There is Power in the Union

"Numbers without union are powerless,

 And union without knowledge is useless."

It is a point of principle for the Socialist Party that the character and function of the political State, in a class-divided society, MUST become an instrument of CLASS RULE and that under capitalism the State must and will be dominated and manipulated by and in the interests of the capitalist class and against the working class. The Socialist Party has kept to the straight and narrow path of No Compromise and has not sacrificed any principle to recruit, to capture votes, for temporary gain and popularity. Whoever wants socialism must first want a class-conscious working class. The Socialist Party unfurls the banner of liberation and demands the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. Having outlived its social usefulness, capitalism must give way to a new social order. Upon our fellow-workers rests the duty of effecting this revolutionary change in a peaceful manner, using the ballot and all that thereby hangs in order to effect the change. We, therefore, call upon all wage workers to muster under the banner of the Socialist Party. We seek an end to the existing barbarous class conflict by placing the land and all the means of production, transportation and distribution into the hands of the producers as a collective body, and substituting the socialist cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, industrial strive and international wars and social disorder - a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of modern technology.

The Socialist Party declares that trade union action by workers under capitalism constitute the logical and unavoidable reactions on the part of the workers to the inhuman and unbearable conditions imposed upon them by capitalism which places the workers in the category of commodities, and which accords them as wage slaves a treatment economically not essentially different from that accorded the chattel slave or serf. Driven by deprivation; subdued largely by the thought of the misery inflicted upon their loved ones if they refuse to submit to being exploited, but goaded finally to rebellion by the utter degradation to which they and their families are eventually reduced, it is inevitable that they should strike back at their exploiters, however blindly, and however mistaken they may be in their manner of the retaliation.

The Socialist Party applauds the spirit which prompts our fellow- workers to take action against the inhuman wage slavery under which they suffer, and offers our endorsement of striking workers in any manner consistent with the principles of the Socialist Party. A worker who will not rise against his employer, who will meekly acquiesce, that wage-slave alone is hopeless. But the wage-slave who persists and perseveres, despite failures and poverty, in rebelling, there is always hope. The Socialist Party, however, warns our fellow-workers that strikes and go-slow work-to-rules in and by themselves cannot solve their problems, let alone abolish the cause which creates these problems, namely, the capitalist system. We emphasise that, however, justifiable and understandable is their resort to strikes and related activities, such efforts and attempts at ameliorating their lot must prove futile while the capitalist system of private ownership in the land and the means of production prevails. As Karl Marx, once said:

"... the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labor more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation.... The necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement."

While the workers are wage slaves under capitalism, their condition is bound to grow worse and worse, and, whatever incidental improvement or increases in wages some sections of workers may achieve, they are secured either at the expense of the working class as a whole, or because of a temporary condition which happens to favour such groups of workers economically. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the facts referred to, the workers must resist the encroachments of their capitalist exploiters, and through their day-by-day struggles seek at least to maintain the prevailing working conditions where these cannot be improved. The Socialist Party points to the fact that capitalism is fated to create conditions which render the lot of the workers ever more precarious and insecure. The Socialist Party also points to the fact that attempts at this stage at bettering their lot through legislative enactments can result in nothing but the fastening of the chains of wage slavery upon them ever more firmly and securely, while at the same time such legislative enactments in effect constitute certification of their slavery, and amount, in fact, to a codification of the terms of this slavery, besides accelerating the tendencies, and consolidating the social and economic forces which, barring socialism, must inevitably lead to absolute economic serfdom.

The Socialist Party urges the working class to organize into class industrial unions to the end of doing away with the causes which now reduce them to the status of wage slaves, and which inescapably block their every attempt to throw off the yoke of this degrading and intolerable slavery. The primary cause is capitalism, but among the subsidiary causes that stand out prominently is the craft structure of many of today’s unions.

 Members of the Socialist Party must never fail to explain to the workers the ultimate futility of all attempts made by them to better their conditions under capitalism, and while Socialist Party members must constantly point out to the workers that there is no hope for then except through a speedy overthrow of capitalism and all its works, the Socialist Party does not belittle or underestimate the social significance of strikes and similar manifestations of working class rebellion, for the reasons stated before that a contented or submissive slave cannot be relied upon to seek his or her emancipation. While it is not the function of Socialist Party to encourage workers to strike under the prevailing circumstances, it is their duty to commend and promote the spirit and the sentiment which prompt the workers to strike.