Socialism is the birthright of all.

The working class are divorced from the essentials for producing wealth: they own neither the land nor the means and instruments by which the natural resources are, by their class alone, utilised and transformed into wealth. The expenditure of their labour-power creates all economic wealth, but that wealth is appropriated by their exploiters, the capitalist class, who own the means of life. Out of the total value alone produced by our class, we receive but a small portion—wages—to keep us in bare subsistence to enable us to "carry on" from day to day.

The sole function of the worker is to create wealth in order to produce a surplus-value, i.e., a value which is unpaid for, for their masters. Slaves thus, to the class that own all the means of producing wealth and appropriate all the products, they exist to serve the interests of the exploiting class only. Commodities being produced only for profit, a market must be found for them. They are sold in the long run at their value, and realise profit for their sellers. But embodied in a commodity is far more value created by the labour expended in its production than has been received by the workers for producing it. Practically every single commodity in the world, in fact, contains unpaid labour. And they are all produced by wage-slaves. Through the fleecing wages-system the greater part of the value of all commodities represents the robbery of their producers through capitalist exploitation.

Their labour-power is bought solely for that purpose !

They have to toil far longer than is necessary to create the wealth they require to maintain themselves; and the surplus labour-time produces a surplus-value for the exploiting class.

At present the latter are the masters of the world: they own and control humanity's means of life. Their class interests are upheld in every sphere—industrial, social, political. Press, pulpit, and platform reflect their will and make secure their dominance.

And above all they have and wield the political power. Through that alone the military and police obey their will, and laws are shaped to protect their interests.

Is, then, the position of the workers hopeless? Emphatically no ! They will inevitably be freed from the chains binding them—but the workers alone can and will make them snap. The development of the capitalist system engenders an ever-increasing strife through the innate opposition of interests, proletarian and capitalistic. The workers are driven by the economic forces ringing them round to increased class-consciousness.

What irony that the world is owned and controlled by the capitalists, and a shackled proletariat run the whole concern for them !

Only the workers can free it from the bonds of a pernicious system. "Wage-workers of the World, Unite! " says Marx. The solidarity of the workers, keenly conscious of their class interests and aims, and educated to see their goal and the way to it, will, with organisation, prepare them for capitalism's overthrow.

Crisis after crisis will occur, ever intensifying, as the present system increases in complexity and becomes unworkable. The more the workers feel the economic pinch the more will .they be ready for our propaganda. And socialist propaganda will have its effect. The wage-slaves' chains will chafe unbearably.

Then will come the Social Revolution!— brought about as the result of capitalism's inability to solve the problems it has created. In the Socialist Commonwealth, where the products of all labour will be the common wealth, the work of a wife and mother will be as highly valued as the work of a welder or a bricklayer. The making of a strong and beautiful citizen will be as important as the making of a strong and beautiful ship.

 

Having captured political power, the workers will control it and its adjuncts, overthrowing the present regime and establishing in its place the Socialist Commonwealth.

They have nought but their chains to lose ! They have EVERYTHING to gain by a Socialist system of society. No other class but their own will emancipate them from wage-slavery. No other means but the seizing of the political power, the capture of the machinery of government through the ballot, will enable them to effect their purpose—it's the key!

The economic resources of the world, then, will be organised for the use and benefit of the community as a whole, by the only class that counts—the workers.

Production for profit will be superseded by production for social use. Exploitation will be extinguished, class ownership of the means of life having been displaced by social ownership in a society in which the class barriers are swept away.

The wondrous means of large-scale production—prolific beyond even our wildest dreams as soon as the stifling hand of capitalism is removed from it—will enable society to create a superabundance of wealth with a minimum of effort—sufficient for all without toil, so that none need look askance at what another eats or enjoys, no hand may be niggard toward its neighbour, and no back warped and bent with drudgery.

As all who are able will have to contribute their share to the work of producing the social wealth, and there will be no parasitic idlers of any kind to maintain, it follows that the daily social effort will furnish abundance for ALL with an unimagined facility.

Thus man's life will not be as now, one long drudgery of wealth-production to enrich the coffers of an idle and thievish class—but it will be life indeed !—full and free as only the conquest of the forces of nature, and equality in the enjoyment of the economic fruits and advantages of that conquest, can afford.

Also all the evils inseparable from capitalism—its inevitable products, in fact, will disappear. Unemployment, overwork, want, prostitution, and all the preventable evils will cease to exist along with capitalism itself.

Mankind, liberated from wage-slavery, will at last be free ! Society then will be one in which oppression, class-rule, and all the anomalies of the present order will have disappeared. The impetus this will give (through the reorganisation by a revolutionary class on a sane economic basis and the consequent liberation of that class) to the devotion of society to things of real worth will be tremendous. The fullest opportunity to gain and keep health of mind and body ; the development of each individual citizen's finest abilities and innate qualities will be accorded every facility; and culture and all that makes life worth living from youth to old age will, under socialism alone be the birthright of all.

Isn't such a world worth winning ? Compared with the sordid system of the present day the gain for the workers is indeed immeasurable.

The toilers have even now the means at hand for realising socialism, for they have the preponderance of the votes. All that is lacking is an understanding of their class slavery and how socialism will free them from it.

Think it over, fellow workers. Consider its meaning to you and your class. Socialism is inevitable but the sooner you are ready for it the sooner you will be able to establish it.

It rests with you, the workers of the world, to liberate yourselves from your slavery, and rid the world of a blighting system of capitalist exploitation.

Workers must understand that this system of private ownership in the means of wealth production and distribution is the cause of their poverty and misery, that they are poor because they are robbed as a result of being compelled to sell their labour power to the class that own. They must learn, further, that the interests of the working class, and of the non-working, employing, and owning class are opposed ; that the struggle which the workers carry on with the masters for better conditions, fewer hours of employment, etc, arises from the propertied and propertyless condition of the two classes, and the attempt of those classes to live out of the wealth produced by the working class, each class struggling to obtain as big a share as possible.

The masters take advantage of all the means at their disposal to compel the workers to, not only increase the total wealth production, but to accept and be content with, the smallest possible part of the total that will suffice to keep the workers alive and able, or fit, to continue wealth production. The workers must learn a lesson from the masters and build up an organisation for themselves ; and as only a change from the system of private, to the common ownership of the means of life, can alter the poverty conditions of the workers (that should be the object of the workers' party and that only) they should control their organisation and its members and seek to capture the governmental forces to aid them in their struggle against the capitalist class. In so doing they take away the power that the capitalists have and add power unto themselves.

How the Socialist Party has the answers

Whatever changes or reforms the ruling class may decide to introduce, the duty of the workers is to organise politically for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. They must refuse to be side-tracked by reformers. The workers of all lands are wage slaves. They have the same miserable lot, of whatever nationality they may be. Workers are only allowed access to the instruments of labour in order that they may produce more wealth than they have returned to them in the form of wages, hence they are exploited—robbed. And as a natural consequence they try to lessen the extent of that exploitation by struggling for increases of wages.

We in the Socialist Party are out for the abolition of the wages system—the result of the private ownership of the means of life. We want the workers to grip the fact that it is just this— the way in which these means are used against our class by our exploiters—that causes all the misery. We desire the overthrow of the capitalist system, and in its place the establishment of socialism. We wage war against CAPITALISM, and therefore are out to rid the world of it. We want the abolition of the system causing the class division. We desire the speedy overthrow of the bloody system that is built up out working-class slavery and exploitation. We are out for SOCIALISM! Then production for the use of all will take the place of the pernicious production for the profit of a few, and a new era will open up for mankind. 

Mere protest against international warfare will not prevent its occurrence. War after war will and must be waged while capitalism lasts. Why? Because under capitalism it is the conflict of capitalist groups that starts the war machinery, and the battle field is the arena where is decided what fails to be decided in the political arena.

When the world's workers are educated in economics and socialist principles, and organised for the capture of political power, we will soon annihilate capitalism root and branch. 

Because the capitalist class desires good and faithful servants, cheap, docile, and ignorant wage slaves. And to get them there is no better preparative than religion.

While the workers' head is full of such notions as God, the Devil, and the Hereafter, to them their slave condition on this planet is a minor affair. The look upon their revolting conditions as heaven-sent and unchangeable. That their lives and destiny should be controlled in just the same way as the machine which they are compelled to tend gives them no food for thought. The ownership by a small section of society of the economic resources of the whole community, "always has been and always will be"—in their mind.

The Socialist Party, however, has analysed society from top to bottom. We know and understand the laws of the development of the social organism. Religion we explain as having its origin in ancestor worship, and owing its development to the changing economic conditions, which will also be responsible for its disappearance in the future. The poverty and degradation of the working class to-day he knows is due to the private ownership of the means of life.

Socialists suggests to you that instead of thinking about "changing your heart," you should consider the alteration of the basis of society—to establish in place of the present system, one based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

Imagine a Different World

For many long years the Socialist Party has pleaded with fellow-workers to organise and take over the entire means of production and distribution. It has published the Socialist Standard, pamphlets, books and leaflets of all kinds with scanty result. Unheedingly, the workers have remained indifferent to questions of supreme importance. Now, in the middle of a pandemic, many are now raising questions about the nature of this society. Some are now saying capitalism must go. It is no longer a question of condemning capitalism; capitalism has condemned itself. 

The capitalist class owns and controls the social necessaries, the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all institutions to its own interests. On the other hand, there is another class—the working class—which is eventually to change the whole system of ownership of the means of production. Workers realise that immediately following the change, these social relations will also be shifted; institutions deriving their support and sustenance from the class in power will be made to confirm to new conditions after the overthrow of the existing industrial system. While the capitalists live in luxury and in extravagance, the workers are condemned to lives of poverty, toil and deprivation. We lack economic security. Poverty and the fear of poverty make our lives miserable. The average worker is not more than a few weeks removed from a state of destitution. Lacking wealth, we lack power, and the wealth they produce constitutes the power of the capitalists which is used to hold us in subjection. Now. workers know they possess a power infinitely greater than that of the capitalists. The pandemic has highlighted that it is our power to produce wealth, to run industry, to carry on production. We can do this without capitalists, while without workers, capitalists are helpless. Working class control of industries, by all engaged in the process of production, must build its foundation on the highly perfected form and methods of production, and upon the conditions which accelerate the passing away of the capitalist system of ownership in the instruments of production and distribution.

Working people will be guaranteed security, democracy, equality and peace only when our world is run on an entirely different basis than it is now; only when a socialist system replaces the present capitalist one. The new socialist system would mean that working people would own the factories and farms and they would plan production and distribution for their own needs.

What is this system?

The working class is not a small, narrow class. The working class constitutes the majority of the population composed of the industrial and agricultural workers, and non-production workers such as clerical, transportation and service workers. The working class is defined as all those who:

1) Do not own the means of production;
2) Have to sell their labour-power to the capitalist class to make a living;
3) Directly, or indirectly, create surplus value... which is expropriated by the capitalist class. 

This exploitation, or expropriation of surplus value, creates an irreconcilable, antagonistic class contradiction between the employees and the employers. Only the emancipation from capital itself can liberate workers. Their mission, therefore, is to overthrow their masters. 

In order to keep power, the capitalists teach the idea that capital and capitalism have always existed. In this way, they seek to convey the idea that capitalist class society and capitalist exploitation will continue to exist forever. In other words, that it is a system of society that is natural and eternal, and there is no use anyone thinking of making fundamental changes in it or replacing it with any other social system. This idea is completely false. It has been developed only to maintain the capitalist class in economic and political control. To live, capital must accumulate. To accumulate, capital must yield profit.

Socialist society will be a class-free society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.”

For this to be possible, socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses, and so on, to satisfy material needs; but also schools and theatres, playing-fields, books and concerts, so that people can lead full, physical and cultural lives.

Socialism will be worldwide. It is not something which can be fully completed in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary it must eventually embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to war. Because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies.

Many institutions which we accept today as essential, such as police and prisons, armies and civil servants, will have disappeared. Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions and organisations, will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a global family.

It is often argued that, however desirable such a communist society may be, it could never be made to work, because, whatever changes are made in the form of society, human nature will always remain fundamentally the same: there must always be rulers and ruled, rich and poor, employers and employed. This argument springs from ignorance of the facts. 

The study of history, and the observation of primitive communities still living in the world, prove that in the earliest kind of society not only were the land and the tools (what are called the means of production) regarded as the common property of the tribe, but everyone shared in the common tasks of production and defence, as well as in the product of their labour. Because of the low level of technique such communities were necessarily extremely primitive and poor, but because there was common ownership, and therefore no classes, they are correctly described as “primitive communism.” 

The World-wide Plague. Capitalism Compelling Use Of The Cash Nexus.

So now we are mired down in what, to call a spade a spade, is a world-wide plague. It began in an illegal animal market in China and the world was not told about it before it was spreading quickly. Putting those two facts together means only one thing: money. An illegal market means money and why wasn't the world told?; probably because of the problems it would cause China's business towards its competitors. 

It all relates to money which of course is the very death blood of capitalism. However, it is all to easy to blame capitalism, which would not be the point. Capitalism is the atrocious system the worlds working class has seen unfit to abolish and now they are paying for it.

Perhaps this co-vid 19 business will aid additional workers seeing the stupidity of capitalism compelling use of the cash nexus to get what folk need; with such a mass interruption in the circulating rate of global capital wiping out profits, and now governments, loath(!), subsidizing workers to buy the things they need, like food, rent, mortgages, (even in Conservative parasite-heavens of America and UK!), perhaps a bit of sense may get knocked into people's heads what a madhouse things were and are, but do not have to be . . . 

In this sense the Socialist non-market case is more timely than ever.

S.P.C. Members.

Machinery That Creates Abundance Leaving People In Want.

On March 7 the Toronto Star ran an article which focused on the potential of robots to cook and serve food at fast food restaurants. 

In a test kitchen at Miso Robotics in Pasadena, Flippy the Robot is doing exactly that. At present Flippy costs $10,000, but cheaper models are promised in future. Flippy can be rented for $2,000 a month in a subscription basis, which breaks down to $3 an hour; a person doing the same job would cost at least $4,000 a month and robots never call in sick. Earlier versions of Flippy are already in use at Dodger Stadium and CaliBurger, a small fast food chain. 

When one thinks of the workers who will be laid off it becomes another case of machinery that creates abundance leaving people in want.

S.P.C. Members.