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Friday, February 05, 2016

Educate, Agitate, Organise.



All the wealth of the capitalist class springs from slavery - wage slavery. Collectively all wealth flows from the labour of the working class. Capitalism cannot function otherwise. We need to abolish it not reform it. Wage slavery in all industries is never coupled with generous terms and conditions. The Socialist Party support unions taking on the employers whenever they do so. This is an essential part of the class struggle but can only ever be defensive of workers interests.

It is past time to do away with capitalism and Capital, buying and selling, money, banks insurance, war, nations, wages or prices and usher in globally, the post-capitalist age of abundance In a world capable of creating a abundance of wealth, landing men on other planets, exploring space and building ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, the problem is of ownership and control of the means and instruments for creating wealth with a rationed (via wage-slavery) distribution of resources. Take power for yourself. Abolish the wages system. Establish common ownership, democratic control, free access socialism.

Wages are a rationing of access to societies gross product.  The people who move wealth around are also wage slaves, some highly rewarded, but most in medium earning brackets and a necessary part of the production process inside a capitalist market system.  It is intense global competition in a shrinking global market which leads to crisis. It is the rate of profit which is fairly consistent, but the means of production requires ever more intense exploitation of hands on production workers and the service sector.

It is capitalism itself which is out of sync with the potential possibilities of its technology.  It is possible to have a superabundance of wealth freely accessible if we get rid of the capitalist class.  Almost all government spending is for the maintenance of the capitalist system. The bulk of wealth torrents upwards and only trickles back down when exploitative opportunities arrive.

You can't just redistribute wealth. Exploitation is built into capitalism. It can't be made fairer. You can’t even gradually reform it, as the market system eventually shakes out and reasserts control, over impediments to producing profit. Market crashes and crises are how this happens. The capitalist class can ride this out for long periods but the workers are disciplined by their poverty with increased rates of exploitation and lack of reserves into the new capitalist order. This is what we are presently witnessing.

The technological advances of capitalist production have to be shorn of their class ownership and a post capitalist order introduced in which all wealth is common wealth. A democratic, global, post-capitalist, free access socialist society is the answer.

Capitalism is obsolete as a method for production and distribution, as it can’t solve the production problem without rationing access to the producer by waged slavery. The distribution criteria of capitalism has production cease, when there is no profit to be earned, so human needs go unmet.

The intensity of competition for shrinking markets causes workers’ wages to be cut or depressed and the rate of exploitation is intensified. Until new products come on and expansion can ensue workers are thrown onto relief or short term work, while the parasite class can sit in ease and luxury on the wealth they steal by the wages system until they can reinvest some of this as capital (dead labour) in emerging opportunities to exploit workers further.

Capitalism is a splintered society; divided not just by sectional ownership of the means of production but by the economic rivalry of independent states striving to exercise authority over given geographical areas.

Conventional political parties endorse the framework of capitalism and compete to win control over the state and to administer the economic system within its boundaries, which necessarily means perpetuating the wages system and the persistent hardship for wage and salary earners.

The policies propounded by these parties are similar because they are manifestations of the same political imperative – a continuation of capitalism – and are distinguishable only to the extent that they propose different organisation methods to administer the same economic system. But while trading one group of careerist politicians for another can never be the answer, changing society’s economic structure is the only answer. It is a delusion if any wage worker thinks they have done better under any of the political parties. All is relative and if you work for a wage or salary, you are in an exploitative relationship with the capitalist class being the exploiter of your capacity to produce wealth from your ability to work.

Capitalism exists only because workers allow it to exist. Changing the structure of society, however, is not as simple as changing political allegiance to a party. Capitalism is based firmly on a principle of leadership, where a minority in secret makes decisions and the excluded majority is told what they should do and how they should think. Changing the world’s economic structure by converting the means of production from class ownership to common ownership requires that workers individually understand what they want and actively combine to change their condition. Socialism cannot be delivered by leaders and is achievable only by the concerted action of a politically conscious mass movement without direction or leaders, for only then will the majority become the decision-makers. The task may be daunting but must begin somewhere. Workers would do well to start by considering whether capitalism – under any political party - is really the future they want.

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