“Practical" Capitalism? "Utopian" Socialism? A 1945 Election Speech on U S Radio

Submitted by dalcassian on 20 October, 2013 - 9:53

On November 6 you have an opportunity to
make your voice heard.

Your vote does not merely help elect the can-
didate of your choice. It registers the things you
are interested in, the things you want. It registers
the way in which you expect to get these things.
Now, what are the things that you and I want?
What we want is what the plain people all over
the world want. They are simple things.
We want peace, instead of bloodshed and vio-
lence and destruction. ,
We want security, instead of insecurity, the ter-
rible business of not knowing today whether or
not we will have a job and an income tomorrow.
We want to be sure that we will be able to raise
our families In decent homes and good schools.
We want comfort and prosperity, instead of low
living standards, slums, child labor, unemployment,
hunger and starvation.
We want democracy and freedom, instead of regi-
mentation, bureaucracy, racial and religious and na-
tional conflict.
These are the simple things which you and I and
all the plain people everywhere long for, the sim-
ple things we have always wanted for ourselves and
our children.
But we don't have them. We live in a modern
civilization. We have huge industries all over the
land. We have undreamed-of natural resources.
We have millions of trained and skilled workers.
We can produce in one day. what it took our an-
cestors years to produce.
Yet we do not have peace. We do not have se-
curity and prosperity.
WHY NO SECURITY?
It Is the social system that stands in the way,
the system .of capitalism or, as it Is sometimes called
to make it sound better, the system of "free enter-
prise."
Under that system, a handful of capitalist monop-
olists control all the wealth and power in the coun-
try- This handful owns industry, banking, mining,
transportation. It owns our jobs. Whoever owns all
these things, controls our lives, the lives of you and
me and tens of millions of others.
One of my opponents told me the other evening
that the program of the Workers Party sounded
very attractive, but that it was impractical and un-
realistic. Wc live in a capitalistic system, he said,
and we must make the best of it. All right, let us
see what is the BEST that capitalism offers you,
and how practical and realistic it is. We will test
how practical and realistic it is in the richest and
most advanced country in the world, the United
States. We'll test it at its best.
Let us test it for security and prosperity.
The great economic crisis of 1929 broke out under
Mr. Hoover. Millions were unemployed. People went
hungry, ragged and homeless. Farmers starved in
their own fields. Banks collapsed. Factories closed
down and stayed closed. "Free enterprise** had every
opportunity it needed to show what It could do. No-
body interfered with it, but it collapsed miserably.
It couldn't get industry going again. Mr. Hoover's
solution was to have the unemployed sell apples to
each other.
That was Test No. 1, and capitalism failed com-
pletely.
After Mr. Hoover, we had Mr. Roosevelt. I don't
deny that things were better under Mr. Roosevelt.
But I do claim that he did not and could not solve
the problem. He set out to make capitalism work.
For the first time on such a scale, people were paid
by the government for NOT producing. Farmers
were paid for the acres on which they im>N I
raise food.
Under Mr. Roosevelt, producers were paid to
plow under every third acre of wheat, of corn, of
rice, of tobacco, of cotton. They were paid to de-
stroy every third steer and hog and sheep and lamb.
Are people hungry? All right, let's destroy some of
the food! Are people without clothing? All right,
let's destroy some of the cotton and wool!
That's the stage of insanity capitalism reached
under the New Deal. After six years, in January,
1939, there were still 12,000,000 unemployed workers
In this country.
/ That was Test No. 2, and again no security and
no prosperity.
THE WAR TEST
After the New Deal came the war. And, lo and
behold, capitalism performed a miracle! Every fac-
tory began working full steam, some of them three
shifts a day. Twenty billion dollars were spent in
four years to expand old plants and put up new
ones. Unemployment came to an end. Everybody
was put to work. The United States produced twice
as much as it ever did before.
But. WHAT was produced? Homes to live in?
Decent clothes to wear? Healthful food to eat?
Schools for our children? Medical facilities? New
automobiles and good roads? No, none of these
things.
Instead, we produced the most terrifying means
of destroying life, destroying wealth, destroying
whole peoples and nations; bullets, bombs, tanks,
planes, battleships, artillery and, finally, our proud-
est achievement, the dreadful atomic bomb.
Why couldn't we have full production and full
employment in peacetime? Why couldn't all these
plants be used then to produce the good things of
life? Why is it that the only time they worked at
full steam was when war came?
Because capitalism works very well indeed to
wage war, to kill and maim, to destroy and devas-
tate. Capitalism is at its best when it is at its worst.
But it is no good for peace, security and prosperity
of the people. The war was Test No. 3, and again
it failed.
Full production was paid for with the lives,
bodies and minds of more than a million American
casualties, to say nothing of the ruin and wreckage
caused all over the world.
And now we are having test No. 4. The war is
over, and what do we see? Nothing was planned
for the peace period. Eight million men will be out
of work by the middle of next year. Overtime work
is finished, and the take-home pay is cut heavily.
The big monopolies, the big corporations, made bil-
lions in blood profits during the war.
What about you working men and women? Al-
ready you are without a job. Or if you still have
a job, your wages have been ciit. If you still have a
job, how do you know you will have your job to-
morrow, or next month, or next year?
The monopolists* the champions of "free enter-
prise," what do they say about this situation? They
say: We cannot guarantee everyone a Job; we can-
not guarantee an annual wage. That means that
"free enterprise" cannot guarantee you security, it
cannot guarantee you a decent living, it cannot
guarantee that you will be able to raise a family
the way it ought to be raised. No job means no in-
come, and no income means no life.
That's the best that capitalism offers you. That's
how practical and realistic capitalism is. Aren't these
tests enough for any thinking working man? If yon
test capitalism for peace, you And it is no better,
but worse.
There was a bloody war in 1914, which we en-
tered in 1917. We did not have even one generation
of peace. The Second World War was a real capi-
talist improvement over the first. The death and
destruction it .caused stagger the imagination. We
were solemnly promised a lasting peace after the
First World War. But we did not get it. We were
just as solemnly promised that after the Second
World War there would, at long last, be real peace.
But you know and I know that there is no real
peace. Why, even before the soldiers are out of the
army that fought the Second World War, capitalism
is preparing the army to fight the Third World War.
We are to have permanent military training, a per-
manent army, a huge navy. And you know what
armies are for. Our wounds are not yet healed and
our tears not yet dried. Yet, before our very eyes,
the big powers are jockeying /for position for the
next war.
And what a war it will be! The war of the atomic
bombs, the war that will slaughter us off like rats
in a trap, the war that will reduce those of us who
remain alive to a new barbarism.
Is that what YOU want?
Is this what our women are for—to produce war
troops?
Is this what our men are for—to live in caves,
to be torn to ribbons, or to be maimed or unsettled
in mind for life?
ALTERNATIVE OF SOCIALISM
That is what capitalism offers you. If that is
what you want, you don't even have to register
yoBrself in favor of it by voting for a capitalist
party. You can just stay at home and wait for the
doom of civilization.
But 'we of the Workers Party believe there is an
alternative. The alternative to a capitalist govern-
ment and capitalist bankruptcy is a workers* gov-
ernment and socialism.
We can have security, peace and freedom. If we
establish a workers' government, a government
controlled and operated by YOU, the millions of
American working men and women.
We want to take over the industries built by us
—by us and nobody else. We want to take over the
wealth produced by us—by us and nobody else. We
want to, and we can, run industry to produce for
peace, not for war. To produce for us, for the needs
and comforts of the people, and not for the swollen
profits of the monopolies and trusts.
Without capitalism and capitalist profit, we can
put an end to these horrible wars. They are caused
by economic rivalry and by the lust of every mo-
nopolist to dominate the wealth of the world. Our
marvelous machinery performed the terrible mira-
cles of war production. We can make it perform far
greater miracles of peacetime production to pro-
vide plenty for all, homes fit to live'in, comforts
and prosperity, self-respect and human dignity. •
Those are the things we all want. They are the
things socialism stands for. They are the things that
we. the Workers Partv. stand for.
Labor Action, Nov 12, 1945

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.