End the Profit System

 

It is the need for food and a house to live in, that forces men and women to sell themselves to work for a boss for wages. Where land is free, food abundant, shelter available and clothing still a matter of ornament, men and women are practically free economically. It is the private ownership of land, food, clothing and houses that makes slaves of the non-owners. They are forced to work for wages to get money to buy these necessities. Everywhere we find that capitalism grabs up the land and other natural resources so that people are forced to find jobs in order to live. Is there any working man or woman who does not know that something is very wrong with things as they are today? No matter how hard we may work and save, we rarely make ends meet.

The sole end and aim of the employer are to make PROFITS. No matter how much the bosses may say in the media, you know that they consider everything connected with the business to bring MORE PROFITS to them. They install automation because it will enable them to reduce staff and thus make more PROFITS. They adulterate food with toxic preservatives to make it appear fresh all for the sake of paying more dividends to their shareholders.  If you stop to think about it you find almost everything in the world today and almost every institution directly relates, in one way or another, to PROFITS.

 When you go on strike with for shorter hours and higher wages, the boss opposes you, because higher wages and shorter working hours for YOU will mean lower PROFITS for HIM. You’ll hear the politicians teaching contentment and thrift because the rich men pay their salaries and the master class want you to be contented and obedient. These things mean more PROFITS for him. The politicians always line up behind the Captains of Industry instead of behind working men and women. It PAYS better. The media never tell the truth about a strike. They always side with the employers because the employers advertise and advertising means PROFITS.

Today the capitalist, or employing class, owns all the machines, by which things are produced. The employing class owns the land and the factories. They own the transport and the shops. They own these things and want to own these things – not for the purpose of raising food for people to eat or building houses for them to live in. They own these things for the purpose of robbing the working class – for the sake of PROFITS.

Employers need the unemployed in order to make profits almost as much as they need workers. We are today unable to name the price at which we will sell our strength, or our brains, to the boss because there are unemployed men and women who are offering their brains and muscles just enough to live on. If we demand higher wages or shorter hours, they will undersell us and get the jobs. This is how the employers use the unemployed to keep our wages down, and it is by keeping wages down that they are able to draw profits from the shops and mills.

We call these men scabs when deprivation drives them to take our jobs at lower wages, and we treat them like our bitterest enemies, all because their need is so great that they are forced to take our jobs at lower wages, to keep out of destitution.

Can you blame someone whose children are crying for food or to pay the rent to keep a roof over the family’s head is willing to work on your job for a bit less than you are getting? You may find yourself in the same fix week after next. Somebody desperately looking for work is precisely the same kind of human being as you and I.  That is how the boss uses the out-of-work against us and against themselves. You are always competing for jobs with the unemployed whether you realize it or not. And you must stop competing with them and begin to realize your need for them and their need for you. We must organise and cooperate with the out-of-work against the employing class.  We must stand by the unemployed in order to have them stand by us. We need the cooperation of our out-of-work comrades and hereafter we must organize with them to present a united front against the boss.

Profits are the cause of poverty. And the Socialist Party proposes to abolish poverty. This is why every workingman and woman ought to be a socialist. Because the bosses own the factories, they are able to buy your working strength for less than the value of the things you produce or make. This leaves a profit for the bosses. Socialism intends to make the factories,  the common property of those who work in them; to do away with bosses and to abolish the PROFIT system. The socialist movement is the only movement in the world composed of workers who mean to abolish poverty and the profit system. There is no member of the Socialist Party who waves the white flag of truce to the capitalist class.

Workers of the World, Awaken (music)

We have no country

 

In the war, in Ukraine, those who do the fighting will get nothing. Some of them will be killed and many of them will be crippled, but beyond that they will only have the glory and honour of serving their master class to gain ownership and control of resources.

 We wish all our fellow workers would stop and consider who will be benefited by war.  No matter WHICH side wins, the workers will gain NOTHING. The capitalists have sufficient good sense to let the working people do their fighting for them and they hire clever writers to publish patriotic editorials.

The only person  worth fighting is the man who ROBS us. The only people worth fighting is the ruling class that EXPLOITS us.

Why should workers  be patriotic? If we are working men or working women, we HAVE NO COUNTRY. We don’t even have a place to eat and sleep, unless we are able to find a boss to pay us wages and when we are out of work we have to beg for welfare. 

Or we have to become migrants and move to other countries to live and to find employment. We are driven from city to city,  from nation to nation by the everlasting chorus of “MOVE ON.”

Fellow workers of ALL countries are OUR countrymen.

 The capitalist is the FOREIGNER. Our only enemy is the capitalist class, the class that, under every flag, hires us for wages and keeps for itself the things we manufacture.

Russian  men and women have no quarrel with Ukrainian men and women. They share the same interests. Both are robbed by a capitalist class and the only way we can stop this robbery is by uniting under the banner of SOCIALISM. 

We must unite to demand the common ownership of the factories and the farms. United we can abolish the present system of society and make production the shared property of all those who perform any useful service in society.

The CLASS WAR – the war of the propertyless and exploited working class against those who live off their labour – is the ONLY WAR worthwhile. That is the ONLY war that can benefit OUR class. The only war in which we should engage is the working class war, which will abolish poverty from the face of the Earth.

Are you a Russian or Ukrainian? Or German, French, English, Chinese? Are you an American? It does not matter. This question applies to every worker in the world. What has “your” country ever done for you?

What has “your” country ever really done for you, fellow worker? Has it always looked after your welfare? Does it give you a decent comfortable home? Has it assured that your children received schooltime and playtime to equip them for useful satisfying life?

Surely no one expects you to love and die for a particular geographical district upon the face of the earth just because you accidentally happened to be born in it, unless that district has done something for you. Why should you love that land any more than any other?

Fellow worker, what has your native land done for you that you should fight for its flag and its power? No matter how large or powerful it may become, no matter how rich its resources and natural wealth, you will share in none of these things. If you are rich, “your” country will open its arms to welcome you and the law and the police will protect your wealth. If you are penniless, you will be vilified. “Your” country has protection only for the powerful and it has no concern for those who are poor and sick. “Your” country has no place for you once you have harvested the crops. For when your work is done your pay ceases. All that you have made, all that you have produced, has been kept by your employers and you are turned out, dependant upon the pittance of a pension from “your” country in your old age. 

Fellow workers of the world, the land of your birth has done little for you. Conditions everywhere are practically the same. Everywhere you will find the workers earning barely enough to live on. Everywhere you will find men and women hunting for jobs. Everywhere you will find the privileged protected and the poor driven out. Every national flag in the world today means benefits for the employing class, who appropriate the things produced by their workers. Flags has no significance for those who sweat and toil.

There is only one flag worth fighting for and that is the red flag, which means universal solidarity of the workers of the world in their fight to abolish the profit system.

Mrs Barbour's Army (music video)

 

The only solution - socialist revolution

 

Democratic control over the means of production and the establishment of socialism is the only solution to austerity, unending war and the destruction of our environment. And it is the only road to the reversal of the current descent into barbarism and the only thing that will save the world. Reformism is not the same as socialism. The job of socialists to clarify what socialism means and how it will be achieved. We can’t make that distinction clear if we lend our support to capitalist politicians no matter what they call themselves. This is our most fundamental task. We can’t substitute fake socialism for the real thing. It will only cause defeat and demoralisation. . It brings workers  to think, “what the hell’s the use of fighting when it will only lead to defeat?”

 

The only solution to the plight of the working people and the planet is socialist revolution—the complete overthrow of the capitalist mode of production for profit and replacing it with a system of production for want and need, democratically controlled by the working class—to end hunger, homelessness, oppression and inequality. This can’t be achieved if we support the candidates of the parties of capital—the parties of war, racism, sexism and oppression of the masses of humanity on the planet. It is an oxymoron to support capitalist politicians while fighting capitalism. There can be no clearer example today of the wrong-thinking of giving support—critical or otherwise—to any candidate representing the parties of the capitalist class no matter what they call themselves or how radical they sound. They represent the class enemy of the working class. You have no country. Every national flag in the world today means protection for the employing class, who appropriate the things produced by the workers. It has no message for those who toil. As long as there is a class that preys, the class exploited and preyed upon will continue to struggle for emancipation. People prefer to work for better living conditions for themselves and their families today rather than wait for a paradise on earth for future generations. And this is as it should be.  The days when a worker shall rest content in promises for the future, be it an economic, industrial or heavenly future, are dead and gone. If it be in the realms of human possibility to attain, we want higher wages, shorter hours and better living conditions right now. Mankind seeks happiness and avoids discomfort and largely in this fact lies the hope of the humanity. When an economic need of anything arises, that need has to be satisfied. Sometimes we grow impatient and say that events move slowly, but when economic pressure becomes strong enough all things yield. Old ideas are  displaced by new ones.

We build the mansions and palaces and we live in hovels. We sweat in the factories  – for somebody else to enjoy. We feed the world; we clothe the world; we house the world – and if we are out of a job for one week – we are broke, we are hunting for another master – another boss again.

The reformists and philanthropists promise us many things. Oh yes, they promise many things. There is only one thing that you and I receive. That thing is wage-slavery.  Sometimes you may see politicians who are trying to lighten the burdens of the workers by legislation, such as shortening the hours of the working day. When we protest they will give us a few sops to keep us compliant. The real business of socialism is to abolish a society that is based on the wages system. It proposes that the working class shall take over all the great industries; it means that these industries shall be owned and managed by the workers without handing over any profits to any boss. It is ownership of the factory that makes oneperson wealthy  and and another, who has no property, a wage slave. 

Socialism means the overthrow of the wage system. This is the real essence of socialism.

There is only one flag worth fighting for and that is the red flag, which means universal solidarity of the workers of the world in their fight to abolish the profit system. Join the Socialist Party – the international organization of the working class for the abolition of capitalism. 

Why is the Socialist Party different?  Why should working men and women join the Socialist Party and support its candidates?  The answer is that the aims of socialism are always in the interest of the working class. Workers share nothing in common with their employers. 

Dump The Bosses Off Your Back (music video)