As capitalism breeds great inequality, it also generates great anger against the system. The trouble is that, instead of workers everywhere uniting against the common enemy, the ruling class, they are turned against one another. People are told that their problems are not the result of the unjust system of capitalism but because of the "others"- the outsiders and outcasts. Workers are told organising for better conditions will cut jobs because the bosses will outsource them elsewhere; people are made to resent foreigners and migrants. It is the employed against the unemployed; it is the old versus the young. The mass media are complicit in this, feeding prejudice directed against other people rather than against capitalism. Suffering from the effects of exploitation workers are ripe to be influenced by populist demagogues who blame other workers such as immigrants or those with darker skin tone. Anything that provokes more division among workers — by sex, ethnicity, caste, — is a benefit to capital because it keeps people from uniting and struggling together for better conditions. The conservative parties and right-wing movements use immigrants as scapegoats, blaming them for the varied problems facing labour.
Marxism is more relevant than ever in understanding capitalism. One of the most significant concepts may be commodity fetishism: the idea that under capitalism, relations between people become mediated by relations between things -- that is commodities and money. The overwhelming focus on exchange value rather than use value means that exchange value gets seen as intrinsic to commodities rather than being the result of labour. The market interaction becomes the "natural" way of dealing with all objects. This is what creates commodity fetishism, an illusion that the centrality of private property determines not only how people work and interact, but even how they perceive reality and understand social change. Capitalism is a relentless, system, ceaselessly searching the planet for opportunities to accumulate capital. And it looks for elements of our lives that have yet to become commodified and works to create markets for them. Both are made possible by the exploitation of wage labour and the expropriation of land and resources everywhere in the world.
Marx spoke of the creation of the world market, which we now call globalisation, as the natural result of the tendency of the capitalist system to spread and aggrandise itself, to destroy and incorporate earlier forms of production, and to transform technology and institutions constantly. The tendencies for the concentration and centralisation of production have very strong contemporary resonance, even when such centralisation and concentration is expressed through the geographical fragmentation of production (as in global value chains driven by large multinational companies) or in the sphere of non-material service delivery, or even through the commodification of knowledge and control of personal data for purposes of making profits. Many workers have seen their incomes stagnate while many have been forced to take lower-paying jobs than they previously held, while still others have been rendered superfluous by the forces of automation and outsourcing to lower wage regions within the same country or to other countries. Many discarded workers do not have the resources to move to regions with a better chance of employment. This has left a sizable number of people struggling to live and raise their children, aware that something is very wrong, but not understanding what has caused their predicament.
Alienation still relevant. For Marx, this was not an isolated experience of an individual person's feeling of estrangement from society or community, but a generalized state of the broad mass of wage workers. It can be expressed as the loss of control by workers over their own work, which means that they effectively cease to be autonomous human beings because they cannot control their workplace, the products they produce or even the way they relate to each other. Because this fundamentally defines their conditions of existence, this means that workers can never become autonomous and self-realised human and social beings under capitalism. Such alienation is blatantly obvious in factory work, but it also describes work that is apparently more independent, such as activities in the emerging "gig economy" that still deny workers effective control despite the illusion of autonomy.
Capitalists have assembled a vast array of mechanisms for control. Some of these are used in workplaces and include monitoring; constant speed-up; systematic hiring and firing; the deskilling of whatever work possible; the threat of dismissal for attempts to unionise; divide-and-rule assigning of workers to pit men against women, black against white, ethnic majority against ethnic minority, one religious group against another. The intentional geographical separation of different aspects of a business’s production processes is another divide and rule tactic, which makes potential antagonists of workers in one country and those in other nations. In every nation, the state serves as a bulwark of capitalism, standing ready to repress and suppress workers' resistance. A continual ideological conditioning is waged by the capitalist class, reflected in patriotism and national chauvinism where we are taught to be suspicious of the “other,” to compete, to act selfishly, to see the system as all-powerful and unchangeable.
The future and survival of humanity depend on the working class struggle once again coming to the fore and oppose the social and ecological problems that result from the drive of capitalists to maximise profits. There is no alternative but to redouble efforts to organise and to carry out socialist education. Many workers instinctively feel a powerlessness and that they are at the mercy of the whims and needs of capital. This is the result of a class war from above that capitalists have been waging while workers have been mostly frightened into submission. The ongoing class war can no longer be one-sided. When people are pushed and pushed down again and as their lives deteriorate, they eventually will resist. We must fight back. Many people are beginning to understand the reality that the various social and ecological problems facing humanity can’t be solved in piecemeal fashion. A bigger view of society is needed, one that unites all those struggling for a more decent and healthy society. The struggles in the workplace for better working conditions and decent pay, the fights for social justice, the striving for ecological harmony, and protests against wars—presently manifested by separate organizations—are all part of the same struggle for a more humane world. Socialist ideals are now developing again across the world. The future — if there is to be one — lies with the working class. Capital must be attacked at all times. Class warfare must be waged in all aspects of life. Our fellow-workers must build an independent politics, without allegiance to any capitalist party. It must fight for the entire working class. We must emphasise solidarity: an injury to one is an injury to all, the “We” is more important than the “I.” The bounty of the Earth belong to all of us. Our goal is to end capitalism’s destruction of humanity, society, and the planet itself.
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