Being more than anti-capitalist

"Anti-capitalism" has become a popular slogan, and a good thing too. But if this is to have a positive impact people have to be clear as to what is mean by capitalism. Unless these anti-capitalists take the time to study what exactly capitalism is and how it operates they risk not advocating a viable alternative. Calling yourself “anti-capitalist” is a bit like proclaiming yourself to be “anti-cancer”. We would all like to see an end to cancer, but the only way to bring that about is to understand how cancer works. In the long run, there isn't any point in just trying to treat the symptoms of the disease. Unless you cure the disease itself, the symptoms will keep on coming back. The same logic applies to capitalism. People have been trying to reform capitalism for as long as it has existed. What have they achieved? A polluted planet, scarred by war and hunger, which is owned and controlled by the McMicrosoft Corporation. Why have things turned out this way? To understand this it is necessary to understand what capitalism is. Hundreds of different organisations are not a movement. They are not even anti-capitalist, in the sense that they haven't yet agreed on a definition of capitalism.

For a revolution to be any good, you have to be FOR something, besides being AGAINST capitalism. Any person can be against capitalism and some people are just against big capitalism (the banks and the corporations) as if somehow 'small' capitalism is a completely different thing, and perfectly nice. It's not. They're the same. Capitalism is commodity production for sale on a market and instead of that, we could have co-operative production for use and free distribution on the basis of need. This would involve no markets, no money, no commodities, no private property, no rich class and poor class, no ecological destruction, no famine, no war and virtually no crime. Anti-globalisation is supported by many. It is a movement that is hard to pin down and impossible to characterise in a few words. The proponents seek to constrain the global financial system; restrict the behaviour of corporations; stop the privatisation of public resources such as land and water, among other ameliorations of the world order. Unfortunately, the thinking is stuck very much within the blinkers of capitalism.

We cannot hope to understand world events unless we view these from a class, rather than national, perspective. We live in a world where the dominant world economic system is capitalism, a system that has organised all people into two opposing classes with conflicting interests. The owning or capitalist class lives on profits by virtue of its ownership of the means of producing and distribution wealth. It is their class interest to depress wages and benefits to increase profits. The working class everywhere has nothing and therefore is forced to sell its labour power for a wage or salary in order to live. But the source of all wealth is the product of labour applied to nature, and the very people who produce this wealth are denied access to it by laws and ultimately the state. Government's function is to protect the capitalist class and its legal 'right' to accumulate the wealth created by ordinary working people. The two classes thus have opposing and conflicting interests. The central imperative of capitalism is to expand and to seek new ways of extracting more profit from ordinary working people by seeking out raw material and markets and imposing itself on the people of other countries; transforming indigenous self-supporting people into wage and salary workers. People everywhere are compelled to join the ranks of the world's working class to face the same class struggles as their fellow workers in the industrialised countries. We share a common interest.  

It cannot be denied that capitalism has entered a particularly pernicious phase in its development – euphemistically called 'globalisation' – in undeveloped countries as large corporations viciously compete globally to secure markets and relentlessly exploit labour in countries where they reputedly earn 75 percent of their profits. But exploitation is not just confined to undeveloped countries. Working people everywhere are on the defensive against the class whose imperative is to maximise its profits and perpetuate their mastery over all working people. There can be little doubt that the wages and salaries of the majority of people in industrialised countries have stagnated or declined, working hours and job insecurity have increased and conditions of life have deteriorated. The correlation between economic growth and improving social welfare has been cut as corporations seek to introduce 'Third World' standards into the established industrialised countries. We share a common interest.

The real enemy is class society engendering the domination of ordinary working people by the class who live by making profits. Countries don't dominate or exploit other countries; the capitalist class who own the companies and corporations assisted by their respective governments exploit the working class everywhere, regardless of their geographical location. Working people don't benefit from the ruthless exploitation of undeveloped countries; companies and corporations benefit by maximising their profits for their shareholders. Ordinary workers don't import or export commodities; companies and corporations owned by the capitalist class export commodities in order to release the profit generated for them by the world's working class. Ordinary workers don't make trade rules; governments working to further the interests of companies and corporations draft these rules. Ordinary workers don't invest in other countries or claim 'free trade' is an impetus for global prosperity; companies and corporations invest in order to generate 'super-profits' and it is they as a class who prosper, not ordinary working people. Ordinary working people don't live on profits; instead, they struggle on a wage or salary. We have a conflict of interests.  

When anti-capitalist protesters demanded less corporate exploitation of developing countries they were intimating that the indigenous population would be better placed if left to its own devices. This is a delusion; less interference from 'foreign' capital would simply“Read! Think! Study!” allow the indigenous capitalist class or even the state to take over the exploitation of the indigenous working people. The same is true of struggles against colonialism, demands for national liberation, independence and the right of national self-determination. These movements are no more than the struggles of an indigenous capitalist class, striving to gain the right to exploit ordinary workers in their own country. Worker support for such movements is based on the misapprehension that it is somehow less painful to be exploited by someone born in the same country than by a foreign corporation. Workers have no country, just a place where we struggle to live, work for a wage or salary and make profits for the owning class. We have a common interest; we are all wage slaves.

The world cannot be made 'fair' by rewriting trade rules. The WTO together with the IMF and the World Bank and all the other institutions exist only to serve the needs of the companies and corporations owned by the world's capitalist class in their pursuit of profit. Their abolition would not alter the underlying conflict of interests between ordinary working people and their capitalist masters. It is only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialist society that worker servitude everywhere will end. This is achievable not by demonstrating for reforms to institutions of capitalist society but by a majority of the world's workers understanding the need for socialism and working together to capture political power to abolish capitalism and build a socialist society.