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.

Distract, Divide, and Conquer

 

When we can convince a majority of our fellow workers that putting into practice of our principles will bring about an era of industrial democracy — the only true freedom — then we know our goal will be achieved. It cannot be gained until we do this. We do not believe in minority rule of any kind, no matter by whom. We do not believe in dictatorship, whether of the plutocracy or the misnamed “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

We have been for centuries and are now suffering from dictatorships, and we want to help abolish them from the face of the earth.We subscribe to the right of a majority to decide under what kind of system we shall live. Any other method means chaos. Our business is to do our part in convincing the majority that they must use their organised political power to achieve their freedom.

The Socialist Party has often been vilified by pseudo-revolutionists who hope they can “create” a revolution by following the methods of those in other countries where the industrial environment and institutions of government were very different.We believe in using every effort to overthrow the present economic system called capitalism. We believe in using every democratic effort to capture the political power of the state to be used in overthrowing this system. We believe in it because we also believe that the peaceable method of the ballot is the most efficient method; that it is real “direct action.”

Workers have but one enemy, the capitalist class. The only war worth fighting is the class war, the war of the workers against the robber class. The abolition of the profit and wages system is the only fight that will benefit us. We are oppose  ALL armies and ALL wars  because they always have been, and always will be, the weapons of the ruling class to keep us in wage slavery. We object to having single working person sacrificed to the interests of the capitalist class.  We have to fight the class struggle because nothing other than the class struggle can solve the problem of war and peace. The Socialist Party rejects  nationalism as a reason for  workers to go to war.

We judge any action taken by the wage slave fraternity from the standpoint of working class interests. The class struggle is the guide to tactics and to policy. We approve of those acts that aid in the fight against capitalism and condemn those that strengthen the power of labour’s enemies.

 The Socialist Party has  no scheme for re-drawing frontiers or solving minority problems. We recognise the fact that many people are much concerned with religious or language or other differences, but we do not believe that these are the cause of national conflicts and racial hatreds. The problem of making all countries fit for all people to live in will not be solved by changing borsers. When there is no longer a profit-seeking privileged class to bedevil relationships between peoples, and when there is no exploited class to suffer poverty and unemployment, the national problem will be solved, but that means socialism and no frontiers.

It is capitalism that causes the poverty of the mass of the population, on both sides of all frontiers, and it is capitalism that threatens the worker always with unemployment: but how convenient it is for the capitalist to hold up the foreigner as the cause of it all. If  foreign workers stays at home we are told they are destroying “our” industry by their cheap labour. If foreign workers happens to be a minority group inside the frontier, they are taking “our” job. If a person who speaks our language is in a minority group in some other country, he or she is told they can only find prosperity and happiness by agitating to rejoin the fatherland or motherland.  

Slum housing, malnutrition, diseaseare directly the result of poverty. To eliminate these evils, poverty must be abolished.

Poverty is caused through a small minority class owning the means of wealth production and distribution; as a consequence, they also own the wealth produced by the sweat and toil of the working class. The cure for poverty is simple. Here are the directions on the label.

Let the working class organise for socialism. Make use of their votes to gain control of Parliament and thus control of the armed forces. Eject the owners of the means of production from their ownership. Make the instruments of wealth production the common property of all, and the wealth produced by the community free of access to all.

Then a complete change in the economic basis of society will be achieved. Poverty and its ills, as well as war, will become for all times a thing of the past.

The Enemy Is Capitalism, The Fight Is For Socialism! 

One Worldists

 

Those in charge of the political affairs of British capitalism are worried. The nationalist propaganda that their predecessors pumped out for years -- justifying the British Empire on the grounds that the colonised peoples were inferior -- has come back to haunt them. A large section of the native working class still believes this crap, long after it has ceased to be of any use to the ruling class. Now that there is a large minority of workers from or descended from people from the old Empire, our rulers want them, in the interests of national unity, to be regarded as fellow Britishers. So now they are going to "educate" workers that it is nasty and wrong to think black people are inferior and cannot be British.

Of course, people who have dark skin are not, and never were, inferior. All human beings are members of the same biological species -- homo sapiens -- and we all have the same capacity to learn. There is, if you like, only one race -- the human race. We are all citizens of the world, Earthlings.

But this is not what the politicians are proposing should be taught in the schools. They want to teach working-class kids "what it means to be British" in true Jingo fashion.

So, although racism is now out, equally divisive nationalism is still in and is in fact to be stepped up. Schoolkids are to be taught, as before, that they are primarily members of a supposed "British nation" all of whose members allegedly have a common interest different from the subjects of other so-called "nation-States". The only difference will be that they will be taught that this British nation now includes dark-skinned people from the former Empire and that such people too can now proudly look down on "foreigners".

Socialists will try to do what they can to counter this nationalist state-propaganda by pointing out that nationalism is an ideology which ruling classes use to try to obtain the acquiescence and support of those they rule over and that wage and salary workers from all countries have more in common with each other than with their rulers. Ultimately, they have a common interest in establishing a socialist world commonwealth where there'll be no frontiers or nation-states just people speaking different languages and enjoying different tastes in dress, music, culture and the like but which everybody will be entitled to share in.

The solution to the ongoing insanity, we insist, remains the same. There is one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause – to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of humanity – socialism.

As socialists, we do maintain that it is dangerous to listen to leaders of any party and from any country, regardless of their flower cant, and insist that anything they say is taken with a pinch of salt and that workers should organise against them and in their ilk and in our own interests. The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society when we abolish the profit system and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living, their control of the education system, and their monopoly of the media and other information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we possess are our class unity, our intelligence, our ability to question every corrupt word that is uttered by politicians and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency – not least of these methods is to further lie to us at every opportunity. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness questions everything they say, to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

The Limerick Soviet (song)

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

This is our planet. We want it back

 

We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements. Only in a socialist society will the community be able to make decisions about energy production which are based on what is safe and in the human interest instead of decisions based on, and limited by, economic considerations. Only in a socialist society, when human beings can relate to each other as one family and not as units of labour to be exploited or national enemies to be destroyed, will the threats of environmental or military destruction really be removed. Socialism needs mass understanding and support — and then the world will be changed.  We in the World Socialist Movement can envisage a socialist party growing in the future along with many other expressions of working class organisation including trade unions and workers’ councils. We have never stood aloof from the industrial scene and class struggle, as our critics keep repeating until such claims have become an urban legend for many on the Left. However, what we strictly adhere to is that decisions about industrial disputes and work-place agreements are to be made by those directly involved and not by outside-the-union political parties.

The working class will organise itself to expropriate those who live parasitically upon it. It will link itself with the workers of every country, to achieve this internationally, when the workers understand their class-interests. Force is the foundation of capitalist domination, and that force is obtained through Parliament; capitalist control there means capitalist control everywhere. The workers therefore have nothing to gain by supporting any party which seeks to maintain that control. Concessions and reliefs may have been granted in the past by both parties, but none of these concessions, none of these vaunted reliefs have altered the general position of the workers in society. They are still slaves, and while Conservatism, or Labourism has their loyalty they will remain slaves. The workers alone can free themselves from the burden of their condition—this they can do when they wish by organising on a class basis. The SocialistParty preaches the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life. That is the only way of ending the war of classes.

‘The Socialist Party seeks to build an inclusive united working class movement as the next stage in the class struggle. Socialist Party members understand that a shorter work week and the creation of a new union organisation will not topple the capitalist system. But, as a first step, it would provide an example and a base of operations. The object is to continue the education of the worker, to secure badly-needed immediate improvements in working conditions, and, thus, through the organisation, to further the solidarity of the working class and to prevent premature violence. The workers’ revolt can commence on a regional basis, the socialist revolution must be national, continental, and, ultimately, world-wide. Let us determine that that demand for a new idea in the workers’ minds shall not be the sterile idea of nationalism but with the one fruitful conception for humanity, the idea of socialism, the aim will be to make the whole earth a common human possession.

The immediate task is to make socialists and the conditions for propaganda have never been more favourable. After the most devastating war in history, capitalism is still torn by dissension and struggle. It is as useful to write in dust as to work for peace on a capitalist basis. The way to prevent war is to establish socialism. Let us not bow our heads and complain of betrayal; let us organise together for the establishment of a worldwide society—Socialism. A socialist world is possible now, to-day. Make it a certainty by joining the Socialist Party to-day. Workers, for your own sakes and for humanity's sake study socialism. Then, when you understand it, you will organise to establish it and so emancipate yourselves from the shackles of wage-slavery. Clearer than ever before stands out the great fact that there is no hope for real peace in the world until these various sections of workers recognise the common fundamental character of their slavery and set to work to remove it, thus ending the enslavement of the human race by the establishment of socialism.

We Call It Socialism

 The alternative to the present capitalist system of profit-seeking and monetary accumulation involves:

· the absence of any property rights, private or state, over natural and industrial resources needed for production;

· the existence of a non-coercive democratic decision-making structure;

· the guaranteed access for all to what they need to satisfy their needs;

· the orientation of production towards the direct satisfaction of real needs in a flexible and self-regulating way without the intervention of money and buying and selling;

· the organisation of work as a voluntary service under the democratic control of those working in the various production units.

We call this system “socialism”, but it is the content, not the name, that is important. In any event, it obviously has nothing in common with the state capitalist regimes (as in the former USSR or China) or proposals for state control (as by the Labour left) which are often erroneously called “socialist”.

The means by which the new society can be achieved are determined by its nature as a society involving voluntary co-operation and democratic participation. It cannot be imposed from above by some self-appointed liberators nor by some well-meaning state bureaucracy but can only come into existence as a result of being the expressed wish of a majority—an overwhelming majority—of the population. In other words, the new society can only be established by democratic political action and the movement to establish it can only employ democratic forms of struggle.

Because the present system is, as a system must be, an inter-related whole and not a chance collection of good and bad elements, it cannot be abolished piecemeal. It can only be abolished in its entirety or not at all. This fact determines the choice as to what we must do: work towards a complete break with the present system as opposed to trying to gradually transform it.

Gradual reform cannot lead to a democratic, ecological society because capitalism is an economic system governed by blind, uncontrollable, economic laws which always triumph in the end over political intervention, however well-meaning or determined this might be. Any attempt on the part of a government to impose other priorities than profit-making risks either provoking an economic crisis or the government ending up administering the system in the only way it can be—as a profit-oriented system in which profit-making has to be given priority over meeting needs or respecting the balance of nature. This is not to say that measures to palliate the bad effects of the present economic system on nature should not be taken but these should be seen for what they are: mere palliatives and not steps towards an ecological society.

The only effective strategy for achieving a free democratic society in harmony with nature is to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as its sole aim. We recognise a huge mistake among those wanting to see changes for the better — not that positive changes are undesirable but simply that tinkering with a mechanism can't be the best way to fix the problem. Anyone drawn to the idea and principles of socialism will not be looking to 'fix' any problem caused by capitalism, whether technological, scientific, or whatever, but will be wanting and seeking because it's obviously necessary if the planet is to remain a viable planet for survival, the end of capitalism.  Socialism has no borders. It is essentially global. It cannot be otherwise. The abolition of nations will not mean that cultural variety will be destroyed. Indeed, it is nationalism which all too often suppresses minority cultures. In a socialist society the richness of cultural customs will make the world a better place, just as the absence of armies and bombs and passports — all features of a world divided — will make the world secure.

 A socialist world will not be one in which there will be no problems left to solve. But, free from the fetters of production for profit, the sole basis of creating goods and services will be the satisfaction of human needs. Without several nations competing to make the same product, without rival research institutes in different nations each trying to make a discovery without others knowing what they know, the world will be able to unite its energies for the first time ever. The waste, duplication and tension of a society cut up into nations will give way to one world, one people and one common aim of mutual survival and comfort.

Socialism Now

Only with the introduction of socialism will the problems of capitalism end. As revolutionaries, we should fight the collective war between us and the ruling class, not play the hostage game at their bargaining table. We have nothing to say to our rulers on how to run capitalism, we should not be drawn into fighting their battles. We advocate a world without borders, social classes, leaders, governments and armies. A world without money or wages, exchange, buying and selling. Where people can give freely of their abilities and take according to their own self-defined needs. A global system in which each person has a free and democratic say in how their world is run. It is workers who produce everything society needs and provides all of its services. Capitalism is a barrier to the fair and needed use of the world’s productive forces. In a world of potential abundance, profit imposes widespread artificial scarcity.  We have always said that socialism can only be established by a conscious, participating working class organised not only politically to capture and destroy the State machine but also outside parliament ready to take over and run industry and society generally.

Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. Governments cannot be depended upon because they only act as an executive of capitalism. An expansion of democracy, while welcome, makes little difference if candidates can only offer variations on the same policies. Capitalism must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with it buying, selling and exchanging. And in place of this, we need to establish a different global social system – a society in which there is common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed. Socialists build that new world, by building an understanding of what socialism will be like.

We feel no shame or guilt in inviting you to join the Socialist Party. It is no boast when we say that it is the only political party in this country worthy of working-class support; the only party whose sole object is the overthrow of this system whereby the majority of human beings —the working class—produce the wealth of the world for the small minority—the capitalists—who own it. Our organisation is small, but it is based on principles sound and irrefutable. Socialists would ask where is this common-sense in working men who continue to vote for political parties representing the capitalist class. It is indeed a strange state of affairs when we live in a society which is capable of producing an abundance of goods for the benefit of all men, yet that production is restricted artificially because a minority of men and women who form the capitalist class, can see no profit at the end of the day. Workers after all produce all the goods and services, they run the capitalist system from top to bottom, and yet they own virtually nothing of the means of production except their right to defend themselves in times of war, and the right to be subservient to them in times of peace. We believe that the human race is gradually learning the simple lesson that the people as a whole are wiser for the public good than any privileged class. we can only attempt to educate our fellow-workers, as we in our turn have had our eyes opened to the nature of society, and what makes it tick and explode.

Socialism is the complete antithesis of capitalism. In a socialist world private and/or state ownership of society’s means of life will give way to social ownership and production of goods and services solely for use. So goods and services will no longer be produced as commodities for sale and profit. Accordingly, there will be no role in a socialist society for a means of exchange; hence, the entire, utterly wasteful commercial sinews of capitalism will be obsolete. The classless, wageless, moneyless society envisaged in the socialist aphorism: “From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs” will become a reality. A world free from the corruptive influences of money and power where the government of people will give way to a simple administration of things.

Such a society – founded on co-operation instead of competition – could not be established by guns, bombs or violence. It can only be established and only maintained by the conscious democratic action of the majority. Such a majority would be the democratic foundation of a free, socialist world. If the question of counter-revolutionary violence is hypothesised then obviously that violence would have to be eliminated; as socialists have traditionally said “peacefully if we may; forcefully if we must”, but, given the conditions created by a socialist-conscious majority, the capitalist reaction would be deprived of material nourishment.