“The human race is gradually learning the simple lesson that the people as a whole is wiser for the public good than any privileged class of men, however refined and cultivated.” Lewis Henry Morgan
This is by way of being an invitation. We are addressing the young and enthusiastic members of left-wing organisations duped by the hot air of insincere politicians. We feel no shame or guilt in inviting you to join the World Socialist Movement (WSM). It is no idle boast when we say that it is the only political organisation worthy of working-class support, the only group whose sole object is the overthrow of this insane inane 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. You are a worker, so we need hardly tell you that the share you are allowed to have in this wealth just about keeps you living from week to week and capable of producing the goods you cannot possess. The WSM has the utmost respect for the sincere, self-sacrificing campaigners; its regret is only the deeper that a strong fund of good intentions should only be assisting to pave the way to an even worse Hell than capitalism has prepared for our class.
The system we wish to see established, world socialism, under which all human beings will own in common, and have free access to, the planet’s wealth, cannot be brought about by tinkering with or patching up by means of reform, the system existing now. For this reason, you do not give your support to any other political organisation that you have seen with their promises of a better life if only you put them in power. You have chosen not to side with us. It may be because you feel despondent and think the task of establishing a socialist society an almost impossible one in the face of the powerful propaganda pumped into the working class by all the means capitalist media have at their disposal. It is difficult to reach an audience to realise the yawning gulf that separates this party from all other political organisations. 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. It all boils down to this: The working class has got to learn and when it gets the knowledge, it will do the deed.
Our organisation is small, but it is based on sound and irrefutable principles, which throughout the years of the WSM’s existence, have never had to give way to compromise. But we socialists would ask where is this common-sense in working people 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, 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 them in times of war, and the right to be subservient to them in times of peace. The World Socialist Movement takes no part in supporting the interests of one section of workers against one set of employers, or vice versa. Governments represent the interests of the employers—those who own. Therefore, all governments, in the end, work against the interests of those who are employed—those who own nothing (of importance).
The pioneers of socialism, people like Karl Marx, after the most penetrating analysis of capitalism, affirmed that it was a system of social organisation in which a relatively small class exploited the great majority by its ownership and control of the means and instruments of production. The method by which these owners, or capitalists, carry out this exploitation is the wages and money system. Given then that capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the working class it is patently absurd to suggest that there can be any form of national government that can make it function in the interests of the class it exploits.
Within capitalism there is obviously an inevitable conflict of interest, a class struggle, between the overwhelming majority who produce but do not own and a relatively small minority class who own but do not produce. Members of the working class do not voluntarily elect to join this class struggle; we are mostly born into it and it governs the way we live. To promote the notion that the area of our birth (‘our’ country) or a religious or political ideology transcends or neutralises our class status or gives us a common cause with a class that socially deprives and demeans us, that imposes either mere want or grave poverty on our lives and the lives of our families, is to be cruelly deceived by the political machinations of capitalism. Throughout civilisation to-day, notwithstanding national and political differences, the basis of the social system in every country be it a democracy or autocracy, is the ownership by a class of the means whereby the people live. As long as class ownership exists the people will be confronted not only with the unemployed problem but with the thousand-and-one evils that afflict the social existence of the working-class at the present time.
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 socialist society for a means of exchange; hence, the entire, utterly wasteful commercial sinews of capitalism will be obsolete. The class-free, wageless, money-free 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 government of people will give way to a simple administration of things. Such a society – founded on co-operation instead of competition – can only be established and 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, capitalist reaction would be deprived of material nourishment.
While the workers possess nothing but their physical and mental energy; while that energy is bought and sold in the labour market, subject to laws which dominate alike the capitalist and the worker; while the operation of these laws involves a continual decline in wages, the price of labour power, so long will the working-class suffer from poverty accentuated at intervals by sickness and unemployment. The capitalist form of society, that is, capitalism, does and can only exist to the detriment, degradation, and demoralisation of the working-class. The capitalist-class has its representatives in the government, local and national, and uses the legislative and administrative boards as pliant tools for the protection and promotion of its class interests, for the maintenance and extension of class domination, and for the further robbery and enslavement of the working-class. If, then, this is the economic function and political role of the capitalist class, what have the workers to expect from the present-day rulers of society ?
Those who think in directing the attention of the working-class to the political representatives of the master-class for relief from the misery which is crushing them, in holding out to them the prospect or possibility of amelioration through the good grace of the ruling faction, are incurring a serious responsibility. Promising the working-class something that must inevitably fail is the fruitful source of that apathy and indifference in which the workers are sunk to-day; telling the workers they have gained victory when it is only a victory for the capitalist-class, entrenches the ignorance and calling upon the capitalist governments to undermine their own position, which must be the case if any measure of material value to the working-class is put into operation, creates that pessimism in the minds of the workers.
The mission of World Socialist Movement is to show the workers that capitalism lives on their wretchedness and slavery, and that, if their emancipation is to be accomplished, they must adopt a political attitude necessarily hostile to all other political parties. Outside the WSM, the organisation of unqualified socialism, and the party of the working class, all other political parties uphold and safeguard the interests of the capitalist-class and the continuance of the wage system which is responsible for not only the unemployed but the other evils that afflict society. The WSM is the political expression of the material interests of the working-class for whom there can be only one policy and one programme, that is the control through public ownership of the tools and machinery for producing the necessaries and comforts of life, to be achieved by the political action of the working-class, cognisant of of the causes of its suffering and conscious of its material interest and historic mission.
The time is fast approaching when the working-class will recognise the value of the political machine as an instrument of offence and defence in class warfare, and when that time arrives the working-class will use that weapon conscious of its power and conscious of its use. The World Socialist Movement is spreading the knowledge which will dispel the confusion existing in the minds of the workers, and its fearless advocacy of the cause of the disinherited will succeed in stimulating the intelligence and arousing the enthusiasm of these who are apathetic and indifferent to-day. Any other policy can have only one result, the division of the working-class into two sections, one of which saturated with pessimism, is driven into the camp of reformism and reaction, and the other possessing only an inkling of the truth, gravitates in the direction of anarchism, a result in either case disastrous to the organisation of the working-class.
We do not expect money-dominated elections to be fair. We leave it to the good sense of the workers, whose ancestors fought for the vote, to decide whether or not to give a democratic hearing to the case for a sane alternative to the profit system.
