The heart of capitalism is accumulation. Capital is accumulated through the exploitation of workers. Workers sell their labour power in exchange for a wage. The difference between what they actually produce and what their wage is worth is ‘surplus value’ – the source of profits for capitalists. In assessing labour costs, just like machinery costs, the capitalist is only interested in replacement – so that there will be enough workers of sufficient ‘quality’ to continue production tomorrow. In many developing countries wages are below the poverty line because it doesn’t matter to the employer if his employees only last a few months unless they’re skilled and expensive to replace. There are plenty more labourers to be had in the provincial towns and rural villages. In the developed world, where there is a relatively limited labour force and a need for much higher productivity to maintain profits, wages have to be much higher. The wage paid to a worker has to be enough to keep him working ‘efficiently’ and to ensure that when he is worn out a replacement is ready. His wage has to cover his own needs, those of his children and those of his wife whose job it is to service and maintain this generation of workers and the next. Although increasingly it requires two wages to cover the costs of living and most wives are now workers in their own right.
Also, the capitalist class use their theory of profit taking in the struggle against workers. Economists put forward the argument that Britain’s decline is related to “unproductive” activity like education and health those provisions for the reproduction of the work-force taking too great a share of national resources. This is then taken up by politicians to suggest that there is “too much waste which we can no longer afford”. The Tories or Labour can justify cutting “too much waste which we can no longer afford”. The Tories or Labour can justify cutting government expenditure on health and education in order to restore prosperity in the national interest. Education and health services are not waste but are part of the profit-producing sector of the economy. By cutting back on education and health, the government is adversely affecting the reproduction of labour power which will reduce the amount of surplus value produced.
Capitalism says profitability should be the sole criteria by which we decide what gets built, what services are provided and who works. If there’s a profit to be made, let’s invest in it and produce it. Don’t do it, though, if there’s no profit to be made. Building our society solely on a capitalist quest for profit has placed us all in jeopardy. Mankind has followed the capitalism path for only a relatively short time yet we are now on the edge of the precipice. We have tens of thousands of years of history proving that we can organise our lives around values other than for profit. Even today, in the midst of the most capitalist-dominated period ever, most of our lives, outside of paid work, is based on love, caring, sharing, solidarity, respect and doing what’s best for our collective future. This is called family and community. If we can just come to the understanding that an economic and political system can also be based on these ‘community values’ we would have a path to building a viable alternative to the mess we are in.
There is one real capitalist system, advancing money in order to make more money - namely a profit over the money paid to the workforce and for the means of production. We start with money and we finish with money. Beneath the process of money making money, we can show that this happens through the exploitation of labour and the amount of exploitation or extra money made can be explained by the appropriation of surplus labour time (beyond that needed to keep workers alive and in production).
The basic fact of social life today is the ownership of the materials and instruments of production by a small class. The rest of us depend on this class for a living. To live we have to work for those who own. The places where we work are not ours, nor is what we produce. We are needed by the owners because we can work. The ability to work is, to all intents and purposes, our only asset. We cannot use this ourselves of course since we have no materials or instruments of production. But it is of use to those who do own the places of work. Without it their factories, farms, mines and mills cannot be operated. For selling our ability to work to these people we are paid a price, variously called a wage or salary.
Wages are thus a price—the price of human energy. While potatoes are sold by weight and petrol by volume human energy is sold by time. Houseroom too is sold by time. The buyer pays for the use of some rooms for, say, a week. The buyer of human energy likewise pays for its use for a certain time, perhaps an hour, week, month, year or an even longer period. We live, then, by selling our energies. Our standard of living depends on the size of our wage packet.
The goal of the Socialist Party is the expropriation of the capitalists and taking over by the working-class of the means of production and distribution. This is beginning the social organisation of production, and the end of the burdens of parasitism of private ownership. Industries will be organised and planned at every stage of production, so much energy, so much textiles, so much steel, etc. The output is calculated to meet the immediate needs of the population and for the means of production to extend the productive power in the future plus a margin held in reserve for any unforeseen shortfall. The necessary work to be done is spread out over the entire labour force, i.e., the whole able-bodied community, hours being shortened by the introduction of technology in place of the capitalist method of overworking. Necessary adaptations to new forms of work can be rapidly and easily effected. In agriculture and farming having been squeezed by both capitalism and landlordism, the removal of all the burdens of rent, mortgages, bank loans, as well as the obstacles of inadequate machinery, the hunting shooting and fishing game rights of the millionaire sporting estates, as well as the inappropriate and inefficient farming in unsuitable areas, along with the breaking down the old division of town and country, of rural and industrial workers, will rapidly build up agriculture anew. This is a question of meeting immediate needs; how far, in the final world organisation of production agricultural and industrial areas will be allocated on a world basis, or, as modern technical development appears to indicate, closely united and integrated throughout the world, is a question of the future.
What will be the immediate consequences of the change-over from the present capitalist society to a socialist society? It is clear that, economically, we shall have solved crises, we shall have ended unemployment, we shall have established production to meet the needs of all; politically, we shall have abolished the rule of class distinctions and privilege, and entered on the way to the first real democracy and freedom for all, the free and equal workers’ society. What will be the social consequences that the workers’ rule will immediately set itself to realise in order to bring the fruits of the revolution to all, in order to end the present reign of inequality — inequality in respect of every elementary human need of food and housing, conditions of health, education, etc., and bring the material conditions of real freedom and development to all? Let us begin with a little calculation to give a notion of what is possible, to show, that we are not speaking of some utopia, but only of what is immediately and practically realisable so soon as the workers are united to overthrow capitalism and enforce their will.
These, then, are the alternatives before the workers - the collapse of the whole existing structure leading to conditions of famine and slow extinction for masses of the population — or the socialist revolution, leading to new life for all. The capitalist propagandists try to frighten the workers from revolution by holding before them the spectre that revolution means “starvation,” that the workers depend on capitalism for their existence. The contrary is the truth - that the workers can by the method of social revolution rapidly reconstruct and extend production and win prosperity for all. It is the continuance of capitalism that means starvation. The workers, if they depend on capitalism, can only go down with it. Already millions are unemployed, are brought down to the barest subsistence basis. Semi-starvation conditions spread, Millions, and yet more millions will be “superfluous” before the process ends. Capitalism already grudges the bare subsistence basis, sees no way save to cut it down. Under the conditions of capitalism, the spectre of mass starvation draws ever closer as environmental destruction and climate change exacts its price and takes its toll.
There is no time to lose. What is the first need for to-day? A fighting spirit within the working-class. We are advancing to large struggles - the issue of class power, the issue of capitalism or socialism. We need to prepare new forms of struggle, to unite and organise against the capitalist attacks and to awaken and draw into the struggle ever more workers determined above all to overthrow capitalism.
Forward to Socialism! Forward to the Social Revolution!
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