Who We Are

 

Workers are wage slaves who survive only by selling their labour power to the capitalists. Capitalists own the means of production and pay workers for their labour power. But the working class produces far more wealth than it receives in income. The difference is the source of capitalist profits. The capitalist tries to drive down the wages of the worker. The worker is employed only as long as he or she helps create profit for the monopolies. When the capitalist has problems maximizing his profits, he does not hesitate to throw workers out into the street. The capitalist system exploits the working class and creates the poverty and economic insecurity of society as a whole. The capitalist system is a system of economic anarchy and crisis. Capitalism is plagued by periodic economic crises which are built into the economic system. 

There is only one thing that will cure the world of wars, of poverty, of  insecurity and that is industrial democracy - socialism. Industrial democracy means the rule of the workers as opposed to what we have known all our lives-the rule of autocracy, or the rule of the capitalist few. Capitalist rule has brought poverty and despair to the productive many, and luxury and power to the unproductive few. The profits of the big corporations swell bigger than ever.  

The capitalist world heaps misery upon misery upon the backs of the working people. For countless millions, life today is hunger, toil and anxiety. Everywhere the capitalist rulers look for remedies. But they can find none. To-day all the shams of capitalism are exposed.  We are living under a system which is clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but only brings poverty, hunger and misery to the working people. It inflicts draconian cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class.

Events have emphasised the need that working people have for an alternative to their misery. Working men and women who try to find an answer to the hardships of present-day conditions are faced with a hard task.  Everywhere, rising prices, falling wages, the uncertainty of a job, months or even years of unemployment; wars and ever-new threats of war.  The armaments industry profits from wars of unparalleled brutality.

 Capitalism is responsible for the deliberate destruction of the environment. The profit motive is incompatible with safeguarding the world’s natural resources. So long as it is profitable, environmental destruction is perfectly ’logical’ under capitalism’s business model, the process of capital accumulation. Our ecological problem is not limited resources but the waste of resources. The anarchistic system of capitalism wastes a great amount of social wealth. 

 

All these are the daily conditions of life now. The root cause of all this is capitalism’s quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human concern. The capitalist system has concentrated the ownership of the tremendous productive forces in the hands of a small group of big corporations.  It is marked by a basic contradiction: production is social, involving the coordinated and interconnected labour of millions of workers, but the control of this social labour and its product is private. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful, irrational and increasingly unproductive. The situation demands a new, more rational system of economic organisation that will utilise the productive forces for the benefit of the vast majority of society.

The greatest need of to-day is a clear understanding and positive mapping out of the path to travel. In the existing movement, there is no direction, no preparedness or unity. If the

 workers do not awaken in time a terrible fate awaits us all. Capitalism cannot be reformed. The only solution is to end it and build a new social system. Socialism will provide a society planned for the majority rather than for profit.

Our vision is of a world movement which does not claim a monopoly of correct ideas but which brings together all the initiatives which exist in society and builds them into a coherent whole. The task is to abolish capitalism and bring about a socialist society. We are under no illusion about the difficulty of overturning capitalism. The ruling class will not give up its position easily. The socialist society of the future will draw its strength from the new organisational forms thrown up in these mass struggles and will learn from the experience.

Watchword of Labour (music)

 

Workers’ Revolution is the Only Solution

 

If working men and women understood what socialism really meant they would rush to join the World Socialist Movement BECAUSE SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY HOPE IN THE WORLD FOR THE WORKING PEOPLE. Socialism is the international movement of the working class to abolish the wage system. It is a revolutionary movement OF THE WORKERS, BY the workers and FOR the workers.

The person who works for wages is a slave, in fact,  worse than a slave, for a slave can always look to a master to feed, clothe and house him or her. The wage-worker is forced to get a job – to sell one’s working strength to a boss or beg, starve or steal. Men and women can never be free or independent as long as they have to beg the idlers for a chance to work. The man who owns your job owns you. And we workers make everything in the world. There is nothing fine, valuable, beautiful, or useful that is used by men and women, no matter who they are, that is not made by the hands and the brains of workingmen or women. But we are not permitted to enjoy these things. The bosses claim them all. They only give to us (in wages) enough to eke out a poor existence. The whole secret of our slavery lies in the fact that a few people OWN THE FACTORIES, the MINES, the LAND and the TRANSPORT.

Socialism proposes that the workers who operate the industries shall OWN them collectively – that men and women shall work for themselves and shall own the things they make without DIVIDING UP with any idle property owners. Socialism proposes that the workers themselves shall be the collective owners of the MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. This is socialism in a nutshell. Socialism is the movement of your class, the WORKING CLASS to free themselves from wage-slavery.

Marxism teaches that the revolution against capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of the old world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves.  It has never been part of our argument to think you could overthrow capitalism over the head of the working class. Marxists also we recognise that in the modern world it is impossible to organise a revolutionary movement solely in one country. If we disagree with other parties, we have to say so! We have to make it clear why we disagree so that working people will know the difference between one party and another. Nothing is worse than blurringthe  differences when they concern fundamental questions.  Our Declaration of Principles is not dogma but a guide to action. We know where we come from and e intend to maintain our continuity. Socialism is the society of the free and equal and its democracy is the rule of the people.

The Communist Manifesto says:

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”

Every benefit for one class must be made at the expense of the other class. From this antagonism existing between capitalists and wage-workers arises the class struggle which is a part of the socialist philosophy embodied in the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party is the party of wage earners, organised for the overthrow of the wage system. It is OF, BY and FOR the working class alone and it ceases to be a socialist party the very moment it pretends to represent the members of ANY OTHER CLASS.  Remember that the interests of wage-workers and capitalists are absolutely opposed.  Our party rests upon the class struggle as a condition of its existence. Unite with your fellow-workers into one great organisation of the workers. Alone we can accomplish nothing; united the world is ours.

The aims of socialism are always in the interest of the working class. The business of socialists is to abolish a society that is based on the wages system. Socialism stands for common ownership. It means the overthrow of the wage system. This is the real essence of socialism. The sole end and aim of business are PROFITS and MORE PROFITS.  Profits are the cause of poverty. And socialists propose to abolish poverty. This is why every working person ought to be a socialist.

 

When Labour Calls (music)

 

Production without profit

 

The World Socialist Movement is loath to draw up blueprints of the future. It would be undemocratic for a handful of us now without access to the exact details of available resources and conditions to try and draw up rigid plans. We also recognise that there may not be one single way of doing things, and precise details and ways of doing things might vary from one part of the world to another, even between neighbouring communities. Of course, we can reach logical conclusions based on basic premises and can outline broad principles or options that could be applied. That is, we do not have to draw up a detailed plan for socialism, but broadly demonstrate that it is possible.

The working class will be able to make use of some of the existing institutions of capitalism in order to indicate the democratic decision to set up socialism. The WSM urges workers to elect socialist delegates in local and national elections, not simply as a propaganda exercise, but in order to gain democratic control over the machinery of the state. The growth of the desire for socialism can practically and effectively be demonstrated via the ballot box. In most capitalist countries this “democratic machinery” does exist, at least in constitutional theory. What is lacking is a working class which has decided to use constitutional democracy for the purpose of creating socialism. Where democratic facilities do not exist, it is the message of the WSM is that workers must combine their struggles for such rights with a political struggle for socialism.

What distinguishes the World Socialist Movement is that when we talk of common ownership we do not just include the means of production, but also, specifically, call for the common and democratic control of the means of distribution. Equal access to the common store without the requirement of exchange or payment is one of the things we consider to be the hallmark of genuine socialism. How would common ownership and democratic control work in practice? Without a price mechanism, some critics do not understand how signals can pass from the user to the producer or how decisions about production can be made. Yet such non-market systems already exist even within capitalism and a study of these can give useful insights into the practical operation of a socialist production and distribution system.

Socialism will have a number of advantages.

Firstly, the really great difference will be that instead of functioning in a dehumanised way as objects of exploitation within the wages system generating profit and capital accumulation for their exploiters, people will be freely cooperating with each other to do what was necessary for the community. The whole method of organisation would be through democratic control. People will decide what must be done and they will be free to get on with it solely for the benefit of everyone.

Secondly, socialism will remove vast amounts of waste. That capitalism is a society of fantastic waste was put very well by Marx:

“The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand enforcing economy in each individual business, begets by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour power and of the social means of production. not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable. but in themselves superfluous.” (Capital,Volume I. chapter 17. section 4).

The precise amount of labour that would become available for useful production in socialism is very difficult to judge but, at a rough estimate, it is likely that socialism could double the number of people available for this. The waste in terms of mining, manufacture, transport and energy supply that goes into the war machine and to servicing activities like insurance, finance and banking could be diverted into useful production, reducing the amount by which total production would need to be increased.

A third important advantage that socialism would enjoy would be the freedom to select and use production methods strictly on their merits. It would not matter that a desirable method might use more labour than an undesirable one. The selection and use of production methods will be free to take into account a broad range of needs, including the enjoyment of work itself, care of the environment, conservation of materials, social safety and animal welfare.

The fourth advantage that socialism would enjoy is that it will be free to use the planet as a single productive unit. This will follow from the establishment of a common interest amongst all peoples, and it will tend to make for a safer and more rational use of the Earth’s resources.

The socialist goal is a steady-state system, a society of zero growth with a fixed structure of means of production producing stable levels of goods for stable numbers of people; a conservation society which could work with a minimum loss of natural materials through things like recycling: a society where, because people will live in cooperation with each other, they will also be able to work in cooperation and harmony with the natural systems of the planet, and where the focus of social life will be mainly with the local community.

O Slaves of Toil (music)

 

On with the Revolution

 

Poverty is not a disease imposed by nature; it is not due to a shortage of wealth but to the way in which wealth is distributed. It is born out of particular social conditions and its existence to-day is due immediately to the way in which wealth is distributed. The way in which wealth is distributed depends upon the method of production, so this is the fundamental cause of poverty. To-day wealth is produced by means of privately owned means of production (land, machinery, and so on), consequently, the wealth produced belongs to those who own the means of production. The workers work upon and operate the means of production but they do not own a fraction of the wealth produced. The economic evils that exist are caused solely by the fact that the means of production belong to private individuals and not to the whole people. The only solution of these evils is to change the basis of society; transfer the means of production from the hands of private individuals to the whole of society—change private ownership of these things into social ownership. That is socialism.

If the means of production and distribution are owned in common by the whole of society and used to meet the needs of the whole of society the necessary measures to be taken to allocate resources would be comparatively simple.The working class will be able to make use of some of the existing institutions of capitalism in order to indicate the democratic decision to set up socialism. In this country, it will make use of the elaborate parliamentary machine, together with the various forces of the state that it controls.

Assume that the majority of society has elected to make revolutionary change. What would happen?

First, it would be necessary to —

1. Ascertain the needs of the population.

2. The means available to satisfy these needs.

3. The labour required to do the necessary work.

1. It would be necessary to divide the country up into areas according to the distribution of the population, and to find out the kind and amount of goods required for different areas. The skeleton of such an organisation already exists to-day in the form of city and county councils.

It would only be a question of compiling different kinds of statistics from those which are compiled to-day. The main things we require are food, housing, health and education.

2. The means available to satisfy the above needs would be again a question of compiling statistics.

3. It would be necessary to find out the number of workers, the various kinds of skill and the distribution of the workers over the country.

 The vast amount of statistical work that is done at present and its nature show that the organisation for doing such work is already in existence and would be available.

Once having compiled and collected the statistics (a relatively simple matter) it would be necessary to distribute the work according to workers and resources and spread the work approximately equally over all so that more work would not be demanded from one than from another.

Individual countries are not a self-supporting country and that once dealings are entered into with people abroad complications would arise. Here it must be borne in mind that all over the world the degree of development in the important countries (those that would really matter) is roughly about the same. By the time the majority of the people in one particular country had arrived at the idea that socialism was desirable, the people in other countries would beshare the same view. While each country must settle its own social problem, yet each cannot do so without involving the world in its operations. Hence the international character of socialism.

Union Maids (video)

 

A Message of Hope

 

The socialist transformation of society entails the dispossession of the minority capitalist class of their ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. All of their lands and factories, mines, media and transport will be taken away from them. The machinery of production will become the common property of society. In order for the capitalists to be dispossessed — or "the expropriators to be expropriated", as Marx put it — there is one prerequisite. The working class, who produce all the wealth and constitute a majority of society, must be conscious of what they are doing. The dispossession of the capitalists cannot be carried out by politically ignorant workers, and nor can the task be performed for them by enlightened leaders. As the World Socialist Movement makes clear, the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves. 

Socialists will enter the state bodies as delegates, not representatives or political leaders. They will be accountable for every move to the socialist movement and their sole purpose in entering the state bodies will be to abolish ruling class power. They will formally enact the abolition of class ownership, and in doing so will express the wishes of millions who have voted for socialism and nothing less. 

It is crucial that the state, which controls the means of coercion including the police and armed forces, is not left in the hands of the capitalists it represents. But unlike previous contestants for state power, the working class will not seek to establish its own state: a workers' state or a socialist state.

 As Engels pointed out, the workers' conquest of state power will be the last act of the state. The state will be dismantled. Government over people will be replaced by the administration of things. A class-free society, which will exist the moment that the capitalists are dispossessed and the means of wealth production and distribution are commonly owned and democratically controlled must be a society without a state. The State, like other social institutions, has not existed for all eternity, the long era of primitive man’s existence knew it not, only the advent of property with consequent class subjections makes the State a necessity.

“The modern State is but an executive committee for administering the affairs of the whole bourgeois class.”— (Communist Manifesto.)

With the establishment of Socialism and the consequent abolition of classes and class oppression, the function of the State ceases, and its need is ended. Socialism and the State are therefore incompatible. 

The World Socialist Movement seeks through the self-interest of the workers to change the system because that system is run in the interest of those who are parasites in society. It urges the producers of wealth to gain comfort for themselves. Within the capitalist system, there are countless intellectuals laying claim to being the teachers of the working class. every library and bookshop is filled with their voluminous works, professing their deepest sympathy with the sufferings of that class. Our advice to our fellow workers in this age of political chicanery and academic charlatans is to trust none. The main force generated within that system and the human factor that must bring that change is the growing conscious discontent of the working class, who in order to achieve their emancipation must realise that the barrier of freedom and comfort for all stands in the present socially operated, but privately-owned means of life. The only possible alternative is social ownership, by which the evils of to-day will be removed and the communal form of society in which the human family was cradled for so many thousands of years restored.

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, working people learned that it was difficult to improve their condition by individual appeals to their employers. They also discovered that appeals to elected representatives went unheard. And so the men and women organised into trade unions to exercise their economic power in forcing the employers of labour to concede better working conditions, shorter hours or higher wages. The trade unions are organised for the expressed purpose of exercising the economic power possessed by the workers through the use of their hands or brains in operating and running industry.  Without the working class not one wheel would turn. There is no power in the world strong enough to oppose successfully the will of the organised, useful, productive working class when it is conscious of its class interests and determined to serve them. For it is only the people who work who carry folks around and feed them, and shelter to warm and clothe them, and take things to them. In spite of the innumerable battles between the employers and the workers and in spite of the steady gains made by labour, the workers have lost as many battles as they have won. In spite of increased wages and in spite of improved conditions, workers are still exploited. The workers have to be forever fighting to keep pace with the rising cost of living. The workers have to fight on the industrial field, with their fellow workers or sink lower and lower into utter degradation and despair. There is absolutely no way to avoid this fight. The only real hope for the working class is in the abolition of the wages system.

The Limerick Soviet (song)

 There was much more to the workers' history of Ireland than nationalism.