To All Exploited. (1921)

From the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We have received from an Austrian Comrade the following ‘Call to the Workers of Austria’ issued by the Austrian Communist Party. It will be observed that it is in marked contrast to the utterances of the British Communists – eds.

On the 24th April you will choose your representatives for the Provisional Parliament. The Conservatives and the Nationalists are appealing for your votes – parties which, under the cloak of Christianity and Nationalism, are working for the moneybags of the industrial magnates, the landlords and the big estate proprietors.

You, the exploited, are the overwhelming majority. And yet the exploiters have the power and dominate you ! Wherein lies their power ?

It is rooted in their ownership of the greater part of the land, of the forests, the mines, the factories, the railroads – in one word, in their ownership of the means of life.

It is maintained through their control of and command over the armed forces, the police, the gendarmes, the Courts, and the whole coercive machinery, with which they keep you down.

It is rooted in their ability – thanks to their command over Church and School, Press and Platform – to stupefy you.

It is rooted, finally, in your allowing yourselves to be befogged and mocked by their sham democracy.

They have given you the right to vote, but the right to the sources of wealth, the right to the mines, to the factories, to the great estates, to the forests, they keep for themselves.

Yours the voting power; theirs the wealth, the profits; such is their democracy – a democracy of exploiters !

Never will the exploiters willingly renounce their mines, their factories, their large estates, and their forests !

Never will they voluntarily decide on such a renunciation !

Never will they peaceably acquiesce in such a measure and reform !

Every law made in that Parliament is destined to serve the interests of the exploiters only ! To you they throw a few bones, some crumbs, in order to hide their policy of roguery.

And the Social Democrats ?  They demand from them somewhat bigger – crumbs; they praise Socialism to you in fine phrase, but the mines, the factories, the large estates – they leave to the bloodsuckers ! Take an example.

Your sick dear ones are dying. No hospital, no nursing home to be found in the land for your sick children, your mothers, your infirm old people. The Social Democrats know all this. But they tell you: the country has no money; patience, patience, patience !

Open your eyes, ye poor and downtrodden ! Look to the Semmering ! Can you see there the great hotels and sanatoriums ? Can you see on the mountain slopes the hundreds of magnificent villas ? There they live, those who suck million profits out of the arduous toil of your busy hands ! There the drones live a life of ease and pleasure !

Away with the exploiters ! Away with the drones of life !

In with your sick children, your sick mothers, your infirm old people !

Do you think that this parliament will ever put down such laws ? Never, never ! Neither would the Social Democrats if they had the majority there. In fact, they already had the majority in the old Assembly ! And yet you have remained the exploited ! This Parliament has been created by the exploiters; it can have no other policy but that of a party of exploiters ! Those who tell you different are swindlers, or they deceive themselves and you. And yet –

WE COMMUNISTS WANT TO GET INTO THIS PARLIAMENT !

We Communists want to show you, on every question or measure which comes before that House for consideration, that the Conservatives and the Nationalists care for nothing except the moneybags of the exploiters. We want to show you that they deceive you at every turn, that the very crumbs they throw at you are merely so much dust in your eyes, and – that the Social Democrats are favouring this policy of exploitation.

We want to show you, by practical example, that only an administration can be of any real USE TO YOU wherein the exploiters have nothing to say and nothing to decide – in a word, from which the exploiters have been driven once and for all.

But only as a majority will a Council of the REVOLUTIONARY working class – elected into the present Parliament by really class-conscious workers – be able to snatch the power from the exploiters and place at your disposal the army, the gendarms, the legal machinery, the administration , the school and the press.

Only such a Council of the REVOLUTIONARY workers will be able to take from the exploiters the mines, the factories, the large estates, the forests, the railways, and the ships, and place them in YOUR HANDS – in the hands of those who work – that they may wield them for the benefit of the whole community instead of for the benefit of a few idlers.

Only a Socialist Government will lay the foundations for a community of workers, by first  of all breaking the opposition of the exploiters and holding them down until their acquiescence in the new order of things has been secured and assured.

Only by sending men into this Parliament who will have no other aim but the ABOLOTION OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN THE MEANS OF LIFE, will your interests be served, and will you be able to organise production on a new basis, in the interest of all who work, evolving order out of chaos, and bringing about a social order wherein poverty, privilege, and oppression will find no place, and wherein all may lead a full, free, and joyous existence.

Workers in field and factory, Workers of all grades, if you want to free yourselves from the oppression of capitalism, then you must break the power of the exploiters by common revolutionary action !

Victorious revolutionary action presupposes a CLASS-CONSCIOUS working class. You will therefore have to remove the blinkers from your eyes ! It is for the purpose of making you see, in order to expose the daily practices in the political arena – the lies, the deceit, the humbug, and the misleading ways and intricacies of this sham democracy – that we want to get into this Assembly. To this end preliminarily

WE COMMUNISTS DEMAND YOUR VOTES.

MAKE AN END TO THE POLITICAL BARTER OF YOUR LIVES !

AND END TO THE POLICY OF CRUMBS !

ALL VOTES FOR SOCIALISM! ALL POWER TO THE WORKERS !

THE MINES, THE FACTORIES, THE BIG ESTATES, THE FORESTS, THE RAILWAYS, in one word, THE MEANS OF WEALTH PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION TO THE ORGANISED COMMUNITY OF THOSE WHO WORK.