At the present time, the spokesmen for the ruling class are making an all-out effort to convince us that there is a “recovery” taking place. With the current economic crisis capitalism cracked across the world they are crying for a return to normalcy, and normalcy to them means the former golden age of unlimited exploitation and oppression of labour. They believe they can turn back time. They do not perceive that they are creating new antagonism and bitterness and preparing the ground for renewed and intensified working class revolts against their despotic misrule. There can be no return to capitalist normalcy. The profitability of capital must be restored before the accumulation process can be resumed.
The struggle between labour and capital involves the system’s very existence, bound as it is to its continuous expansion. Objectively, the ordinary economic struggle takes on revolutionary implications and thus, political forms, because one class can only succeed at the expense of the other. The burden of the crisis rests entirely upon the shoulders of the working class. Capitalism has proved again that it cannot and will not provide for the working class. Of course, the workers might be prepared to accept, within limits, a decreasing share of the social product via the austerity cuts, if only to avoid the miseries of drawn-out confrontations with the employers and its state. But this might not be sufficient to bring about a new economic upswing. The working class should fight the class struggle as it is fought by the bosses. The working class has a long way to go to reach the stage of class consciousness, and a will to struggle. But that it is on that road and will continue to travel it, is indisputable.
A host of politicos have also come out for “fighting back,” demagogically trying to profit from the discontent of the people. They peddle the view that the crisis can be solved by electing them. They say the banking system should be nationalised under democratic popular control. Only on this basis would it be possible to get rid of the spivs and speculators that are holding working class people to ransom. A nationalised banking sector would be run for the benefit of the majority, rather than for the super-rich. Those struggling to pay their mortgage would have it converted to an affordable rent; small businesses could get cheap loans, and public works such as a massive house-building programme could be cheaply financed. The Marxist economist Andrew Kliman opposes this. He writes: "Some leftist economists called for state control or nationalization of the financial system, rather than just regulation, of the financial system... But there cannot be socialism in one country. What results when you try to have socialism in one country is state-capitalism, a state-run system that is still embedded in the global capitalist economy, and which is still locked into a competitive battle with capitals elsewhere in the world. A state-run bank is still a bank."
Some Left parties and the TUC claim that companies are being irrational when they suppress wages, and they do not mean the simple fact that workers are having a hard time to make ends meet. They point out that somebody has to buy the commodities with which capital makes its profits. Their proposal is: wage increases create more effective demand and this benefits everyone – workers have more wages and capital more profit. Capitalism could be a nice symbiosis if companies were not so short-sighted.
What is remarkable about this theory is that it is only ever proposed to support rather limited wage demands: a minimum wage, a wage increase of 3% or even an unconditional basic income of a few hundred pounds. Why are the proponents of this theory so humble? Why not an hourly wage of £50, a wage increase of 100% and an unconditional basic income of £5000? If the theory was right, then this would make the economy go pop. Their humbleness shows that they themselves do not really believe their own theory. Rather, these advocates are looking for a reason to have their interest in higher wages recognised in the national discourse.
The theory is also simply wrong. For one, a single company has no advantage if it increases the wage. Even the workers of Nestlé spend only a small part of their wage on Nestlé products. Of course, if other companies pay their workers higher wages, then Nestlé might make more sales. However, it is not the logic of a single capital to pay its workers more for this effect.
Yet, sometimes competitors must be obliged for their own benefit. This is why the Left looks to the state which ought to enforce such wage increases. Workers get more money because the state mandates it. All companies sell more commodities to workers and, hence, attract more money from them. However, the imagined advantage for everyone is not realised: what companies pay more to their workers, they get back through their sales. Though these proponents of higher wages in the interest of capitalist success would not admit it, from the standpoint of the rate of profit, the ratio of advance and surplus becomes worse.
And of course, as it's the pursuit of maximum profit that drives the capitalist economy, reducing the rate of profit will have negative consequences. Which is why this won't work or even be tried. So what's the point of campaigning for it instead of for socialism? People need to know not just what to be against, but what to be for and we have to look beyond mere political and legal changes to changes in the actual relations of production. What is require is not leaders but popular consciousness. The core issue is not one of “taking power,” but of what happens after. People are not just the muscle that brings down the old power, but must become fully equipped, theoretically and intellectually, to govern society themselves.
Developing socialism within capitalism as advocated by proponents of co-operatives and worker-owned enterprise cannot be done. The economic laws of the larger system will not allow it. If you buy from the capitalist world “outside,” you also have to sell to it in order to get the money you need to buy from it, and you will not sell anything if your prices are high because your costs of production are high. To fight for socialism is consciously to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and its state institutions. The idea that socialism equals state planning, ownership, and control is not a Marxist conception.
It seems that most people want to see another world, but think it can come about, if at all, by voting it in, or by workers becoming their own bosses, or by paying everyone the same amount, or by means of whatever political, legal, and administrative measures they have been led to believe can accomplish the redistribution of power and wealth and really make their lives better. Despite the new priorities, new forms of organisation, new forms of ownership, new laws, and the new name you give your society, it remains capitalist. It remains capitalist because the economic laws that govern capitalism continue to govern your society. And they continue to govern your society because new priorities, new forms of organisation, new forms of ownership and so forth are not enough––by themselves––to overcome the economic laws of capitalism. These well-intentioned changes would merely be capitalism in a different form or they would not be viable and lead back to capitalism. And the reason why they wouldn’t work, Marx argued, is that these supposed alternatives to capitalism all try to get rid of capitalism without getting rid of its mode of production.
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