Upside-Down World

Capitalism is not serving the majority of humanity. Capitalism is an economic system which has as its goal the production of capital. This capital is then used to produce more capital, ad infinitum. Anyone who tells you that socialism can be just a cozier, nicer version of capitalism, must be considered suspect.

Capitalism divides the persons engaged in work - producing the goods and services upon which life depends - into two basic groups: employers and employees. In capitalism, the former buy the labor power of the latter. Employers hire employees in two distinct groups. One group (production workers, blue-collar workers etc.) is set to work with tools, equipment and work-spaces to transform raw materials into finished products, both goods and services. The other group (enablers, white-collar workers etc.) is set to work doing the necessary clerical, supervisory, security and managerial tasks that support the first group to produce those finished products. Employers make all key production decisions - what to produce, how and where - with little or no input from employees. Employers likewise make all the key decisions about what to do with the enterprise's profit or surplus. Employees again have little or no power over the disposition of the profits their work achieves.

Let’s say that you’re getting paid $15 an hour by a business owner in a stable, profitable firm. You’ve been working there five years, and you put in about sixty hours a week. No matter what your job is like — whether it’s easy or grueling, boring or exciting — one thing is certain: your labor is making more (probably a lot more) than $15 an hour for your boss. That persistent difference between what you produce and what you get back in return is exploitation — a key source of profits and wealth in capitalism. And, of course, with your paycheck you’re forced to buy all the things necessary for a good life — housing, health care, child care, a college education — which are also commodities, produced by other workers who are not fully remunerated for their efforts either.

Socialists want a world without private property. We don’t want a world without personal possessions— the things meant for individual consumption and enjoyment. Instead, socialists strive for a society without private property — the things that give the people who own them power over those who don’t. That’s the socialist vision: abolishing private ownership of the things we all need and use — factories, banks, offices, natural resources, utilities, communication and transportation infrastructure — and replacing it with social ownership, thereby undercutting the power of elites to hoard wealth and power. And that’s also the ethical appeal of socialism: a world where people don’t try to control others for personal gain, but instead cooperate so that everyone can flourish.

The power created by private property is expressed most clearly in the labor market, where business owners get to decide who deserves a job and who doesn’t, and are able to impose working conditions that, if given a fair alternative, ordinary people would otherwise reject. And even though workers do most of the actual work at a job, owners have unilateral say over how profits are divided up and don’t compensate employees for all the value they produce. Socialists call this exploitation. Exploitation is not unique to capitalism. It’s around in any class society, and simply means that some people are compelled to toil under the direction of, and for the benefit of, others. In a socialist society you and your fellow workers wouldn’t spend your day making others rich. You would keep much more of the value you produced. This could translate into more material comfort, or, alternatively, the possibility of deciding to work less with no loss in compensation so you could go to school or take up a hobby. That may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s entirely plausible. Workers at all levels of design, production, and delivery know how to make the things society needs — they do it every day. They can run their workplaces collectively, cutting out the middle-men who own private property. Indeed, democratic control over our workplaces and the other institutions that shape our communities is the key to ending exploitation.