The Power of the Workers

Most people who agree with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders believe it is possible for both capitalists and the working class to coexist in a system where capitalists can still make lots of money, but where workers are afforded security and a decent standard of living. Socialists who are Marxists espouse a theory that poverty, unemployment, and class oppression are not side effects of capitalism but a vital part of it. Socialists hold that the idea that capitalists and workers can work together for the common good is simply not possible for their interests are irreconcilable. Often dismissed as a dirty word, the influence of socialism and socialists ebbs and flows. Capitalism has cloaked itself in a libertarian guise by proclaiming that the freedom of the market and the individual as the only realistic ways to achieve liberty. But this cloak is very quickly shed for most people as their labour power is reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold, and subject to the profit-seeking whims of a boss. From its early days, capitalism’s claim to represent the only realistic human freedom has been challenged by socialists. To suggest that power is not concentrated in one class is to completely misunderstand the nature of capitalism. Today, wealth and power is concentrated in even fewer hands – the owners of the major banks and corporations –more than when Marx was writing. To say that social relations in modern society are capitalist relations is not to take an ‘economic determinist’ view of society: arguing that every aspect of the ‘superstructure’ of society – the state, politics, culture, social attitudes and so on – are rigidly determined by the character of the economy.

Nonetheless, it is clear that as long as we live in a capitalist society, where wealth and power rest with the tiny elite who own and control industry, science, and technology, then the superstructure of that society will also ultimately reflect and act in the interests of that ruling elite. No amount of demands for checks on their privilege will eliminate the social power of the capitalist class. A determined struggle can force capitalism to adapt to a certain extent but any permanent and deep-rooted change, particularly where it threatens the functioning of capitalism, will only be achieved by the socialist transformation of society. Pointing out the need for fundamental change in society does not in any way downgrade the importance of a combative workers’ movement while we live in this society. But it is utopian to try and create cooperatives and so on when we all live within the constraints of the capitalist system and are all affected by it. Turning inwards rather than turning out to build a movement capable of winning real change is doomed to frustration and failure.

Capitalism shapes the outlook of all of us from the time we are born, with all of the distortions of the human personality that creates. It is not possible to prescribe exactly how human relations would flower in the future when freed from the rigid straitjackets imposed by capitalism. The crucial issue for anyone determined to end oppression, therefore, is how to end capitalism and begin to build a world that is free of oppression for all. The working class is not ‘disappearing’. In fact, it is potentially stronger today as countries where workers were a tiny minority of society a century ago now have large and powerful working classes. In the economically advanced countries many are driven into low paid, temporary work, often in the service sector, while at the same time, large sections of the population –the so-called professionals – who would have previously considered themselves middle class have been forced into the ranks of the working class in their living conditions and social outlook.

Socialism is the struggle for the fullest achievement of freedom in all spheres, the end of the state, of capitalism, of classes, and of all other oppressions. People sit around and complain about the fat cat corporations, but fear acknowledging that we must end the entire capitalist edifice.