Do it yourself!

The working class are enthusiastic when they do things for fun. Pottering about in the garden, tinkering with a car, decorating or repairing the home, or knocking up something from the do-it-yourself kit, these jobs they do with much care and joy.

But spare time occupations, although they provide fun, are more usually sternly necessary because they save the worker from having to pay to have the job done elsewhere. As anyone knows with bills to pay, it is a strain on the household purse otherwise.

In fun or in earnest, the desire when hungry is to eat, when tired to sleep, when cold to seek warmth. These satisfactions are brought about by men producing the things which satisfy these wants.

Under Capitalism, needs and wages are for the working class economic twins. The food, clothing and shelter they buy are dependent upon the price they can get for their labour power. Their lives are fashioned by wages. Wage-labour, prices, and profits, are the economic features of private property ownership. The The bread we eat is produced in order that a profit can be got out of the baking, and this like everything else that, is bought and sold has a direct bearing on the question of unemployment. No profit, no jobs.

The means of production throughout the entire world are today owned by the Capitalist class who employ the working class in order to exploit them. So that the working class may be maintained and reproduced they receive back from the wealth they have produced enough roughly to keep them fit for further work. All the surplus the working class have produced then goes to the Capitalist class.

This surplus value is the source of the disparity between rich and poor, reflected throughout the world in the fact that a relative few languish in luxury whilst millions struggle in misery and poverty.

To those not conscious of the whys and wherefores, this is a problem which may appear insoluble or which will at least take years to solve. To be sure, men will not allow a problem to prevail once they realise the solution. We could have a world where all would contribute what they could to society and take what they needed out of all that was available. This would be a much more simple and sane way of producing and distributing. In order to do this, society must own in common all the means of wealth production and distribution.

This is Socialism. Instead of leaving it to others to bring about, do it yourself!
J. McG.