Capitalism has no solution

The battle between people’s needs and capitalism grows ever fiercer. The attacks of capitalism, to maintain its profits, grow ever more sweeping and ferocious, ranging over every field, against both employed and unemployed workers, against wages and social services, for new forms of intensified labour. The basis of reformism is ended. All the so-called remedies not only fail to touch the root or the evil — the burdens of capitalist disorganisation and parasitism. It is a crisis of global capitalism. Every technological advance of production only intensifies the crises, intensifies the ferocity of capitalist competition for the market.

Many reformists promise that if only the capitalists would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. This is utopian nonsense, which ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Individual capitalists may talk of the benefits of high wages in the hope of securing a larger market for their goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. Competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, to cut wages. Wages are attacked on every side. Working conditions are intensified, heavier output is demanded from every worker for less return. Speeding up and rationalisation is  the order of the day. Capitalism can only seek to prolong its life by throwing the burdens of its crises on to the workers, by ever renewed attacks upon the workers’ standards. The policy of the rival groups of capitalists is to fight to increase their own competitive power, to cheapen costs of production, to fight to enlarge their own share of the diminishing market. But this cheapening of costs, since capitalist rent, interest and profits are sacred, can only be carried out at the expense of the workers. But in the end, where will all these policies of capitalism lead? They will not solve the inherent problems of capitalism. On the contrary, the more they increase the impoverishment of the workers, the more they increase competitive power and since the same types of policy are pursued by all the capitalist powers. The final effect is only to sharpen world competition to breaking point. So develops the capitalist offensive which sweeps through the capitalist world. Socialism means there will no longer the capitalist anarchy of production by competing businesses for an unknown market, with the consequent gluts and slumps.

The capitalist class cannot attempt to organise the growing productive power to meet human needs — the question does not even enter into their heads. It cannot arise within the conditions of capitalism. Only socialism can bring the solution. Only socialism can sever the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. Only the organised working-class can drive the capitalists from possession, can organise social production.

Instead, society will rationally determine what and how much we shall produce all as part coordinated planning. All production will be directed solely to supplying people’s needs. It is for use, not for profit. Therefore, every expansion of production means greater abundance and leisure for all. Workers, because it is their own production, for themselves, their families and their communities will engage in production with an initiative and enthusiasm unattainable in capitalism through their own elected workers’ committee in the factories, controlling production and administration through their own elected administrative bodies. 

Many workers have seen the need of basic social change and placed their hopes in the Labour Party to bring the solution. Swift disillusionment has followed. The condition of the workers has grown worse and Labour governments have acted as a representative of capitalism against the workers. This “failure” of the Labour Party (“failure” from the standpoint of the workers not from the standpoint of the capitalists as it has served its purpose) is not an accidental, nor a personal question of this or that particular leader, of this or that particular policy. It is the whole system of politics of the supposed “alternative” to revolution that stands exposed. The Labour Party could not act and cannot act otherwise than it has acted, does act and will continue to act, as the representative of capitalism — because its basis is capitalism. Their “practical” policy is based upon acceptance of the capitalist State on administering capitalism and helping to build up capitalism. In the period of flourishing capitalism, reformism was able to win small gains for the workers, and on this basis to hold them from the socialist revolution, to hold the workers to capitalism. But this basis is ended. Capitalism to-day is no longer willing to grant concessions to the workers, on the contrary, finds itself compelled to withdraw existing concessions, to make new attacks, to worsen conditions. And therefore the role of reformism, which is the servant of capitalism in the working-class, changes. The role of reformism inevitably becomes to assist capitalism to attack the workers, to enforce wage-cuts, to repress the workers’ revolt, to worsen conditions — all in the name of “practical” policy.

Within capitalism there can be no solution; for the causes of its social ills cannot be changed under the conditions of capitalism. Only the socialist revolution can affect the causes and bring in a new era. Only the socialist revolution can organise production socially on planned and scientific lines; can reconcile the conflict of productive power and consumption, and can end the conflict of classes by the destruction of class distinctions; can create free productive relations by the organisation of world socialist economy.