies.

 The Socialist Party has  no scheme for re-drawing frontiers or solving minority problems. We recognise the fact that many people are much concerned with religious or language or other differences, but we do not believe that these are the cause of national conflicts and racial hatreds. The problem of making all countries fit for all people to live in will not be solved by changing borsers. When there is no longer a profit-seeking privileged class to bedevil relationships between peoples, and when there is no exploited class to suffer poverty and unemployment, the national problem will be solved, but that means socialism and no frontiers.

It is capitalism that causes the poverty of the mass of the population, on both sides of all frontiers, and it is capitalism that threatens the worker always with unemployment: but how convenient it is for the capitalist to hold up the foreigner as the cause of it all. If  foreign workers stays at home we are told they are destroying “our” industry by their cheap labour. If foreign workers happens to be a minority group inside the frontier, they are taking “our” job. If a person who speaks our language is in a minority group in some other country, he or she is told they can only find prosperity and happiness by agitating to rejoin the fatherland or motherland.  

Slum housing, malnutrition, diseaseare directly the result of poverty. To eliminate these evils, poverty must be abolished.

Poverty is caused through a small minority class owning the means of wealth production and distribution; as a consequence, they also own the wealth produced by the sweat and toil of the working class. The cure for poverty is simple. Here are the directions on the label.

Let the working class organise for socialism. Make use of their votes to gain control of Parliament and thus control of the armed forces. Eject the owners of the means of production from their ownership. Make the instruments of wealth production the common property of all, and the wealth produced by the community free of access to all.

Then a complete change in the economic basis of society will be achieved. Poverty and its ills, as well as war, will become for all times a thing of the past.

The Enemy Is Capitalism, The Fight Is For Socialism!