An Address to Fellow-Workers

 

We address you not as citizens of one country to citizens of another but as world socialists to fellow-workers of the world. We reject frontiers as artificial barriers put up by governments. All are brothers and sisters and the world should be theirs. All should be social equals with free access to the plenty that could be if only the means of living belonged to a socialist world community. We oppose governments everywhere, all nationalism, racism and religion, all censorship, all wars and preparations for war.  We support class struggle for better wages and conditions against the employers and the government.  Do not be misled by those who say that universal suffrage is a fraud. Learn from your masters. You too must organise to win political power if you want a new society. Do not let cunning politicians return to power on your backs. Ignore those who would be your leaders. Rely on your own understanding and organisation. Turn universal suffrage into an instrument of emancipation. Do not underestimate what a task it will be to change society. It will be a hundred times more difficult than changing the government. A democratic world community, based on common ownership with production for use not profit, can only be set up when people want it and are ready to take the steps needed to get it up and keep it going. Democratic political action is the only way to socialism. There are no short cuts. We must have a majority actively on our side.

Do not be misled by demagogues, those who praise Lenin, Trotsky, Mao or Che Guevara, who would use you for their own mistaken ends. They think that an elite should use discontent and unrest to gain power so to set up a new society. What dangerous nonsense! Look at former state capitalist Russia where a new privileged class ruled, with police intimidation and censorship, over an increasingly restless population. Look at state capitalist China where power-hungry bureaucrats and new oligarchs cynically manipulate the people in their own sordid squabbles. Learn the lessons of history: elite action leads to elite rule. No socialism unless by democratic political action, based on socialist understanding. The task we face is to build up a strong world-wide movement for socialism. What is needed more than anything else in this period of social unrest is a clear, uncompromising statement of the case for a socialist world community.

We are keen to grow and spread. We want to increase the size and reduce the price of our journals. We have a dozen pamphlets we should like to publish. We seek to improve and widen our online presence. We want to train and equip new speakers and writers. We want—we want a hundred things; but chiefly and above all we want socialism.

We shall not get socialism until we get you. If you are thoroughly convinced of the desirability of socialism and  our method of attaining to it, your place is with us. Do not come in because you think something should be done for the suffering poor. Do not come in because you have a  kind heart and feel charitably disposed towards your fellows. We are engaged in a grim struggle. The enemy will not go down before an onslaught of sentiment. Come in clear-eyed and clear-headed, knowing that you are part of the working class, knowing that your class is a subject class, held in bondage by a parasitic useless class, small but politically powerful; knowing that you can wrest that power from them, and then—and only then—can remould our world.

We as socialists are not prepared to compromise our opposition to defenders of capitalism masquerading as ”friends” of the workers. The class struggle is not going to disappear by wishful thinking; nor will it go away by the introduction of economic or social reforms nor by draconian anti-trade union legislation. While capitalism remains, the class struggle remains. The solution to this struggle between capital and labour, a solution propounded by socialists throughout this century, is that workers must organise politically to abolish capitalism. Trade unions, strikes, and other manifestations of the class struggle can only go so far. They are always limited by the class position of the workers and the vagaries of the trade cycle which capitalism periodically passes through. In the end, workers must realise that it is in their immediate interests to push the class struggle to its limit and abolish capitalism.

Socialism - A Solidarity Society

 

The World Socialist Movement must be independent and uncompromising. It must also stand firmly by democracy, by the methods of socialist education and political organisation, and the method of gaining control of the machinery of government and the armed forces through the vote and only with the backing of a majority of convinced socialists. We do not take sides in ruling class quarrels. Capitalism is based on class ownership, class antagonism. What, then, is the remedy? It is so plain and reasonable that the slowness of the workers to accept it is a matter for recurring amazement. Abolish the capitalist ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. Rid society of this institution which has now become a fetter for the mass of the population. Let society itself, through its own democratic control, utilise the land to produce food for the needs of the whole community, and the factories and railways, etc., likewise. Let us have our means of life turned into means of producing the requirements of humanity, not the profits of a class. Let us turn our two hostile communities into one real community, freed forever of the rivalry of interests between those who own and those who do not own, a rivalry which restricts the production of useful and beautiful things, condemns vast masses to sordid poverty, excites class hatred and international war, and poisons human relationships in a war of the jungle instead of a co-operative endeavour to enrich life. Socialist propaganda by a socialist organisation is still the only road to socialism. Though disillusioned with conventional mainstream political parties, the workers find new illusions to keep them from the path to socialism.

 So long as the capitalist class control the means of life, every economy and every improvement in the education, health, and technical ability of the workers, male and female, only results in their becoming more productive slaves. The fruits of their increased productivity go to the masters and not to themselves. This is the central fact ignored or obscured by these so-called leaders of labour. Whether the workers follow the Left-wingers’  “to nationalisation” plus reforms, or the more militant to “cooperatives” plus reforms, they are doomed to disappointment. The only road to emancipation is the conversion of the means of life into the property of the whole people. To this end, we call upon the workers to organise consciously, and politically for the capture of the machinery of government.

 Socialism, undiluted and unadulterated, is what the Socialist Party wants. As to why we want it, only look around you. Billions in need food, health-care, housing, etc., and the means exist ready to hand whereby they can produce them but we are as far away as ever from economic security. 

 The Social Revolution offers the only way out. Muster, then, under our banner, with a view to its speedy accomplishment.  The only solution to their troubles is the abolition of the cause—the private ownership of the means of life. Until they decide to carry this abolition through, their position as a whole is bound to grow worse by the operation of the factors given above. To abolish their slavery; to establish the common ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution, the workers must first seize the governing machinery of society. This is the political machinery, with its centre in Parliament. At any general election, the workers can do this, because they have the vast majority of the votes. But behind the vote is needed knowledge. Only when the majority of the workers understand they are slaves will they be in the position to end their subjection. Until then they will remain slaves.

 The Socialist Party message is that they are two phases of one thing—the system of capitalism. Capitalist progress means high productivity, profits, economy of labour to the capitalist, but ill-health and nervous tension, robbery of, and unemployment, to the worker. Every strike of any size causes inconvenience and sometimes suffering. But to follow the above argument to its logical conclusion means that the workers must accept anything the masters choose to impose, even though it may mean greater suffering than would be entailed by a strike!

 On the economic field the workers’ powers are limited, and in the ultimate, can always be beaten by the possessors of political power. But, as Marx has pointed out, these everyday struggles, with all their limitations, are a product of the system, and cannot be avoided unless the workers are ready to sink below subsistence level.

 When a sufficient number are enlightened then we shall see the workers organise into the Socialist Party, putting forward their delegates and voting them into Parliament. With this control, they will be able to enter into possession of the means of life and end the misery and hardship of the present system and replace by the system that will secure comfort and happiness to all— namely, SOCIALISM.

OUR BATTLE-CRY: SOCIALISM AND EMANCIPATION!

 Profit and interest, only come from the exploitation of wage labour. The capitalist needs efficiency in his wage-slaves for the production of profit, just as the farmer needs well-fed cattle. Capitalists cannot by legislation solve the fundamental conflicts between contending classes. They cannot permanently make the working class content with the capitalist economic system. We do not underestimate the enormous obstacles in the path to socialism. The greatest obstacle is to get the workers to understand and want socialism. The Socialist Party alone has seen that there must be socialists before there can be socialism and acts on it. The great mass of workers do not understand socialism and do not want it. Until there are sufficient socialists, organised in a socialist party, there will not be socialism. The way to increase the number of socialists is to support the Socialist Party. Our method, and the only effective method of building up a genuine socialist party, is to base our organisation on socialist knowledge, and the clear grasp of socialist principles by each member.  Socialism, as a system of society, cannot be carried on, nor can power for socialism be obtained without first securing a socialist majority. The Socialist Party takes its stand on the policy so clearly stated and defended by Marx and Engels that the working class must, as a preliminary to the establishment of socialism, gain control of the political machinery of society. They can do this in the advanced capitalist countries through political organisation and the use of the vote; the working class possessing, as they do, the overwhelming majority of votes.  The Socialist Party is not prepared to join with parties whose aims and methods are contrary to the interests of the working class and a hindrance to the achievement of Socialism. 

The object of the capitalist class, in general, is to exploit the working class. When capitalist states quarrel, the object of the quarrel and the prize for the victor is a re-division of the wealth of which the working-class is, under capitalism, normally robbed. Armaments exist to give the capitalists security. The position of the workers is as secure or insecure in defeat as in victory. The workers have nothing to defend. National defence is a purely capitalist question. Not national defence, but the overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. Socialism alone is worth struggling for. That is the message of the socialist to all the working-class dupes of the closely-allied superstitions of religious, racial and patriotic rivalries. The cost of war casts a shadow over civilians as well as combatants. Death and mutilation, the loss of health, the breaking up of homes and the frustration of hopes and plans. Under the cloak of patriotism and national defence,  the blessing of the press and the politicians, workers are thrown against each other in battle. They do not know that they are fighting to defend or to extend the interests of the class that lives by robbing them of the fruits of their labour. For the working people in all countries every death, every wound and every hour of suffering is in vain. War solves no working-class problems, and from a working-class point of view, is a crime.

No "remedy" for unemployment is worth considering which leaves untouched the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, and leaves the workers dependent for their livelihood on the possibility of goods being sold at a price profitable to their masters. The Socialist remedy is the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth, and the production of goods for the use of the members of society in place of production for sale and private profit. There is no other solution of the unemployment problem. The Socialist Party, right from its foundation, attacked the policy of political bargaining. We held then, as we do now, that a Socialist Party must be independent and must be based on the demand for socialism, not on a programme of reforms to be obtained by cooperating with capitalist parties. 

 

If the workers would turn their attention to socialism, the whole form of the struggle with the employing class would change. So far, despite heroic fights by trade unionists against wage reductions, the employing class have never had reason to fear that the working class were turning away from their belief in the capitalist system. But when a considerable body of workers learn the lesson that no reformist policy or party is of any use, and begin to understand and support the demand for socialism, we can confidently anticipate a less aggressive and less cheese-paring attitude on the part of employers. They will, when that time comes, be anxious to surrender part of their wealth in the hope that by so doing they may stave off the day when they must yield it all. We shall then be well on the way to the acquisition by society of the means of wealth production now privately owned by a privileged class.

 

The Socialist Party tells the workers that socialism is the only remedy for their troubles. There is no time which is not a proper time for them to work for socialism. This is true whatever the excuse offered by defenders of capitalism. Whether the crisis is a war crisis or a trade crisis, the Socialist Party will continue to promote socialism. Workers who understand the working of capitalism will see through the excuses to the capitalist interests behind them and will help us with our task.

 

Capitalism will not collapse.

 

We live in a system of society known as capitalism, and whose outstanding features are private property and wage-earning. A certain few fortunate individuals are the owners of the land, the railways, factories and other means of production, and the non-owners have to work for a wage or a salary in the service of the owners of property. Society is divided into a class of workers who must work to live, and a class of capitalists who can live without working. We know from everyday experience that there is no wealth without work, yet the workers are poor and the non-workers are rich. Wealth (excluding the air and other things abundantly supplied by nature) is produced by work. The work is performed by the great propertyless mass, the working class, but the means of wealth production, the machines, the land and so on, are owned by a class of non-workers, the capitalists. From this arises a great cleavage of interests, for it makes the workers dependent upon the owning-class since they cannot live except by entering the service of the owners. Out of the total wealth produced by their labour, the workers receive but a part as wages, the remainder being retained by those who employ them. The one class lives by selling its services and the other by owning property. The everyday struggle over the division of the product sets these classes in perpetual antagonism, but the Socialist Party urges the workers to aim consciously not merely at increasing their share but at destroying the system of society that compels them to maintain a propertied class at their expense.

For the socialist all forms of "living by owning," rent, interest and profit are in effect nothing more than forms of exploitation, or robbery, of the wealth producers.

If this is correct, then it follows naturally that it is in the interest of the workers all over the world to act jointly in resisting any attempt to heighten the degree of that exploitation, and in overthrowing the system which is based upon exploitation. The Socialist Party says that the poverty of the poor and the riches of the wealthy are the results of the system of private property, and the only remedy is its abolition. The enemy of the working class is the capitalist class. The only safe rule of conduct for the workers is to stand firmly on the basis of their class economic interests. From this standpoint, there can be no circumstances requiring them to participate in capitalist wars or trade rivalries. Even the supposed hardships resulting from military defeat do not outweigh the arguments in favour of the socialist course of action. Workers should not fight for "country and empire," because they have nothing to fight for. They should refuse to help solve the economic problems of capitalist industry, or the political problems of capitalist empires and concentrate all their energies on the fight for socialism. The duty of socialists is to keep this issue always to the fore, not to rouse deadly national hatreds which obscure the class divisions in society and slow the growth of socialism.

Workers can solve their problems only by gaining control of parliament for THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF INTRODUCING SOCIALISM. A party that seeks to gain political control for any other purpose must therefore be anti-socialist and anti-working class. The Labour Party seeks to gain control for a variety of reforms, including such capitalist schemes as nationalisation. Some reforms may in themselves be good, most are indifferent and some, like nationalisation, are for the working class wholly bad. But whether good, bad, or indifferent, they are not socialism, and do not, and cannot, aid in hastening Socialism. Socialism presupposes a socialist working class. The propagation of reforms does not make socialists. First, it makes reformers and then drives them through disillusion to despair. The Left has not socialist aims. Its guiding belief is in its ability to administer capitalism better than the capitalists themselves. This may be true, but it is not socialism.

Let us face the facts. Capitalism is strong, and the capitalists are growing wealthier. They have forgotten their post-war panic and are confident of the stability of their system. The machinery of capitalist organisation, the banks, foreign trade, etc., may bring their problems, but it is absurd to suppose that the capitalists will, in the long run, allow members of their own class to imperil the system by persisting in methods, such as unrestricted competition, which have become more dangerous than useful. The confidence of the capitalists in the stability of capitalism rests on the docility of the working class. Capitalism continues because the workers unthinkingly accept it. To devise means of prolonging this convenient condition of the workers' minds is the chief and the potentially fatal problem of the capitalist class. Capitalism will not collapse.

It will end when the workers organise to bring it to an end. To educate and organise the workers for that purpose is the only problem with which socialists should concern themselves.

Socialism - All Will Gain.

 "He who dreams that he can lead a great crowd of fools without a great store of knavery is a fool.” - Voltaire

We see a system of society, in which a small minority, the capitalist class, own the means of producing wealth. We see that this class no longer takes an active part in the production of the wealth which they own, and of which they retain a large part after paying wages to the workers, the real producers. We see that the capitalist class have ceased to be socially useful and that the organisation of society which they built up, and which was in its time and place necessary and an advance on previous systems, has become a hindrance to further progress. We see that the capitalists maintain their position by their control of the machinery of government, and we know they will not willingly abdicate their privileged position. Because of this, we ask the worker to organise for the conquest of power so that they may wrest from the ruling class their hold on the means, of life, and may rebuild society on the basis of common ownership and democratic control. We strive for something definite and material. We want to abolish capitalism. We stand for the destruction of wage slavery and the profit-making system. Socialism alone lies the hope of the working people.

 SOCIALISM is the only remedy for present or future working-class ills and one that can be applied as soon as the workers choose to apply it. We contend that socialism is the only object worthy of working-class support. The sooner you turn aside from the long-exploded quack remedies offered to you and set yourselves to the task of promoting socialism and organising the workers for its accomplishment, the sooner your problems will be solved, and the less will be the cost to you in poverty and suffering.

The workers, the producers of wealth, are poor because they are robbed; they are robbed because they may not use the machinery of wealth production except on terms dictated by the owners, the propertied class. The remedy for working-class poverty and other social ills is the transfer of ownership of these means of production from the capitalist class to society. That, in a few words, is the case for socialism. The work of rebuilding society on this new basis cannot be started until power is in the hands of a socialist working class, and that cannot be until many millions have been convinced of the need for change and are broadly agreed on the way to set to work to bring it about.

Some critics tell us to devote our energy to make the best of capitalism by getting “something now”? By “something now” they mean higher wages, increased State benefits, and other like proposals. It may then come as a surprise to them that we also believe in getting something now. We differ in that we are not willing to subordinate our campaigning for socialism to the demand reforms from the capitalists, and instead, we hold that the best way to get these things is by the revolutionary activity of an organisation of revolutionaries. In other words, the quickest and easiest method of getting reforms from the ruling class is to let them see that it will endanger their position to refuse.

While we recognise that socialism is the only permanent solution, we are do not consider that the capitalists cannot provide better conditions for the workers. If the workers would, cease to struggle for improvements, they’d soon find that there is still room for a worsening of their conditions, and on the other hand were they free from the mental blindness which prevents them from striking a blow when and where it would be most damaging, they might, even within capitalism, raise their standard of living and diminish their insecurity.

Unfortunately, they do not yet see the brutal facts of the class struggle, and too often allow themselves to be paralysed by action by their belief in the supposed community of interest between them and their exploiters, by their response to every deceitful appeal in the name of patriotism, and by their lack of confidence in their own powers and intelligence. They will put up a straight fight against their employers, but they have not yet seen through the more subtle hostility of the newspapers, the politicians, and all the other defenders of the employing class who pose as neutrals because it makes their influence more deadly. The employers and their hired defenders know well enough that your gain is often their loss, and they, therefore, have good reason to persuade you not to seize the opportunities that offer of raising your wages or reducing your hours. But many who talk about the beauties of an “advanced programme of social reforms” seem not to have realised that if such things are to be of any worth to you necessitate at first the dipping into the profits of the other class. Various well-meaning persons may preach arbitration and conciliation, but you know well enough that sweet words do not, as a rule, charm employers into giving higher wages. They will not give up any part of what they hold except under pressure one kind of pressure is fear; the fear that refusal to spend part of their on reforms will encourage revolutionary agitation for the seizure of the whole.

Our aim as socialists is the destruction of the capitalist system of society, and we are therefore unalterably hostile to all political parties which seek to gain control of parliament for any other purpose than the establishment of socialism. The Labour Party is such a party. its so-called “socialists” are puppets dancing on the strings of the industrial and financial capitalists behind the scenes; its pacifists are merely decoys who will allay suspicion while the militarists prepare for war; its radical left is a convenient buffer to receive the blows of the workers so soon as they tire of waiting for something to be done to relieve their misery.

The enemy of the worker is the master

 Socialists take every opportunity of examining and commenting on all the facets of capitalist society, including that much-publicised field, at the moment, anyway, trade unions. We oppose all other political parties, but when dealing with trade unions the fact that the leadership of any particular union has a political bias does not affect our judgement of their activities in the industrial field. As good or as bad as they may be, we recognise that trade unions are the weapon of the working class in the field of industry, and we, therefore, support the principle of trade unionism. We have this to say to trade unionists. Your right to strike has been bitterly fought for in the past: be careful that you protect it in the future.

 Only when industry and transport etc, are owned and democratically controlled by the whole community can service to the whole community be a reality. Nationalisation or state capitalism is not the solution to the problem. The immediate task of the workers is to study the structure and origin of capitalism and to learn that there are no shortcuts to emancipation; that the solution of the problem of poverty in every industry and in every continent is the same—the abolition of the system of society which requires that the great majority shall be poor in order that a favoured few may live idle and luxurious lives.

Capitalism can be replaced by a system of society in which technical developments of machinery, inventions and discoveries will benefit you instead of rendering your position more insecure; in which education, real education, will be within your reach; in which poverty will be a memory and nothing more. It can be done, but your rulers will not, and your leaders can not do it for you. You must do it yourselves. When you understand the system you can end it. It is a slow and difficult task to remove from the mind of the typical wage workers the pathetic belief in the inevitability of their sufferings, and in the permanency of political institutions and economic forms of society; but there is only one way, the educational way, and to think of challenging those who are now in control, before this educational work has been accomplished, is mere foolishness. Knowledge of the evolution of human society, and of the origin and development of existing political institutions on the one hand, and knowledge of the present economic structures which makes possible the exploitation of the workers, exploitation not superficially observable, are the necessary forerunners of successful organisation for the emancipation of the workers. 

There is a notion widely held in certain circles that capitalism is in a state of collapse, or at least, that its collapse is imminent; and this is interpreted to mean that the existing system of society will reach a point at which the production and distribution of commodities will cease, and the whole of the mechanism of society will fail any longer to operate. Those who propagate this conception naturally accept the view that the tactics of the working class organisation must be framed with this collapse always in mind. It is of no use waiting for the system to collapse, nor preparing a new economic structure to replace it. It will not go until the workers determine that it shall go, and the pressing service revolutionary organisations can perform is to prepare the workers' minds for the possibility of the immediate establishment of socialism. When the workers understand the social system, their exploitation, and their relation to the capitalist class, they will organise for the specific purpose of capturing the machinery of government from the capitalist class, in order that they may build a new social system based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, under the protection, it will afford. The workers have the remedy for their sufferings in their hands; only when they are class conscious will they use it. Only those organisations can effectively wage war on capitalism which is composed of members who recognise the class struggle is fundamental; who realise that socialism is the only hope of the workers, and who know the lines of their struggle, and the result to be achieved by their activities.

Working-class organisations have always (but especially during and since the war) suffered from acts of treachery committed by leaders in whom confidence had mistakenly been placed. Hardly a strike or lock-out of considerable size occurs but there is some trade union official who, from sincere or other motives, deserts, or counsels action useful only to the other side. Each of these defections raises a little storm of protest and much vowing of "never again" among the active rank and filers; but the storm dies away, the incident is soon forgotten. The Chartist paper, the Northern Star commented:

"It is better at all times to submit to a real despotism than to a government of perfidious, treacherous and pretended friends."

The Chartists alternately supported Whigs and Tories, sometimes neither, and sometimes both together. In the Northern Star, on June 12th, 1841, were two leading articles advising opposite policies.

Socialism will be achieved by socialists; by the deliberate action, that is, of those who, understanding. what is at the root of the present evils, know what is necessary for their removal. The existence of a considerable proportion of convinced socialists precludes the possibility of swaying the electorate by emotional appeals. Without ignorant emotionalism, there is no need, no possibility, of political leadership, whether from a traditional ruling class or from a minority of superior intellects. Political bargaining exists because socialist knowledge is lacking. Without such knowledge, neither the leftists nor anyone else can give you socialism. Do not, therefore, waste time trying to dragoon the working class into striving for an object which they do not understand.

 HELP US TO PROMOTE SOCIALISM.