We Need Socialism

 Many agree with our object socialism but disagree with our view of how it should come about. Well, the important thing is that we agree about the socialist objective. We’re sure our differences about methods can be reconciled by discussion and debate. The struggle for socialism is a political one and its object is to achieve the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism by a majority of socialists. On the political front, there is only one kind of action which is consistent with the socialist objective—work to persuade the majority of workers that only socialism can achieve the common ownership of the means of production and the establishment of a system of production for use on the basis of equality and co-operation. There cannot be a long-term objective which can be reconciled with short-term actions to ease the worst effects of capitalism. These "short-term actions”committed to advocating a modified form of capitalism which would surely be hostile to socialist principles. We cannot seek the abolition of capitalism by advocating some modified form of it. This is surely contradictory.  The decision to support reformist parties of an allegedly working class nature has been a complete waste of time. The working class the world over are still an exploited class; we still have poverty, unemployment, wars and all the social problems that go with capitalism. If all those who argued that the socialist objective should be set aside in favour of political attempts to improve capitalism had instead joined the socialist movement based uncompromisingly on socialist principles, then we would have a large and influential socialist party. The choices in the real world are these you either have capitalism with all its unavoidable consequences in terms of its problems, or you have a socialist system of production for use which would enable the people of the world to solve those problems. The political and economic realities are that there is no ground in between. By its very nature capitalism cannot be run in the interests of the community; its social and political limitations are essentially economic in nature and cannot be controlled. This is what all reformers have ultimately discovered. The difference between the socialist and the anti-socialist is clearly that the socialist is one who takes up the prosecution of the class war to its final aim: the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. He or she who, claiming to be a socialist abjures this, is, therefore, no socialist and of necessity must be anti-socialist

Capitalism deprives the working class of the full product of their labour. It makes a world of conflict, terror, famine, disease. Its hallmark is exploitation, poverty, the degrading of its people. The engine of modern capitalism is commodity production. Goods are produced and services made available because it is profitable to do so. “Things” are a potential source of profit with the result that capitalism elevates the material and the tangible to positions of exclusive supremacy. That which is measurable and which has currency in dollars, marks, and pounds, etc. is—by definition—more important than attributes and experiences which are not so quantifiable.

Capitalism is disconcerted by beauty, truth, dignity, generosity of spirit and so on because these are intangible and elusive. You may have to pay ten pounds to buy a recording of a Mozart symphony and perhaps a million times that amount for a landscape painting by Renoir, but in neither case does the cost reflect the beauty sublimed in the experience of listening to the music or looking at the painting. On the contrary, it is the scarcity of the two artifacts which is crucial. If only one CD of a Mozart symphony was available but several million paintings by Renoir existed, we would expect the prices of the record and the paintings to reflect these facts. Capitalist economics might now make the record a million times more expensive than any one of the paintings. To paraphrase Marx: in the capitalist society, their price is related to scarcity and not to intrinsic value.

What value can be attached to a Mozart symphony, a Renoir painting, the exhilaration of a sunny day in May, a mother’s love, a teacher’s power to enthuse, the integrity and conviction of a stunning piece of acting, the sense of being a respected member of a team, congeniality, generosity and fraternity? Capitalist economics has nothing to say about such matters. It is as though they were part of another world—a netherworld remote from the “real” world of buying and selling and the market. Because they are not the subject of commodity exchange they are—in capitalism’s terms— capricious and unimportant, insubstantial and trivial. Yet for most people, they are the essence of what makes life worthwhile. A society obsessed with markets, with buying and selling, with profits before all else, transforms humankind, and in doing turns potentially creative, altruistic and sociable people into materialistic monsters. Capitalism is always prepared to spend a huge part of its resources on destruction, regardless of how much deprivation there is in the world. It is no coincidence that it is at its most inventive, efficient and productive in wartime when its aim is to destroy as much, and murder as many, as it can.