Capitalism must go

Socialism has gone beyond the patchwork of anti-capitalist slogans, utopian proposals, and romantic hopes. One group of workers co-opting a factory in a capitalist society doth not a revolution maketh. Let's imagine a single factory closes down, and is occupied, taken over and self-managed by its workers. This may or may not be a good thing; Even those most critical of self-management would not begrudge workers trying to survive, although some may argue occupying to demand a higher severance package would be a better approach than assuming management of a failing firm. But a single act like this doesn't challenge the totality of capitalist relations, it would just swap a vertically managed firm for a horizontally managed one, leaving the 'totality' of the system unchanged.

 However, if factory takeovers were happening on a mass scale, such that they could start doing away with commercial/commodity relations between them; and at the same time there were mass refusals to pay rent/mortgages and militant defence of this resistance from the States subsequent coercion subsequent... And if this was happening across several countries then we might be looking at a social movement at the level of toppling state power, superseding commercial relations, making possible social reproduction (housing, food, health) without mediation by money, self-management of the activities necessary for this (rather than self-management of commodity production and wage labour). This would only be the case to the extent the movement grows and extends; if it was contained within a couple of countries say, then the movement could go into reverse and the acts may lose their revolutionary transformative character.

Self-management of production within capitalism can be seen as an integral part of the revolutionary process only if it becomes part of a greater social political movement where capitalism is challenged in other ways and only if there are as soon as possible moves made to abolish wages and markets. Self-managed industry operating under a market system by definition does not involve the undermining of exchange relations, value - workers are continuing to sell their labour-power on the market; their relationship to capital is little different to if they worked for a private capitalist.

Another argument which comes up when discussing struggles against the closure of workplaces due to unprofitability or capital flight is that the conditions that made the business unprofitable doesn't vanish, so long as the workplace still exists to sell stuff on the market (and workers continue to sell their labour-power on the market). The most that can be achieved by occupying and self-managing the workplace in such a context is to keep on working, competing with other producers on the market, subject to the same market conditions that made the workplace close in the first place only with workers enforcing pay cuts and job cuts on themselves, rather than a boss doing it.

Defenders of capitalism often say that socialists fail to recognise gains under capitalism that make socialism unnecessary. This sort of criticism is considered superficial, not because its claim to progress under capitalism is unfounded but because it fails to meet the major point of socialism that, whatever the record of economic progress under capitalism, the existence of private property and the profit motive inherently limit the potential of capitalism to serve human needs in an adequate way.

Socialism tends not to offer a blueprint of the future organisation of society and hold the belief that working people, once given the chance, are able to democratically choose their own path. Socialism remains an impossible dream only to those who denounce it as utopian even though every advance in technology and science turns the potential into more of a reality that is possible to realise. Today's production of goods in abundance and the accompanying knowledge, have transformed the utopias of an earlier time into practical alternatives to our everyday existence. The trouble with capitalism is that in this system production is for exchange not consumption. The merchants offer food to sell, not for people to eat. If you've got money to buy this food then you won't starve. If you have no money you will. This explains famine in Africa and the slow increase in malnutrition starting to show itself in Europe. It's a shortage of money not a shortage of food.

Inside a socialist society the major aim initially will be to produce enough food to feed everyone. That's all of us; the whole of humanity, all over the globe. Planned production worldwide will do away with malnourishment and starvation forever. Capitalism could never achieve this spectacular improvement in everyday life if they lasted another hundred years, because they only produce things to sell. That is the sad heart of this miserable life destroying system called capitalism. It's just production for exchange, so the ruling class can collect the profits contained in the commodities they sell. They have no interest in people's needs. Just their own greed for profit. We need is more and more planned production, so that all human needs can be satisfied and humanity grow, mentally and physically, so that its enormous and as yet untapped potential can begin to be realised. It's the same with health and education. With communism we will produce more hospitals and better schools so that everyone can have a proper chance to grow. We will produce better people and a better society!