Let's not fix capitalism – Let’s get rid of it.

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