Socialism is not some idyllic Utopia, which we OUGHT to establish but a future system which we MUST attain if humanity is to continue civilisation. Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. While production is a social act, the appropriation of the product, under the present system, is individual. As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are built, thousands of labourers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The labourers are merely paid wages for the use of their labour power, wages which constantly grow less and less an aliquot part of the total product as the total product ever increases. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. Small mom and pop enterprises become big corporations or are driven out of business, the original entrepreneurs become mere rentiers. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand and to run the industry. The former individual owner now becomes a purely parasitic hanger-on, his dividends paid regularly by the state apparatus which he controls. The greater the productivity of labour and the greater the amount of production, the greater becomes the surplus product in the hands of the owners, the greater the need for markets, the greater, therefore, the competition among the capitalists, and the greater the tendency to lower the rate of profit, the greater the lowering of the wages of the workers, the larger the army of unemployed and paupers, the more vigorous the drive for foreign markets for exploitation, and the more violent the military interventions to control the world. The greater the globalisation of markets, the greater the need to have a military machine to defend the market interests, the greater grows the oppressive burdens of the state apparatus, the greater grows the necessity to transform the whole nation into an armed, economically ruthless, chauvinistic state.
It was capitalism which created the working class who bear the full weight of capitalism upon their backs and as the working class fights against its increasingly worsened position it comes to the realisation that the only way out is for labour to take what it has produced for itself. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, resources, utilities and run them for their own benefit. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end both despotism in the factory and anarchy in the market. Then society will allocate its resources and labour power according to a social plan that will benefit all. It is capitalism which sharpens the workers' intelligence and gives it its science. It is capitalism that arms the workers with knowledge and gives them the strength to carry out their own interests. In short, capitalism, as it grows out of date, creates its own grave-diggers. The interest of the workers is diametrically opposed to the interest of the capitalists and exploiters of the workers who, controlling the government and the social educational agencies, strive to keep the workers down. Surely, the victory of the working class cannot be forever delayed as the capitalists, blinded by their interests, try to stop the Juggernaut of progress. When the workers of the world unite to take political power and to supplant the capitalist system, then the rule over people will begin to give way to an administration over things. The state and religion will begin to wither away. There will be no exploitation. There will be no classes. The productivity of labour will greatly increase, each will receive according to needs and will contribute according to his ability.
When we have reached socialism we will have reached a rational economic where society will be a free one and mankind emancipated.
No comments:
Post a Comment