Capitalism cannot be reformed. If any capitalist reforms have some slight advantage to the working class it is merely an incidental by-product of a measure designed to strengthen and maintain capitalism. The advantages to the capitalist class far outweigh any to the working class. Go and read up what socialism is before you attribute it to any other capitalist experiments. Low wages or higher wages are not a solution. It is in the very existence of waged slavery at the point of production where all exploitation takes place. Governments are merely the puppets of the parasite capitalist class.
Socialists have always wanted working people to ‘take control’ of their collective destiny. That’s what socialism is all about. This is not possible under capitalism because it is a system governed by uncontrollable economic laws which impose themselves on people whatever they want or decide.
The only way to take control (‘back’ is out of place since the majority class of wage and salary workers has never had any control) is to take control of the places where we work and where wealth is produced and run them for the benefit of all. We need to abolish the wages system and establish a priceless commonly owned society with production for use. The politicians are powerless to do anything other than attempt to manage us in the interests of the global parasite class. All government is over us.
Credit Suisse have produced their Global Wealth Report for 2016. It notes, for instance, that 'the 33 million millionaires comprise less than 1% of the adult population, but own 46% of household wealth.' There's lots more data there.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/publications.html
All wealth comes from the world's working class. The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite class. That class is easily removable when the workers of the world aspire to a free access, democratically controlled, commonly owned world where production is for the use of everyone to satisfy all human needs, where the organising principle is, "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs".
Resisting change may indeed be a good and appropriate option for unions at a particular junction. The parasite capitalist class can run away with the loot they have amassed from the exploitation of workers, at or below the market rate. Unions can sabotage this 'quick getaway' of the industrialist to get some settlement for the workers who will be thrown onto the scrapheap. They are not the cause of any meltdown as all unions know the market rate sometimes above in good times or below in downturns is the best they can do.
The parasitic economic class income is in the millions or billions from exploiting their ownership of the means of production and distribution. In any case trade unions are a part of capitalism and its wage bargaining and nothing to do with a free access socialist society.
It is not a moral question of who are saints or sinners. Workers have no choice upon where raw materials or coffee beans or their shoes come from. It is a question of class interest. They do indeed have more in common with those overseas workers being exploited than with their home grown employers and require ot make common cause with them, to overthrow capitalism and to usher in the post-capitalist society, to end all waged slavery, whether highly or lowly paid.
The supply of cheaply consumer commodities from abroad are intrinsically linked into depressing wages here. The wage is only so much food, clothing, shelter, etc. so cheap produce, built upon waged slavery overseas is incorporated into reducing wage costs here also. Hence wages here have been successfully depressed for many years. The capitalist class can only exist through extracting surplus value from the waged working class. It is irrelevant how highly or lowly paid the worker is. All is economically relative. Nor is it a question of being envious. A much bigger and essentially global question.
It is one of ending a system of ruthless exploitation of human beings and natural resources though intense competition for the benefit of a minority parasitic class in whose interests all governments govern over us, all wars are fought for them, 'business by other means' over trade routes, raw materials and spheres of geopolitical interests even to extent of war science upon hapless civilian populations at Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the 'good guys' and all profit accrues to.
Crocodile tears for workers sufficiently distant in Africa and elsewhere, blind you to the causes of their immiseration both there and here, war by deed or proxy and poverty both absolute and relative, twin concomitants of the system you support and will have you sleep walk into the next world conflagration.
It is at the point of production you exploited your workers and creamed off surplus value. The future of your workers is not your concern, but the profit of yourself is. You may have had sleepless nights wondering how many to get rid off, to maintain your profitability, but I don't think any capitalist goes into business motivated by a desire to create a stable future for a labour force. Codswallop and bollocks to that notion. Capital accumulation is the raison d' ệtre of all capitalists.
Most capitalist revolutions have indeed been minority led ones. In the move from feudalism to capitalism the state often was used in this way forcing state capitalist development in emerging capitalist economies which were trying to leapfrog into the advanced stages of capitalist development in the absence of a large enough domestic capitalist class or sufficient capital is to industry, employing Taylorism etc.
Capital develops unevenly through concentration and centralization. And for that matter capital is still going on accumulating globally whereby one capital kills many giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. Accumulation is going through destruction and annihilation. This is reactionary. This is decadence
Productive forces have developed to the stage of both actual and potential abundance for all. But the working class consciousness and organization have remained subdued under the domination of capitalist ideas and interests – constantly and crushingly campaigned by all pervading 'right', 'left', or 'centre' chronicles and ideologies.
Now capitalism has developed the means and an educated workforce to run things, as they do now from top to bottom, we can proceed to the post-capitalist era.
We are speaking of the immense majority being self-led and using democratic means, the end of governments over people and utilisation of this political awareness to have the people themselves administer over things utilising recallable delegates when necessary. You have to make a leap from considering how things are done today, with standing armies and competing local, regional and global interests allied with anarchic production for sale market allocation for the benefit of 1-5% minority privileged owning groups with the majority in waged enslaved conditions of rationed access to the wealth they collectively produce, into commonly owned production for use cooperative global regional and local endeavours with free access and the situation is resolved into cooperative allocations and sharing of raw materials as opposed to warring competition.
The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relation.
But nothing will stop an idea which time has come. A world without the twin concomitants of capitalism, war by deed or proxy and poverty absolute or relative, will provide its own challenges when we get there.
Wee Matt
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