The Socialist Party is pledged to abolish the capitalist
system, class-rule and wage-slavery—a party which does not compromise. A
socialist economy must be an economy without wages. It is simply a question of
capitalism or socialism, of despotism or democracy, and they who are not wholly
with us are wholly against us. No sane person can be satisfied with the present
system. When you are born you have a right to live like everybody else and
socialism assumes that you have the common sense to get up and contribute
something to society according to your creative ability. To change the world
and to create a better one has always been the aspiration of people throughout
human history. It is true that some portray the present plight of humanity as
somehow given and inevitable. Nevertheless the actual lives and actions of
people themselves reveal a deep-seated belief in the possibility and even the
certainty of a better future. The hope that tomorrow's world can be free of
today's inequalities, hardships and deprivations, the belief that people can,
individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come, is a
deep-rooted and powerful outlook in society that guides the lives and actions
of vast masses of people. The Socialist Party shares this belief of countless
people and successive generations that building a better world and a better
future by their own hands is both necessary and possible.
The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden
humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, discrimination, inequality, political
repression, ignorance, bigotry, cultural backwardness, unemployment,
homelessness, economic and political insecurity, corruption and crime are all
inevitable products of this system. No doubt bourgeois apologists would rush to
tell us that these have not been invented by capitalism, but have all existed
before capitalism, that exploitation, repression, discrimination, women's
oppression, ignorance and prejudice, religion and prostitution are more or less
as old as human society itself. We answer:
Firstly, all these problems have found a new meaning in this
society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism. These are being constantly
reproduced as integral parts of the modern capitalist system. The source of
poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity at the
end of the 20th century is the economic system in place at the end of the 20th
century. The brutal dictatorships, wars, genocides and repressions that define
the life of hundreds of millions of people today draw their rationale from the
needs of the system that rules the world today and serve specific interests in
this world.
Secondly, it is the capitalist system itself that
continually and relentlessly resists people's effort to eradicate and overcome
these ills. The obstacle to workers' struggle to improve living conditions and
civil rights is none other than the bourgeoisie and its governments, parties
and apologists. Wherever people rise in the poorer regions to take charge of
their lives, the first barrier they face is the armed force of the local ruler.
It is the capitalist's state, its enormous media and propaganda machinery,
institution of religion, traditions, moralities and educational system which
shape the backward and prejudiced mentalities among successive generations.
There is no doubt that it is capitalism who stand in the way of the attempt by
millions of people to change the system. The capitalist system and the primacy
of profit have exposed the environment to serious dangers and irreparable
damages. This is the reality of capitalism today, boding a horrifying future
for the entire people of the world. For sure, present society is no doubt
complex and sophisticated. Billions of people are in continuous interaction in
elaborate arrays of economic, social and political relations. Technology and
production have acquired gigantic dimensions. Humanity's intellectual and
cultural life, just as its problems and difficulties, are broad and diverse.
But these complexities only keep out of sight simple and comprehendible
realities that make up the economic and social fabric of the capitalist world.
Like any other class system, capitalism is based on the
exploitation of producers — the appropriation of a part of the product of their
labour by the ruling classes. Under slavery not only the slave's product but he
himself belonged to the slave- owner. He worked for the slave-owner, and in
return was kept alive by him. In the feudal system the peasants either handed
over part of their produce to the feudal lord, or performed certain hours of
forced and unpaid labour. Under capitalism, however, exploitation has quite
different bases. Here the main producers, i.e. the workers, are free; they
don't belong to anyone, are not appendages of any estate, they are in bondage
of any lord. They own and control their own body and labour power. But workers
are also 'free' in yet another sense: they are `free` from the ownership
of means of production, and so in order to live, they have to sell their labour
power for a certain length of time, in exchange for wages, to the capitalist
class — i.e. a small minority that own and monopolise the means of production.
The workers have to then buy their means of subsistence — the goods they themselves
have produced — in the market from the capitalists. The essence of capitalism
and the basis of exploitation in this system is the fact that, on the one hand
labour power is a commodity, and, on the other hand the means of production are
the private property of the capitalist class.
Under capitalism labour power and means of production are
shut off from each other by the wall of private property; they are commodities
and their owners must meet in a market. On the face of it, the owners of these
commodities enter into a free and equal transaction: the worker sells his/her
labour power for certain periods, in exchange for wages, to the capitalist,
i.e. the owner of the means of production; the capitalist employs this labour
power, uses it up and makes new products. These commodities are then sold in
the market and the revenue begins the production cycle anew, as capital. However,
behind the apparently equal exchange between labour and capital lies a
fundamental inequality; an inequality which defines the lot of humanity today
and without whose elimination society will never be free. With wages, workers
only get back what they have sold, i.e. the ability to work and to show up in
the market once again. By its daily work the working class only ensures its continued
existence as worker, its survival as the daily seller of labour power. But
capital in this process grows and accumulates. Labour power is a creative
power; it generates new values for its buyer. The value of the commodities and
services produced by the worker at any cycle of the production process is
greater than the worker's total share and that portion of the products which
goes into restoring the used up materials and wear and tear. This surplus
value, taking the form of an immense stock of commodities, belongs
automatically to the capitalist class, and increases the mass of its capital,
by virtue of the capitalist class's ownership of the means of production.
Labour power in its exchange with capital only reproduces itself, while capital
in its exchange with labour power grows. The creative capacity of labour power
and the working class's productive activity reflects itself as the birth of new
capital for the capitalist class. The more and the better the working class
works, the more power capital acquires. The gigantic power of capital in the
world today and its ever-expanding domination of the economic, political and
intellectual life of the billions of inhabitants of the earth is nothing but
the inverted image of the creative power of work and of working humanity.
Thus, exploitation in capitalist society takes place without
yokes and shackles on the shoulders and feet of the producers - through the
medium of the market and free and equal exchange of commodities. This is the
fundamental feature of capitalism which distinguishes it in essence from all
earlier systems. The surplus value obtained from the exploitation of the
working class is divided out among the various sections of the capitalist class
essentially through the market mechanism and also through state fiscal and
monetary policies. Profit, interest and rent are the major forms in which the
different capitals share in the fruits of this class exploitation. The
competition of capitals in the market determines the share of each capitalist branch,
unit and enterprise. But this is not all. This surplus pays whole cost of the
bourgeoisie's state machinery, army and administration, of its ideological and
cultural institutions, and the upkeep of all those who, through these
institutions, uphold the power of the bourgeoisie. By its work, the working
class pays the cost of the ruling class, the ever-increasing accumulation of
capital and the bourgeoisie's political, cultural and intellectual domination
over the working class and the entire society.
Technological progress and rise in labour productivity mean
that living human labour power is increasingly replaced by machines and
automatic systems. In a free and human society this should mean more free time
and leisure for all. But in capitalist society, where labour power and means of
production are merely so many commodities which capital employs to make
profits, the substitution of humans by machines manifests itself as a permanent
unemployment of a section of the working class which is now denied the
possibility of making a living. The appearance of a reserve army of workers who
do not even have the possibility of selling their labour power is an inevitable
result of the process of accumulation of capital, and at the same time a
condition of capitalist production. The existence of this reserve army of
unemployed, supported essentially by the employed section of the working class
itself, heightens the competition in the ranks of the working class and keeps
wages at their lowest socially possible level. This reserve army also allows
capital to more easily modify the size of its employed work force in proportion
to the needs of the market. Massive unemployment is not a side-effect of the
market, or a result of the bad policies of some government. It is an inherent
part of the workings of capitalism and the process of accumulation of capital.
