The only alternative to capitalism is socialism

 

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITED

Climate change is here right now and it will only get worse. Extreme weather events are happening more and more frequently around the world —forest fires, heat-waves, hurricanes and super storms, droughts in one region and floods in another, melting glaciers, unprecedented cold freezes and rising sea levels. Runaway climate change caused by soaring greenhouse gas emissions threatens the survival of life on the planet. If we're not worried by all this, we're not thinking straight.

One thing that is clear is that there is no realistic way to reform or control capitalism. The capitalist response to these challenges is business as usual. The solution to climate change is known and simple: rapidly phase out the use of fossil fuels and make a mass-scale switch to renewables. But gigantic economic interests at the heart of the capitalist system have massive investments in coal, oil, gas and nuclear power and will not change. The switch to renewable energy across the board is being blocked by those who profit from the polluting industries. The sole operating imperative of the big corporations is to secure the greatest possible profits — regardless of the consequences to the planet and its people. It is the Green Party’s view that through legislation the excesses and abuses of the system can be reined in. However, there is absolutely no evidence that this will ever really happen. Even if there are reasonable well-intentioned laws on the books, they are flouted, ignored or simply not enforced.

 Fewer and fewer ordinary people have any confidence about the future — how could they? The all-pervasive ruling-class propaganda machine is ceaselessly promoting scapegoats in an effort to divide ordinary people and forestall or weaken any effective resistance. Refugees, Muslims, benefit claimants on welfare, public housing tenants with a 'spare' bedroom, petty criminals — all are pressed into service by the media and the politicians to distract ordinary people and displace their anger away from the actual system which is destroying our lives.

The labour of working people creates the wealth of society. The rich are wealthy not because of their genius but because they are able to appropriate the toil of the masses. The bosses are able to do this because they own the means of production. We have no alternative — we have to work for them. We get wages, they get the surplus — the profits. The economy is a social enterprise, a product of the work of the mass of the people yet it is controlled by a handful of people the 1% and is run solely to make profits for them. That is the source of all our problems and it has to be confronted. We can't duck or fudge this issue. The corporations control the economy, on which we all depend. Bringing capitalism under social control is the big unspoken taboo. Shouldn’t the means of life be owned by society. As someone once said, people can more readily envisage the end of the world than they can the end of capitalism.

We need a system of social democracy that empowers people. Apologists for capitalism have long devoted enormous efforts to campaign against socialism. They constantly try to prove that it is a completely utopian exercise, flying in the face of human nature; that it will never work. Of course, the idea that society will only function if we have a system of organised, institutional greed — that is, capitalism — is completely ludicrous. Our current problems have arisen precisely because we have such a society. To save ourselves we need change. Fighting to get rid of this rotten system and replace it with a socialist society of peace, solidarity and plenty remains the most urgent task facing progressive humanity. Socialists argue that the only way this can happen is if the economy is brought under social ownership and control.  With the economic levers in our hands we could elaborate a conscious plan focused on meeting human needs. Combating climate change and building a sustainable economy would be the most urgent priority. Plans would be democratically decided. Workplaces would be controlled by producers. This is the socialism. Capitalism, on the other hand, treats the workers like possessions — things to be used like other machinery in the factory in the process of making a profit. In the process, the workers humanity is sucked out of them. It destroys the ability of the workers to live a productive life with love. They live the life of a commodity, or an animal, to be exploited, used, and discarded.

Elections are always a very important moment, a time that encourages discussion on the future. Socialists participate in the electoral process to present socialist alternatives. By fielding Socialist Party candidates in elections at all levels of office, we educate the voters about socialism and its radical solutions. We also promote the independent political organization of working people in direct opposition to the capitalist parties. Our party knows that a socialist revolution is necessary when workers become conscious that the power of the capitalist bosses must be replaced with the power of the people. This is the message that the Socialist Party has promoted in its 2015 election campaigns. Our participation in the elections has given people the opportunity to question our candidates and to vote for a party that is already fighting in their interests. There is access, albeit limited, to the media which enables us to show that we are here. Despite all the difficulties and inequities of the electoral process, in terms of time and coverage we are managing to gain an audience.

Most Green activists want to keep the market. They accept that private property and competition for profit are natural and good even though they add many of their own caveats to that. There is nothing ecological about private property, capitalist competition, or the profit motive. Naturally, human beings, their work, their societies, are communal. Primitive, tribal society was communist. As human society developed the capacity to create a surplus, various forms of property and privatization arose, so that an elite class could claim that surplus for itself, and thus exploit the labour of the rest of us. In primitive society, human beings recognized the simple fact that since we all work together, since we are interdependent, we ought to share the fruit of our labour.

Private property is a story of exploitation and oppression: even though you worked to create the surplus, “I get to keep it. It is mine, not yours, because my class owns the state”. In ancient society “I own you, your body itself, as a slave.” In feudal times because “I am lord of the manor, because of my aristocratic social status, I have the right to collect, from my serfs, a substantial portion of the agricultural surplus.” In capitalist society, private property comes into its own, so to speak, as the culmination of this historical process of class exploitation. It meant, first, that aristocrats and the gentry got to enclose the commons as their private property, and kick the serfs off of it. When they lost their land the peasants moved to the cities in massive numbers. Thus they became prey to the industrialists. Because the industrialists owned the factories, they were the only people who could give workers any livelihood. So they could force the workers to work for very low wages in horrible conditions. “I am the robber industrial baron, now, your new master, and you are a wage-slave to furnish me with the surplus value you create”

Propertarians would argue that this gives small businessman a bad rap—that many employers are kindly and benevolent. Perhaps so. But to be sustainable, every single small capitalist would have to be a saint, would have to give away his profits to his competitors and to the community if he started winning too much at their expense. That is impossible. And if we talk about workers' cooperatives, or the various utopian schemes put forward by the left reformists the same problem applies. With competition for profit, most such cooperatives will eventually go under, while a few will survive. Competition always intensifies, because the rate of profit tends to fall. Capitalists, big or small, cooperative or corporate, compete with each other on the market, and they do so by cutting their prices. The best way to do this is to replace their workers with machines. This works out for the first capitalist who gets the new technology: he can undercut his competitors. But then his surviving competitors get the same technology. Since profit is based upon human labor, profits, in general, fall, as they get squeezed between falling prices and higher technological costs. As profits fall, competition for profits intensifies. As competition intensifies, there will be a strong temptation for relations even within cooperatives to become hierarchical, for a few "elite" members to drive the rest to work harder, so that the cooperative can compete better, externally. In the case of both small businesses and cooperatives, as they compete with other concerns for survival, their decisions will be based upon profit and survival rather than upon what is good, in the long term, for the environment, the larger community, or even for their own workers and their smaller shareholders.

The only alternative to capitalism is socialism. And we will use every forum to keep saying that until our message begins to sink in.