The earliest societies practiced a primitive communism. To
work is good for one’s well-being, as opposed to being employed. The people who
transcend the capitalist method of wage slavery producing for sale on a market will
not be lacking in their resolve to make the superabundance be shared and work
for all. Capitalism has solved the production problem and created the
knowledgeable workforce capable of running it from top to bottom. Socialism is going
to be built upon the mass technology of capitalism. Capitalism generates an
abundance of evidence of its own failings every minute of every hour of every
day, evidence which people are remarkably adept at ignoring or skilled at
explaining away. Nothing, however, is
forever. Capitalism had outlived its useful potential by the start of the 20th
century. We have had two world wars, innumerable small ones and they are
picking sides as we speak for another go, over raw materials, spheres of interest
etc. War isn't about 'Goodies' versus 'Baddies'. It is 'business by other
means.' Capitalism is in the same predicament as feudalism was with warring
kingly factions seeking domination over what spoils of war may bring. Arguments
for going to war are arguments for killing our fellow worker on both sides.
Capitalism cannot exist without war.It is an insane system which can legitimise
slaughter in the interests of a minority parasite class against other
capitalist parasites, for raw materials, strategic advantage, trade routes etc.
and justify it with our without, the legal and juridical structures which are
imposed for protection of the dominance of king Capital. War is never in the
interests of workers and are not entered into out of any humane considerations.
These are sometimes stitched on to the case made but this is a part of
propaganda.
The division of the world’s population into distinct nations
seems to be perfectly natural. The idea of nationalism is that "we"
all have certain characteristics in common, and "we" should stick
together. We are all assumed to belong to a national group but nationality is a
product of social processes. The modern state is a product of bourgeois (i.e.
capitalist) development. There exists a mistaken belief in a country's
permanence - the myth of the "eternal nation", based on national
character, or territory or its institutions and upon its continuity across many
generations, the community's common ancestry. Capitalist nations however are
not 'ours' but serve the interests of the elite. It is their nation, not ours. Political
scientist, Benedict Anderson, discusses nations as socially constructed
"imagined communities," because "the members of even the
smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or
even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion." Nationalism conceals the real nature of capitalism, turns
worker against worker and serves to impede working-class solidarity. Race is a
stupid, contrived category. We all came out of Africa. We are all homo-sapiens.
We have more in common with workers worldwide than with our home-grown leeches.
We should be making common cause with our fellow workers to overthrow the
system which causes misery and share the planets resources. Race is an irrelevant,
unscientific classification.
It is not the concern of capitalist politicians to put
workers first. The may pretend to do so to win power, but their job is to
govern workers to maintain the discipline, in order to maximise profits for the
parasite capitalist class. Sounding tough on immigration is an attempt to
deflect attention from the causes as well as consequences of inadequate,
housing, over-crowded schools and under-funded health care, by blaming other
factors than the everyday cutting of rations to the wage slaves in a market
driven by profits, by focusing public perceptions elsewhere, at symptoms rather
than causes. In fact, austerity is a prime example of the capitalist imperative
to put Profits before People. No doubt IDS is a tosser, but he is only a
symptom of a market system, which requires workers, whether in work or not, to
have wages or subsistence benefits, until market conditions change
sufficiently, expansion and boom follows slump and stagnation, so they have
more bargaining power. This will continue ad infinitum until capitalism and
production of profit within a competitive, anarchic market, in conditions of
waged slavery is ended and replaced by a society where production is for use
and there exists free access for the wealth producers. We need a social
revolution to win a world fit for us all. Instead of being choked off as
presently, when production is for sale, before needs can be met, a society of
common ownership can continue with production until human needs are satisfied.
This will utilise the available technology with "calculation in
kind", replacing the need for monetary calculation. Auto-regulated,
self-correcting stock control systems, using bar codes and whatever new gizmos
are available at the time, enable a rational human-centred demand and
production model, rather than profit driven boom/slump present day models which
create artificial scarcity by rationing methods (the wages system and the
prices system). In a post-capitalist system, there is no elite planners or top-
down state bureaucracy, or any other privileged minority with control over decision
making, but rather the wealth-producers, as social equals, self-administer over
'things.'
Effectively there are only two economic classes now. We don't
accept there is a true 'middle'' class any more. They were either absorbed into
the upper class or fell into the working class as the progress of capitalism's
revolution gathered pace. If you 'have' to work for a wage or salary in order
to live, then you are working class. If you are an owner of sufficient capital
so you can exploit and have others work for you to produce more wealth, then
you are in the capitalist class. It is a conceit that capitalism can be fine-tuned
and managed. Capitalism is competition married to market anarchy.
We are already producing enough food to meet the needs of
ten or even 12 billion people. The question is really where, how and what to
produce. Right now, too much is being produced in some regions of the world,
and not enough in others. In the
northern part of the world and in some emerging economies, there is a surplus
in the production of particular foodstuffs – like corn, cereals, rice, soya and
rapeseed – which are mainly used for making biofuels, animal fodder, starch and
sugar (which we do not need). In most southern countries, however, there is a
great untapped potential for producing more. So we need to rebalance the world
food and economic system. Current production exceeds our need for food, but
millions of people are still dying of hunger – which means the current system
doesn’t work. We need systemic change to the food processing model. Currently,
throughout the world, there is a growing trend of simplification. Intensive
single crops that will produce foodstuffs generating a large profit are
favoured. They are often high in calories, too, which can have a devastating
effect on health. While there are 800 million people suffering from the effects
of famine, 1.5 billion are overweight. We really need to move onto a sane
post-capitalist future where production is for the use and consumption of
everyone, in conditions of free access and common ownership, with democratic
control by social equals, free at last from the drudgery of wage slavery for
the enrichment of a capitalist class. The SPGB (Britain's oldest existing
socialist party) are proceeding from a Marxian analysis which sees capitalism
having to be replaced with its superior advantages of technology and production
and information intact, harnessed for the common good with production for use
and free access to the wealth, by the worlds workers, who already produce the
wealth but not only that, increasingly run capitalism, from top to bottom.
Capitalism has outlived its essential usefulness in
developing the technology. Let's not try to fix this exploitative and
oppressive social system but get rid of it.
Ending the capitalist mode of production and distribution, with private,
corporate, state ownership of resources, would free up labour presently engaged
in buying and selling and money shuffling, for the production of useful
necessities and lighten the working day for all.
"Too long have
the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He
has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if
you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up
your minds that there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves". - Eugene Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment