Capitalism is unpredictable and there is presently the sound of war-drums in the air, in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the South China Seas and in the Arctic. The world is in an economic slump also.
Socialism/communism, production for use and not for sale, abolition of the wages system, has never been tried to fail. All we have ever have been variants of capitalism. Capitalism cannot be reformed in this way except for brief periods if it proved useful for the ruling class. Capitalism depends on poverty (absolute or relative). How else will we present ourselves for waged slavery exploitation for the surplus value wealth only workers create? The end of the ruling class by the last great emancipation, that of the wage slave and the introduction of production for use, will end the necessity for the war machines.
"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor." Said Voltaire
War is not some natural event, but a consequence of a social system, where intense competition for raw materials , trade routes or geo-political interests are threatened by other members of a global minority parasite capitalist class. The capitalist social system and its bloodstained ethos of, primarily of individual accumulation of riches for the minority capitalist class, can be replaced by a classless commonly owned society of production for use. One where all human needs are met and access to them is free, where raw materials are shared and not owned, where the world is organised locally, regionally and globally by all its people with no elite vital interests.
The organising tenet of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", will send capitalism's twin horrors of war and poverty to the dustbin of history. There are probably enough buildings in London to house everybody, certainly enough so that nobody need be homeless or live in accommodation without basic amenities. The problem with housing is same with anything else it is a commodity produced for sale on the market with a view of realising a profit. Because housing is produced for profit there is no possibility of a rational approach to housing within capitalism. As Engels pointed out as long ago as 1872:
‘As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of life and labour by the working class itself’ (The Housing Question).
Immigrants are fellow workers and are equally victims of the housing shortage problem as anyone else, not the cause of it. We workers are not a nation. The nation state is the collective arm of the capitalist class and the referendum had damn all to do with workers but represents a division in the interests of rival capitalist groups. Workers have more in common with fellow workers worldwide than with their local or global capitalist class.
We need a post-capitalist system, which utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use, to satisfy all human needs, using self-feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control with direct inputs, at local, regional and global, levels to allow calculation in kind, as opposed to the economic calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit taking. Our business needs to become that of ending business and the ruthless competition which leads to war. The end of the ruling class by the last great emancipation, that of the wage slave and the introduction of production for use, will end the necessity for the war machines. You can't say "Not in my name" when it is civilians, but it's OK for fellow workers in uniform, who have been coerced into fighting their masters' battles are killed. Voting for a capitalist political party is voting for poverty absolute or relative and war by proxy by deed as business by other means as suppliers from the masters of death, the capitalist class as a whole upon whose interests all wars are fought. The 'tax payer' in whose interests all war is fought, for raw materials, markets, spheres of geo-political interests, is not a member of the working class, but of the global parasitic capitalist class. Taxation is a burden upon the capitalist class levied upon their profit. The weapons will always be in the wrong hands while we have capitalism.
Selling to the highest bidder is 'normal' and moral market behaviour in an aggressive competitive capitalist social system. The morality of it is determined by the accumulative economic and/or strategic outcome for the capitalist class engaged upon it. These are all upstanding 'moral' good guys and gals whose governments approved the conducted war science upon civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is the social system which requires to be revolutionised into a human centred, commonly owned, production for use, cooperative world. The ethical behaviour and morality which proceeds from this will surely be different to the ones which presently prevail. All we need is a majority who are politically aware of those facts and conscious of the necessity of their shared role with fellow-workers worldwide, in bringing the post-capitalist society into being.
We don't need leaders.
We are not sheep.
Workers have no country
We have a world to win
Wee Matt
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