The anarchy of production of the capitalist system means there is no overall planning to match production with human need. Anyone can start up or ramp up production when sales and chances for profit are high. Inevitably a saturation point is reached when demand is lower than production and we have an overabundance of goods. Workers must be laid off and factories closed, creating a recession. Since the seeds of the next boom are to be found in that recession - cheap labour, raw materials, machinery, and factory rent - then we have the continual boom and bust cycles familiar to capitalist production. When an opportunity presents itself to the capitalist to expand production, he must be able to find the necessary labour. This is where the poor, unemployed and welfare people come in. They are `the reserve army' standing by on minimum benefits ready to be called on as required. In other words, they are a necessary part of the system and they won't go away while the profit system exists, and the people mentioned above are simply attacking the symptoms, not the disease.
The source of all social wealth is human labour. The working class produces an abundance of wealth, so much so that poverty could be eliminated very quickly if a socialist society, based on the common ownership of the means to produce that wealth was established. Poverty is an endemic part of capitalism and it cannot be different. The fundamental aspects of capitalism are the ownership of the tools of production by a tiny minority of the world's population and the consequent wage-slavery of the majority. With production for profit, the capitalist tries to extract as much as possible from his workers, who inevitably resist and organize into unions to improve conditions as best they can, hence the class struggle.
Governments, dictatorial or democratic, exist to run the affairs of capitalism and therefore to preserve the status quo, which makes the continuation of poverty inevitable. This does not mean that there are no well-meaning politicians or political parties, but they cannot succeed in eliminating poverty within capitalism. For more than two centuries the profit system has held sway over this planet and none have succeeded in this endeavour yet. In 1945, the Labour Party introduced the modern-day welfare state which, in 1948, included the NHS for all. Nobody would deny today that poverty exists in the UK and even their health system is in a mess and suffering from gross underfunding. Nor does it make sense to argue that we don't have socialism yet, so, in the meantime, we need to fight for reforms to at least reduce the worst effects of poverty. This argument has been voiced by so many for so long that `in the meantime' has become forever. The time is long past and too many people have suffered, are suffering, and will continue suffering until we attack the disease itself.
There is one way, and one way only, to abolish poverty, and that is to establish a socialist society in which the tools of production will be commonly owned and administered by the population as a whole in their own interests. In such a world, not only poverty but all the social evils created by the profit system will be abolished. Who would not want to abolish war, famine, crime, preventable disease, planned obsolescence, people having nervous breakdowns, and a host of other problems engendered by profit motives? Who would not want to replace them with a world where all will live in peace, harmony, and prosperity? This can be had as soon as people want it. So why not organise politically in the Socialist Party to bring it to fruition.
The Socialist Party has continually shown that, while there may be some subtle shades of difference between the main political parties of the world’s developed countries, they all support and work in the interests of the current economic system that is the underlying cause of the ailments afflicting the world such as poverty, war and deprivation of necessary goods and services. So long as we keep as we keep electing these parties, so long will those afflictions continue no matter which party is in power or how many new leaders arise.
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte).
On the other hand, when socialism replaces capitalism, there will be no leaders, no political parties, and no states, as they are expressions of a class-based society. In socialism, which can only be established by the democratic will of the majority of the working class, it will be up to the people to decide how their society will operate. Elected delegates will carry out the will of the people with no more special powers or privileges than anyone else and would be accountable and recallable at any time. Leadership implies the investiture of special powers in a person and subservience of all others to those powers. Decision-making and policy-making are taken out of the hands of the majority as being incapable, and left to the leader and his small cadre of “experts”. Once the leader is elected, the rank and file who elected him are expected to go away and remain quiet only to be trotted out for support every four or five years. We cannot be led into socialism for if that were the case, we could be led out again by a so-minded politician. It will only be the understanding of the socialist case and the desire for it by the vast majority that will give birth to and maintain a socialist society of common ownership of wealth production and distribution in the interests of all.
“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.” (Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto).
The Socialist Party has no leaders, only elected officials following the directions of the membership.
No comments:
Post a Comment