Capitalism is our Enemy

Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the majority of working-people. The present system of social production and private ownership is rapidly converting society into two antagonistic classes — i.e., the capitalist class and the propertyless class. Independent political action and the trade union movement are the chief emancipating factors of the working class, the one representing its political, the other its economic wing, and both must cooperate to abolish the capitalist system. Therefore the Socialist Party declares its object to be:

 First — The organisation of the working class into a political party to conquer the public powers now controlled by capitalists.

Second — The abolition of wage slavery by the establishment of a system of cooperative industry, based upon the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, to be administered by society in the interest of all its members, and the complete emancipation of the wage-slaves. 

Socialism shall satisfy all the material needs without stint or measure from the common storehouse, according to their desires. The abundant production now possible, and which invention will constantly facilitate, will remove any need for rationing or limiting of consumption. Every individual, relying on the great common production, will be secure from material want and anxiety. There will be no class distinctions. There will be neither rich nor poor. There will be neither masters nor servants, all being in a position of economic equality — no individual will be able to become the employer of another. When wages have disappeared, when all are upon a basis of economic equality, when the position of manager, director, organiser, etc., brings no material advantage, the desire for it will be less widespread and less keen, and the danger of oppressive action by the management will be largely nullified. Nevertheless, management imposed on unwilling subordinates will not be tolerated; where the organiser has chosen the assistants, the assistants will be free to leave, or change him; where the assistants choose the organiser, they will be free to change him. Co-operation for the common good is necessary, but freedom, not domination, is the goal.

Money will no longer exist, and none will desire to hoard commodities not in use, since a fresh supply may be obtained at will. There will be no selling, because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything at will, without payment. The possession of private property, beyond that which is in actual personal use, will disappear. Since co-operative work and mutual reliance on mutual aid renders some kind of organisation necessary, the best possible form of organisation must be chosen: the test of its worth is its efficiency and the scope for freedom and initiative it allows to each of its units.

The land, factories, mines, transport, all the means of producing are owned by the capitalist class. The majority of the people own nothing except their muscles and brains, that is, their power to work. The capitalist will only buy labour if he can make profit out of it. The capitalist will compel the worker to work as hard and as long as he can, for as little money as possible. The worker has nothing to sell but his or her labour power. Working-people sells their labour power to an employer for so many hours a day for a certain price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one’s body it comes to this, that a worker actually sells oneself like a slave. Wages are determined by what it costs to keep a worker and  family. What does capitalism offer workers? A life of toil, a bare subsistence. Always the dread fear of unemployment. The whole world must become a huge cooperative society, and working people, instead of slaving to enrich the idle capitalist, creates wealth for the whole community. The workers will enjoy the results of their labour, without having to pay tribute to stock exchange speculators and industrial profiteers. They are no longer slaves of a master but a member of a great global community. Together we shall build a worldwide Co-operative Commonwealth.

The words socialism and communism have the same meaning. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common, production being for use and not for profit. We must fight, struggle, be ready for defeats and disappointments, but once we have consciously set our feet on the right road, with a clear vision of the task ahead, nothing can daunt us and all causes for pessimism disappear.

Socialism - A Solidarity Society

 

The Socialist Party conceives of a society without exploitation, organised democratically for the common good. There may be still room for improving the present social system, but it is of minor consequence compared to the world’s crying need for industrial and social reorganisation. The next great change in the evolution of society must be the socialisation of the means of our common life. Privately owned production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane ends. With all its marvellous progress in technology and invention, the monumental achievements of science, this world of ours has not yet learned how to feed itself. There is no longer the least excuse for a hungry person. All the materials and resources are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide nourishing food, good health and decent homes for every man, woman and child, thus putting an end to the poverty and misery. But these tools and materials and forces must be released from private ownership and control, socialised, democratised, and set in operation for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand. Such a world is a world of strife and hate and such a society can exist only by means of coercion and force. The education of the people is the task of the people to be performed only by themselves. All history attests the fact that all the few have ever done for the many is to keep them in ignorance and servitude.

The Socialist Party visualises socialism as a higher stage of human society, economically, socially and intellectually, where all science and the arts is to be utilised, not for the few, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole. Based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, a new and better economic system is to be built, ending all social oppression creating a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common welfare. This socialist commonwealth, liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, would provide the basis, for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the person, giving full scope for the growth of the creative personality.

If mankind equally possessed and enjoyed in common...the goods, wealth, and conveniences of life and if they wisely managed the goods of the land and the fruits of their labour and industry, they would all have sufficient place to live happy and content, for the earth almost always produces sufficient and even abundantly enough to nourish them and sustain them, if they would always make good use of these goods, and it’s quite rare that the earth fails to produce the necessities of life; and thus all would have enough to live peacefully. No one would lack what is necessary, no one would suffer in order to have what they need to feed or house themselves; for all would find all of this surely, abundantly, easily and comfortably in a well-run community; and thus no one would have any interest in resorting to fraud or falsehood.

No one would have any interest in envying neighbours, nor to be envious of each other, because all will be more or less in a state of equality. No one would have any interest in stealing what others might have, no one would have any interest in killing anyone in order to acquire their possessions, for this would be of no good. No one would have any interest in working themselves to death with fatigue, as is now done by countless numbers of poor people, who barely have what they need to live as well as to meet the expenses that are rigorously demanded of them because each would assist the other in sharing the sweat and toil of labour, and no one would remain uselessly idle while others occupy themselves usefully at labour. The rich steal the better part of the fruits of your hard labours, and leave them nothing but the dregs, fearing penury or poverty. There is no happiness anywhere. Surely we ought to make a stand. What is your life or my life worth, unless it has been exercised in doing something to add to the sum of happiness of the human family? 

Co-operation instead of competition is one of the aim of the Socialist Party. It is nonsense to say that if you remove competition individuals will not excel. How many geniuses who have given us great things thought of profit when they were inventing them? Was it not the thought of the having accomplished something so wondrous for many of them? They did not think of themselves, nor of profit.

Our present system has been a pronounced failure. Political parties have failed. There must be unity and co-operation if we are to rise and take upon ourselves the responsibility of proving that we can under the favorable conditions we have around us find the solution to capitalism’s problem. We can do it. We can if we set our minds upon it.

Socialism - A Better World

 

The Socialist Party seeks to build a workers’ movement which believes in political action and also in economic organisation.  Both these methods go side by side. What the workers need is political education, class consciousness and trade union solidarity. When it comes to a showdown between the working class and the capitalist class, these are vitally necessary. Until we break the power of the state, nothing else can be accomplished. When we proclaim the abolition of the capitalists’ property and the establishment of common property, that in itself is a political act. And the socialists believe that it is necessary, as a matter of strategy, to attack the capitalist at his only accessible point, his government. We regard the state as a very efficient weapon in the hands of the ruling class. Until it is taken over no attempt at a social revolution will be safe for the working class. With the armed power of the state out of the way, then we shall be in a position to inaugurate a co-operative commonwealth, and we shall be ready to set it in motion. And when that time comes, it will be done through the activities of the economic organisation of the working class.

The  wages system, under which labour has been reduced to a commodity is to be supplanted by the cooperative system under which all may engage in useful occupation and work together in harmonious cooperation for the emancipation of labour, the uplifting of humanity, and the advancement of our civilisation. By uniting at the ballot box, political control of the State can be secured, and the cooperative commonwealth established. The Socialist Party is not content with piecemeal, incremental improvements in the conditions of the working class, but instead advances the need for a revolutionary transformation of society that would result in a cooperative commonwealth where workers would democratically determine their working conditions. We shall unite all our energies to destroy the present capitalist system.

The time has come for social regeneration, and this is only possible through a new and worldwide change of system.

We therefore call upon all to muster under the banner of the Socialist Party, so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of State power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous struggle, by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, commercial competition, and social strive — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every person equal physically or mentally, will give to every worker the free exercise and the full benefit of his or her abilities , multiplied by all the modern factors of civilisation and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Socialist Party will make democracy, “the rule of the people,” a truth by ending the economic subjugation of the overwhelmingly great majority of the people. The cooperative commonwealth is the inevitable, inexorable product of the evolution of society. There is no power in capitalism, nor in the universe, that can prevent the consummation of a united and harmonious socialist movement in the cooperative commonwealth.

Private ownership of the centralised means of production and distribution — an industrial despotism, or common ownership and an industrial democracy? It must be one or the other — which? Socialism will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all. The growth of socialism is the promise of freedom. Socialism means a more perfect and equitable distributions of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land, capital, and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery.

The present economic system is not only a failure, but a colossal aggregation of crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of civilisation. It promises only an increase of the horrors which the world deplores. There is no hope for our fellow-workers except by the path mapped out by socialists, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth.

As we have witnessed in the recent American election, it will then make no sort of difference to capitalists, or to the working class either, whether the Republican or the Democratic Party be in control of government; for capitalism will be in possession of both parties. The perpetuity of the capitalist system depends upon its having two political parties, about equally matched, to play off against each other, and to shuttlecock the proletariat behind blind issues. America]s electoral process have long been a sort of Punch and Judy show; and it has been all one to the working man, whether he was looking at Republican Punch or Democratic Judy. The strings of both parties were in the capitalists’ hands.

Whatever is done we must do ourselves

 

Joseph Dietzgen, in his philosophical works, has demonstrated the fact that all of man’s ideas come from the outside—that no thought ever sprang spontaneous in the human brain. In other words—human thoughts, human ideas, spring from human contacts and experiences with the physical universe about us. Man’s ability to think—his consciousness—the thing we call the "Ego"—the mind—is a natural development. According to Dietzgen, "human thoughts and ideas spring from human experiences." Similar experiences produce similar ideas. History furnishes us with many instances of great popular and class movements which concertedly move towards some definite goal, having discovered those similarities of experience and their common ground. Mankind is a product of its environment; and that its collective thoughts and ideas are generated by contacts and experiences with the world around it.

 The wages system is, in essence, another form of servitude. Free trade—free competition in buying and selling commodities—is the basic principle of the Capitalist system of exchange of private property, and it is but natural that the labor-power of the working class should also be regarded as a commodity. In fact, it is inevitable that, under a system of production for profit, labour-power should take on such a character and that it should be bought and sold in the open market according to the law of supply and demand of commodities. Nor is it surprising that in a competitive market, where the seller with the greatest necessity for cash fixes the market price, the price of labour-power should always tend to sink to the level of a bare subsistence for the workers; and that those workers with the ability to exist at the lowest standard of living should dictate the terms on which the others may also continue to exist. The whole tendency of the wage system has been to drag all the workers down to the same poverty.

The associated producers collectively organise and manages production and is itself responsible for overseeing the labour process. This is self-organisation, This is self-management.

“… by far the most important decree of the Commune instituted an organization of large-scale industry and even of manufacture which was to not only be based on the association of the workers in each factory, but also to combine all these associations in one great union; in short, an organization which, as Marx quite rightly says in The Civil War, must necessarily have led in the end to communism.” (Engels, Preface to The Civil War in France).

We, the workers, who operate the productive apparatus that has been bequeathed to us by capitalism will strip away all State power. We shall reduce the role of public officials and civil servants to that of mere executors of our directions, responsible to recallable by the workplace or community. We want every person engaged in industry to have a voice in making the rules under which they must work. In socialism the workers would elect their own administrators, regulate their hours of work and determine the conditions under which work would be carried on. We may be sure that when this power is arrived at, the work-places will be arranged according to wishes of the workers and all disagreeable pollution and noise eliminated, and with every precaution taken against accidents. In other words, under Socialism the workers would have absolute freedom in the economic sphere in place of the present absolute servitude.

The economic emancipation of the working class requires a political revolution, the conquering of state power. Workers have not yet awakened to independent political activity. The pro-capitalist parties simply want the workers to be voting fodder in elections and servile camp-followers. They seek to keep the workers politically subservient. 

The Socialist Party emphasises the need of economic freedom, for it is the basis of all freedoms. There can be no liberty in economic dependence. Freedom will become the heritage of all as soon as socialism is realised. True liberty and freedom can only be attained in the cooperative commonwealth.

So long as the worker is deprived of ownership in the means  of production, so long as labour-power is a commodity which he or she is obliged to sell to another, a person is not free but simply a slave to a master. The worker today, then, is a slave, bound by the pressure of economic need to compulsory servitude under capitalist masters, obliged to sell one’s liberties in exchange for the means of subsistence. We live under the greatest tyranny of all — the tyranny of want. By this lash men and women are driven to work long hours and in despicable occupations and to live in slums.

With new technology and the scientific organisation of industry, eliminating all the wastes of the present system, two or three hours a day would suffice to supply all the comforts and even luxuries of life. This would secure to the worker the leisure necessary to to develop skills and talents.  

"If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself." - Joseph Dietzgen 

The Emancipation of the Wage Slaves

 

The purpose of the Socialist Party is to accomplish the Co-operative Commonwealth. We demand the common ownership and control of industry and its democratic management in the interest of all the people — that is our demand. The elimination of rent, interest, and profit and instead the production of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people — that is our demand. Cooperative industry in which all shall work together in harmony as the basis of a new social system, that is our demand. The end of class struggles and class rule, of master and slave, of poverty  of cruelty and crime; the birth of freedom, the dawn of brotherhood, the evolution of mankind — that is our demand. That is our socialism!

The Socialist Party is organising to securing control of  government powers. Having conquered the political power upon the platform that declares in favour of common ownership in the name of the people, they will take possession of production. It will already have already begun the organisation of industry , that is to say, self-management. Industry will be will be cooperative in every department of human industry. Men and women will be economically free; life will no longer be a struggle for survival and sustenance. Labour will no longer be servitude. Every person will gladly do one’s share of the world’s useful work. Every person will be able to say honestly they enjoy his or her share. Every technology will be a blessing to mankind because it will serve to reduce the number of hours constituting a day’s work, and the work-day will be shortened in exact proportion to the progress of invention. Labour will no longer be bought and sold on the market of the world. We will not make things for sale, but will make things to use. We will fill the world with wealth and every person can have all that a person can rationally use. Rent, interest, and profit, three forces of exploitation, will disappear forever.

The existing system is unspeakably cruel. Capitalist society is a diseased organism. We boast of our civilisation and yet every nation on the face of the globe is armed to the teeth against other nations. Is that civilisation in the proper sense of the term? We must bear in mind that competition is war; that war is the normal state of capitalism. With the end of capitalism comes the end of war, and the inauguration of peace. The Socialist Party does what little it can to hasten to coming of the day when war shall curse this earth no more. Its members are not patriots and possess no ambition to kill their fellow-workers from another land.

The Socialist Party is the expression of the world socialist movement, based upon the class struggle in which all workers of all countries, regardless of race, nationality, creed, or sex, are called upon to unite against the capitalist class, their shared common exploiter and oppressor. In the class struggle the equality of all workers is a foregone conclusion, and who does not recognise and subscribe to it as one of the basic principles of the socialism  is not a socialist and should be speedily set adrift to  return to the capitalist parties with their divisions.  Foolish and vain indeed is the person who makes the colour of skin or nationality the stepping-stone to an imaginary superiority. Socialism will give all people economic freedom. Socialism will break the chains of capitalism.

The abolition of the capitalist system does not merely mean the emancipation of the working class, but of all society. It will level upwards. This planet for the first time  will be fit for  men and women to live in.