The Power of the Workers

The parasitic ruling class have always spread the idea that they are indispensable. The more useless they have become, the more adamant they try to impress this illusion upon workers’ minds. “How lucky you are to have us on your backs to direct you. You couldn’t get along without us.” The capitalists, contend, in order to justify their existence, that they alone are competent to rule the state and control industry. The capitalists, of course, try to present their rule and their system of exploitation as eternal. Their lackeys maintain that workers possess a slave-mentality by nature and therefore cannot be permitted commanding positions in political and economic life or in military matters, without overturning the foundations of civilisation. The capitalist rulers try in every way to keep the workers down and to lessen their self-confidence. They want to prevent the workers from understanding their own organised power and from developing their capacities as a class to reorganise the world. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true.

Many years ago workers were told they couldn’t build their own trade unions and administer them. Nevertheless the workers went ahead and created powerful unions.

In reality, the employers and investors live on the toil and produce of the working class and couldn’t exist without them. But to keep the wage-slaves in submission and uphold their system of exploitation, the master class are forced to twist the real state of affairs into its opposite. The capitalists possess their present power, property rights, and privileges as a result of long outgrown historical conditions. This class no longer performs any essential functions in modern society, any more than the appendix performs any useful function in the human body. Today the capitalist class, like a diseased appendix, imperils the very existence of humanity. Society does not depend today upon the capitalist exploiters but upon the working people they oppress. If every share-owner and stock-holder in General Motors were to disappear tomorrow, the workers on the assembly lines could still continue to build cars.

 A worker who now operates a lathe can direct a machine-shop tomorrow and an entire industry the day after. This has been done under capitalism by a few individual workers who climb higher in the career ladder become bosses themselves. What is done by isolated individuals under capitalism can and will be done collectively by the mass of organised workers in socialism, who will collectively own, organise and run industry by means of democratic committees. They will then produce not for the enrichment of a few but for the enjoyment of all. Let our fellow-workers take power and they will learn the art and technique of administration. And they will make social advances that capitalism never dreams of.

In the face of growing hardships and increasing attacks on workers in the factories, mines and fields, and in every sphere of society, growing numbers are taking action and taking matters into their own hands to fight back against the owning class of capitalists that rules. Despite the attempts of the parasites to divide and derail the workers’ movement, it continues to move forward and through many battles to grow ever more potent.

Capitalist society is based on the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class and that all the evils of this society arise from that. But more than that, it shows that throughout history society has been propelled forward through various historical stages by the struggle of the oppressed classes, and that in this era it is the carrying through of the working class struggle, to overthrow and eliminate capitalism, that alone can move society forward. And further it explains how the working class in abolishing capitalism will put an end to the division of society into classes and bring about a completely new era in human history – socialism – where mankind as a whole, through it cooperative efforts and conscious planning, can harness society’s productive forces to advance to heights undreamed of in the past. The movement of the working class is growing and gaining in strength and solidarity.

Throughout society the capitalists are mounting their attacks, cutting funds for education, health, housing and other vital needs of the people, which are sacrificed more and more for the capitalists’ need for profit. And along with all this they practice and promote discrimination and try to divert the anger and militancy of the masses of people against each other–and away from the capitalists themselves. Not content by just by robbing the workers in one country, the capitalists are locked in fierce battle with their foreign rivals around the world in their efforts to exploit all working people around the world, bringing suffering to hundreds of millions of people–all to feed the never satisfied profit-hunger of the capitalists. 

There is only one way that all the suffering caused by capitalism can be finally ended–by wiping out its source, capitalism. And there is only one force in society that can bring this about–the working class. This is the aim of the Socialist Party, not to win whatever concessions which can be achieved, but to build the strength and unity of the working class for the day when it will overthrow the capitalists altogether. There is only one political party in this country that is determined to fight together with the working class for the end of capitalism and the complete emancipation of the working class. This is the Socialist Party, which openly declares that it represents only the working class and seeks, as the highest interest of the working class, the overthrow and elimination of capitalism by the working class itself.

Towards A Better World

The truth of the matter is that this is a rich man’s State and a rich man’s government. The State is there to act on behalf of capital and to protect its interests against the people. The government is the executive committee of the big corporations. The State is an instrument of power in the hands of the industrialists, bankers and landlords, who are the ruling class. The state passes laws and maintains the police and armed forces to keep the working class in line. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. The mass media are powerful means of spreading the ideas and outlook of the capitalist class and its ideology. Capitalist society in its totality is structured so as to preserve the exploitative relationship between the capitalist class and the working class which lies at its heart.

The whole of society is organised around the capitalist economy. It is important to realise that capitalists are not always looking for ways to increase the degree of exploitation of workers because they, the capitalists, are inherently greedy but that they do this because of the way in which the capitalist economy operates leaves them with no choice if they are to stay in business. Similarly, if workers are not to be worked to death and totally impoverished then they have no choice except to take a common stand together against capitalist employers so as to resist employers’ attempts to exploit them even more.

 Facts are stubborn, irrefutable. It is the task of the Socialist Party to hasten the process of the liberation of our fellow-workers from the reformist illusions, to win them over to the side of the class struggle and the struggle against capitalism and reformism. The word “Revolution”, taken in its largest and truest sense, means turning, transformation, change. In fact, all in nature changes, but nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, passing from one turn of life to another, lives ever-changing, transforming, revolutionising. If revolution is the law of nature, which is all, it must necessarily also be the law of humanity, which is a part of nature. But you have a few who close their eyes so as not to see and their ears so as not to hear.

1. That the first source of every human oppression and exploitation is private property;

2. That the emancipation of workers (human emancipation) will not be founded upon a new class rule, but upon the end of all class privileges and monopolies and upon the equality of rights and duties;

3. That the cause of labour, the cause of humanity, does not have borders;

4. That the emancipation of workers must be done by the will and the hands of the workers themselves.

The Socialist Party advocates the unity of the workers of the whole world in common struggle for the realisation of the common goal - emancipation. It affirm the irreconcilability of their struggle against capital. Crisis is an inherent feature of capitalism and cannot be eliminated without eliminating the root, the capitalist system. The anarchy of production will not be eliminated without putting an end to the capitalist system, thereby removing the contradiction which is at its root, the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation. The motive of the capitalist is the securing of maximum profits. Capitalists organise production for the purposes of increasing profits. The manufacture of products is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism. When conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production then that is what the capitalists do. The fundamental flaws of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.

All the capitalist parties, all the parties dedicated to the continuation of the capitalist system of wage slavery, are against the most basic rights and interests of the working class. The workers can only wage their struggle in opposition to these forces. In particular the struggle cannot be one simply to remove the Tory government and replace it by a Labour government. The working class must struggle to end the capitalist system. The reason for the treachery and betrayal of the Labour Party class-collaborationist politicians is not simply the cowardice and spinelessness of various individuals. Workers cannot restrict themselves to addressing only the symptoms; they must remove the source of the disease, the capitalist system of wage slavery. It is the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression, the system of wage slavery, that is the source of all the problems facing the working people, and that shows the urgent necessity to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. Revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity in order to avert the grave threats facing the  people, to prevent the impoverishment and destitution of the people, and avert the dangers of climate change and war to which the capitalist system is leading society.

We Accuse…You

The productivity of labour has increased a thousandfold in the last 500 years, yet those who labour are in constant penury and want. Why is it?

We live in a world where toil for billions of' working men and women, purchased nothing better than squalor, penury, anxiety, and wretchedness—a world scarred by slums and disgraced by sweating, where unemployment through the vicissitudes of industry brought despair to multitudes of humble homes; a world where, side by side with want, there was waste of the inexhaustible riches of the earth. Oh, you ungrateful slaves, who would deny your masters their full pound of flesh! Your employers travel around in luxurious limousines, private jets and yachts take them to all parts of the world, so they can bask in the Caribbean sun, play in Alpine ski-resorts, shoot on Scottish estates, hunt on African safaris. They indulge their appetites at sumptuous banquets, revive their spirits at grand balls, and rejuvenate their interest in life at the races.

Capitalism creates poverty and it breeds wars, but it is you, our fellow-workers who support capitalism. It is you who build empires for your masters when, instead, you could take possession of the earth and build a cooperative commonwealth for yourselves — a socialist commonwealth, where profits no longer would be the object of production, and markets would cease to be a bone of contention for snarling groups of profit-hungry capitalists, but a system wherein free men and women produce wealth according to their needs.

Yet, fellow workers, you have turned away your heads from socialism, because your masters and their lackeys, fearing it, have lied to you about its meaning. They deceive in the media, from their political rostrums. They encourage mis-leaders to misconstrue, defame, and slander. Nothing but another tool of the master class pay to blind the workers as to their true position as wage slaves. You sacrifice your lives to the support of capitalism with its awful destruction and waste of the wealth which you produce, but do not own. Your masters appeal to you as "patriots" to save "your country" from the pandemic, they beg you to save "your country" from bankruptcy. 

Your masters’ desire is for more surplus-value, i.e., the difference between the wealth you produce and the wages you receive. All the wealth you produce belongs to your masters. Your wages are paid out of that wealth, and are determined by what it costs you to live. Your own insecurity and poverty has increased. Your wretchedness is plain to see as your masters snatch away what little you enjoy. You suffer poverty and deprivation while your masters live in luxury off the wealth you have produced. If you support the Left and dream that nationalisation will save you you will, when you awake, you’ll find yourselves under the rule of the bureaucrat and technocrat— wage slaves still, exploited in the interest of all capitalists instead of that of a corporation. You are already there by virtue of your poverty, and must sell your labour-power in order to live. There is not a reform within your reach that can save you from worse degrees of exploitation.

The means of wealth production are owned by the capitalist or master class, and you are only permitted to produce wealth for them while they can sell at a profit. With modern machinery and methods every nation can produce more wealth than it can dispose of within its own boundaries, and it must find markets for the surplus elsewhere. It was this need for markets that led to the war. But war could not solve the insoluble problem. The world's markets are for those who can sell the cheapest. In order that your masters may sell cheaply you must produce cheaply. The capitalists of other countries, realising this, are telling their workers the same fairy tales that your masters are telling you. They are inciting their workers in the name of nationalism to engage in new military conflicts, in the trade wars of factories and markets, in which the cheapest workers will win for their masters commercial supremacy, for themselves increasing impoverishment.

 Your masters tell you that this must always be your lot, that your share of the wealth you produce can never be more than the slave's portion, and that you must work ever more strenuously even for that. They tell you that industry will not bear the burden of higher wages and improved conditions for you. There is only one answer you can return them: they take two-thirds of the wealth you produce and perform no useful function in society; it is they that are a burden on society—and upon you—and you have no further use for them or their system.

Capitalism fails to give you, who produce all wealth, a secure and comfortable existence, then capitalism must go. With modern means and methods of production wealth can be produced to satisfy the needs of all; but capitalism, with is class ownership of the means of life, and the consumerist character which it imposes upon our labour power, stands in the way. The working class contains the only people who produce commodities and distribute them to the consumers, and they are the people who, relatively speaking, consume the least. The working class includes all employees, whether they be managers or office workers, scientists or mechanics.

 It is the same old story of the capitalists' greed for profit the world over. Fellow worker, are you assisting the master class by supporting their system of slavery, which means hellish conditions for those of your class, or are you joining up with your fellows to abolish it? You must first understand the nature of the obstacle, and then organise politically to remove it. The longer you delay the worse does your condition become. The sooner you commence the task—which can only be performed by you, because you are the class that suffers—the sooner will you enjoy the fruits of your labour under a system where the means of wealth production are the common property of all, used and controlled by all, in the interests of all. 

Not until the workers acquire faith in themselves will they escape from this danger. Once they reach that stage in their mental development and understanding the days of "moderate," "wise," and "statesmanlike" leaders will be gone, and the workers will organise to take control of the means of life by retaining in their own hands the power to decide the issues before them. Then, instead of trying to find out how long they can live under austerity, while the masters roll in luxury, they will march to capture the power of control—the political machinery—and end the struggle over wages by abolishing the wages system and establishing socialism. 

Think it over.

Abolish the Wages System - End Wage-Slavery

In a capitalist society, where the ruling class not only controls the productive and state apparatus but also shapes and misshapes the ideas, attitudes and very sentiments of working people with remarkable success. The better the capitalist class is in ruling over us, the more deceived we will be by the false theories which conceal the self-interest generated by and essential to the operation of an exploitative society. Our fellow-workers must break free from the patterns of thought and conduct which help to maintain capitalist class dominance. Without such a break, we cannot emancipate ourselves and all of humanity.

The non-socialist reformists possess no concepts about how to change the system.  It is the historic mission of our class – the propertyless class of wage-slaves – to make revolution,  uniting all who can be united against the hated capitalist enemy. It is necessary to make revolution to eliminate the evils of this society and move society forward in a great leap for mankind.  It is possible to do so. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class.

Karl Marx said long ago:

“Trade Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla warfare against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

What every worker must realize is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which is capitalism but only its symptoms. Not merely that. We are demanding it from the capitalists. In other words, we envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. Every wage increase that is won by the workers is immediately offset by the employers by more intensive work, by increased productivity etc. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he or she started. Trade unionism  limits their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles.

The Socialist Party do not, of course, oppose trade unions and their  struggles nor do our members decline to participate in them. It is very essential for workers to organise and for them to defend their living standards. The trade unions are instruments of organised resistance, based on solidarity and mutual help.

 Capitalist production is a slave exploiting mechanism. It was not designed primarily to enable more wealth to be produced but to enable more profit to be made. The system is built expressly to exploit wage slaves, and it is becoming ever more efficient from that standpoint making the situation ever worse for the exploited. The wage slave knows this instinctively, but cannot understand why it is so; there is a developing dissatisfaction and a desire to kick, but not understanding that the system is at fault, in the main workers act blindly. Society cannot be free without every member of society being free. Capitalism is a system of production for profit only; there has never been produced at any time under capitalism sufficient to satisfy the needs of all. The object of capitalist production is not the production of wealth; the mechanism was not designed for that purpose; where profit is not visualised capital does not go; in other words, no profit—no production. Workers are compelled to revolt against the exploiting mechanism, not because they desire to possess it, but partly because of the workers' disinclination to operate it under the then prevailing conditions. They, the workers, will be driven to take control of the State machine and register the fact that the means of production are from then on to be operated exclusively for use. As a means of ending chaos the tools of industry will be made common property. The dismantling process can then begin.

 Socialism entails the abolition of the wages system. It may be difficult for some to believe they can dispense with it; they have got so used to it they cannot conceive of life without it, and so-called socialists often go out of their way to perpetuate the false idea that man is free from exploitation when he is still firmly riveted to the mechanism of capitalism. To make the machinery of production common property is not the whole of it. To establish a system of production for use through the operation of the present day machinery designed for exploitation is impossible. Many wage slaves vaguely realise this and once they comprehend that socialism means doing away with the tread mill that they now find themselves tied to, they will the better understand our message. The desire to produce what one personally wants will be intensified.

In the earlier forms of society every member of the tribe could do practically what every other tribesman could do. We are returning to the communal life of our ancestors, but on a higher plane. Socialism means freedom. To be free mankind must control the means of life. To be a cog in a machine is to be a slave no matter how well greased the system is.

When we talk and write about socialism, we mean a class-free society in which the means of producing food, clothing, houses, and all the amenities of life, shall be owned in common and democratically controlled by the community. There will be an identity of interests, for no one will covet what his neighbour has if there is an abundance to satisfy his needs. This is the foundation which we claim will solve war and the major evils of the world. Socialism is the only sane way. All other methods have been tried and failed. It does not follow that socialism will succeed because it has never been tried. It requires thought and inquisitiveness on the part of workers, to understand why socialism will succeed.

With the basis of socialist society firmly established, it is not difficult to see that mankind will be free to enjoy life to the full. Men and women will give of their best to society, for they will know that society's resources will be there for the taking. They will produce the best and receive the best. They will be free to develop his natural desires and aptitudes. Production will be a task which men and women will enjoy, for they will be working in the knowledge that goods are actually being produced for the benefit of the community. Mankind will be free to enjoy the arts of the world.

No longer will people be assessed by their bank balance or property, for money would serve no function under socialism. Today, money in the form of wages keeps workers in subjection, and poverty, for they can only buy back a proportion of the wealth they produce. As all means of production would be owned in common for the benefit of mankind, war will be an impossibility, for a socialist society would not fight for something it already possessed.

Workers, do not attempt to escape from the problems thrown up by capitalism by ignoring the cold facts of reality. Face up to the situation that capitalism is now decadent, and that mankind can build a new world in which life will be a beautiful experience. The nightmares of yesterday will then gradually recede in the distance. When socialism is obtained the escape to freedom will be complete.

Your Future - Your Choice

Wars, poverty, slums and climate change cannot be solved in isolation. Capitalism produces these problems. Socialism alone can bring an overdue end to them. Through the abolition of this wage-slave system, mankind will finally master its affairs. The Socialist Party has untiringly persevered with its case for socialism, by the printed word, the street corner speakers, the platforms of public meetings and across the web—wherever the workers could be attracted, calling upon the world’s working class to end its problems of poverty, insecurity and mass slaughter. The Party’s irrefutable case, is based upon the materialist conception of history, and its analysis of the capitalist system with all its contradictions. We  have shown the synthesis of this out-moded economic system, which is the only inevitable road humanity can eventually take—in a word— SOCIALISM.

 It becomes more and more clear that capitalism has outlived its usefulness in social evolution, there accompanies it the hope that the workers will decide to speed the progress by understanding, desiring and determining to establish a socialist society. Only the world’s working class can establish this and ensure for the generations to come, a fuller, happier existence. Sadly, insufficient numbers of the working class have rallied together for this purpose. 

Now, time could be running out. The opportunity and ability of changing society may not last. Today humanity is fast coming face to face with an ultimatum—one which may be utter and final—the fact of an imminent environmental catastrophe. The choice is becoming oppressive, the decision vital; be politically active or become a casualty to the climate crises. Change the social system of monopoly and privilege for the few.

A capitalist society is one in which:

1) the means of production — factories, land, etc., — are owned by capitalists as individuals or corporate groups;

2) this class of capitalists holds political power by controlling the state apparatus;

3) production is regulated by the profit motive; and

4) exploitation occurs, in that capitalists live, partly or wholly, on the labour of others, i.e., of their employed workers.

A socialist society is one in which:

1) the means of production are owned in common by society as a whole;

2) production is planned

3) exploitation — the process of living partly or wholly on the labour of others — has been eliminated.

Should the world become socialist as a result of the difficulties and problems that our capitalist social order is unable to solve, people will discover that socialism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty and shared abundance.

At present most people regard a socialist society solely in the light of the experience of the former Soviet Union. They fear it would produce the same result as it brought for the peoples of the USSR. They dread the bureaucratic tyranny and draconian red-tape in obtaining the necessities of life, the soulless standardisation in the arts and culture, the imposition of political repression and the suppression of freedom of expression. Such ideas are reinforced by capitalist media.

When private property rights and private profits are removed from the capitalist system there will be abundance and free access to the social wealth of the world. This system will be made to work not by bureaucrats and not by policemen but by cooperation and compassion. We will organise our society to produce for human needs rather than  profits. Money will no longer be necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody.