Unshackle the Wage-Slaves

 

For the Socialist Party, our purpose is one of waking the working class up to understand the economic and social forces which make them wage-slaves. So long as the means of wealth production and distribution are privately owned by the capitalist class, so long will the labour-power of the propertyless worker be a commodity which must be sold for the best price according to the fluctuations of supply and demand. Whether at any particular moment, the wages be fair or foul, the fierce competition arising from ever-present unemployment prevents wages in the long run from exceeding the cost of living a shoddy life. The remedy for this problem is for society to own the means of production, and to produce for use. The contradiction between social production and private ownership is the rock upon which capitalism splits. It has been the historical function of the capitalist class to bring about social production, with its enormous possibilities for human comfort and culture; it is the historical function of the working class to bring social ownership and control into line with social operation, and make these possibilities a reality.

The capitalist class as a whole grows relatively richer every year, and the working class grows relatively poorer. The workers must fight to resist the constant attempts of the masters to extract more work for less pay. Despite the heroic efforts of the workers, they are fighting the battle on the wrong ground. In the economic field, the capitalist is the stronger, and while the worker accepts capitalist ownership of the means of production the capitalists will remain the stronger. This unpalatable truth must be faced by the workers and they must grasp the fact (and grasp it soon, or risk utter degradation) that the capitalist class has neither natural nor supernatural right to the control of society, and only owns and rules because society, the vast mass of which is composed of workers, gives it that control and can take the control away as soon as the desire exists.

Violence is never far below the surface of capitalism. The institutionalised violence of the State exists to protect the class monopoly of a minority over the means of wealth production and its agents have continued to contain the frustrations caused by the insecure and deprived existence of the working class under capitalism. But the scarcity the working class the world over has to endure is artificial. The world's means of production are quite capable of producing an abundance of wealth from which everybody could freely take according to their needs. Capitalism holds back production because it operates, and has to operate, according to the rule “No profit, no production” and it restricts the consumption of the vast majority to what is needed to keep them in efficient health — and provide profit.

Those who accept capitalism, and choose to work within it, inevitably find themselves dividing the working class by arguing the merits of which worker, or group of workers, should get which scarce job or house or hospital bed, school or university place.  But they fail to see the very real restrictions that capitalism places on doing this. 

Under capitalism, production is for profit, not for the benefit of the working class. The fact, confirmed by years of sad experience, is that capitalism just cannot be reformed so as to work in the interests of the working class, the majority of society. It is futile to try to do so. We are not saying workers should not protest against their sufferings under capitalism. Of course, they should. But they should fight back on sound lines — for socialism, not reforms of capitalism. What is called for is an end to the situation where workers are in the degrading position of having to struggle amongst themselves for the basic necessities of life, especially when the amount of these necessities is artificially restricted by the same system that degrades and exploits them.

Socialism alone can end this, by making the means of production the common property of all mankind so that they can be used to provide abundance for all. The struggle for socialism will unite rather than divide the working class because it does not set workers against workers over the few crumbs capitalism has to offer but is so clearly in the interests of them all.

The plain fact is that there is no national solution to the problems which face workers. These problems are not essentially different from those of workers in all the other countries of the world. Workers everywhere live under the same system, world capitalism, which artificially divides the world into States and cultivates loyalty towards these States in the form of nationalism in order to further the interests of the various sections of the world capitalist class who rule them. The working class, too, is a worldwide class with a common world-wide interest: the overthrow of capitalist rule everywhere and the freeing of modern technology from the fetters of the profit motive by the establishment of socialism.

Socialism is necessarily a world system because the system it will replace, capitalism already is. As far as the production of wealth is concerned there is already one world. The production of the world’s wealth, artificially limited as it is under capitalism, is one huge co-operative enterprise involving factories, farms shipyards, railways, warehouses, offices and workers of every kind in all parts of the world. What is not worldwide under capitalism is the ownership and control of this productive system, which is scattered amongst hundreds of competing States and big international companies. What socialism will do is to bring this vast worldwide productive network under the control of mankind so that they can use it for their own benefit: first of all, to abolish poverty destitution, hunger, slums, ignorance and ill-health and second, to provide an abundance of wealth from which every single human being can freely take according to their needs without money or rationing of any kind. On this basis, boring work can be eliminated and free men and women come to enjoy the fruits of the centuries of forced labour of their fathers. The degrading struggle for the means of life, and the senseless hatred it engendered, will become a thing of the past. We insist that this is relevant everywhere. We too want an immediate end to the senseless sacrifice of working-class life for no useful purpose (not even now the interests of their masters, as was once the case).

But, over and above this, we want socialism, a far more worthwhile objective than a mere return to “normal” capitalism with its boring jobs, its dole queues, its slums and its general poverty and exploitation minus only the extra violence.

We urge workers in Ireland to join with us, and their fellow workers in all other countries, in working to establish as quickly as possible socialism, a world of peace and plenty.