There can be no fairness in an unfair world.

Historians have unwittingly conceded the material conception of history upon human development when they designate early periods of social evolution the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age, etc. These minerals and their relations to the economic process form one of the most influential factors in society.

Everything you use, everything you eat or wear, your car, your housing — you didn’t make any of these things. We don’t produce these things as individuals. We produce socially. But, even though we produce socially, through co-operation, we don’t own the means of production socially. And this affects all the basic decisions made in this society about what we produce. These decisions are not made on the basis of what people need, but on the basis of what makes a profit. Siding the capitalists is not going to help the workers’ cause. It only pits us against our fellow-workers throughout the world.

Under the capitalist system basic goods and services are produced for and obtained from the market. But above all, it’s a system in which the main economic actors, workers and employers, are dependent on the market. Market dependence is the essence of the system. This unique way of organising material life has had a relatively short history. Other societies have had markets, but only in capitalism is dependence on the market the fundamental condition of life. This means that a wide range of human activity is subject to the market and determined by its requirements in a way that was never true before.

In capitalism, the workers who supply our goods and services are market-dependent because they generally live by selling their labour-power for a wage. In other words, labour-power has become a commodity. Capitalists depend on the market to purchase labour power and capital goods, and to sell what the workers produce.

But here’s where it gets tricky. Workers are paid for their work. That seems just the opposite of peasants exploited by landlords, peasants who pay some kind of rent to the landlords. But do workers in capitalism really get paid for all the work that they do? What are they actually paid for? They’re paid for their labour power for a certain period of time, not for what they actually produce during that time. Whatever the workers produce belongs to the capitalist, and the capitalist appropriates the difference between what the workers are paid and what their products or services will fetch on the market. So, capitalists appropriate the surpluses produced by workers in the form of profit, just as landlords appropriate surpluses from peasants in the form of rent. Karl Marx called this exploitation. Capitalism, however, means a very specific way of extracting surpluses from workers — it’s not done by means of direct coercive force but through the market.

Capitalists have to compete with other capitalists in the same market. Competition is, in fact, the driving force of capitalism — even if capitalists often do their best to avoid it, by means, for example, of monopolies. But the social conditions that, in any given market, determine success in price competition is beyond the control of individual capitalists.

Since their profits depend on a favourable cost/price ratio, the obvious strategy for capitalists is to cut their own costs. This means above all constant pressure to cut the costs of labour. This requires constant pressure on wages, which workers constantly have to resist. It also requires constant improvements in labour productivity. That means finding the organisational and technical means of extracting as much surplus as possible from workers within a fixed period of time, at the lowest possible cost. To keep this process going requires regular investment, the reinvestment of surpluses. Investment requires constant capital accumulation. So, there’s a constant need to maximise profit. The point is that this requirement is imposed on capitalists, regardless of their own personal needs and wants. Even the most modest and socially responsible capitalist is subject to these pressures and is forced to accumulate by maximising profit, just to stay in business. The need to adopt maximising strategies is a basic feature of the system and not just a function of irresponsibility or greed — although it’s certainly true that a system based on market principles will inevitably place a premium on wealth and encourage a culture of greed. Capitalism devotes a huge part of its economy to lying and cheating, to hurting or killing each other. A major part of capitalism’s scientific activity has been devoted to fabricating the means to kill, torture and maim human beings. These have functioned with great efficiency: millions perished miserably in wars and death camps. In every part of the world, there has been a drive to apply the discoveries of chemistry and biology to agriculture and to medicine. The consequences, however, have never been what was intended. They include the destruction, of natural eco-systems,

Capitalism is not an efficient way of supplying crucial human needs. Capitalism may be efficient in producing capital, and it’s certainly true that capitalism has generated great material and technological progress. But there’s a huge disparity between the productive capacities created by capitalism and what it actually delivers. Production is determined not by what’s needed but by what makes the most profit. Everyone, for instance, needs decent housing, but good and affordable housing for everyone isn’t profitable for private capital. There may be a huge demand for such housing, but it’s not what the economists call “effective demand,” the kind of demand with real money behind it. If capital is invested in housing, it’s most likely to be high-cost homes for people with money. That’s the whole point of capitalism. It consumes vast amounts of resources; and it acts on the short-term requirements of profit rather than the long-term needs of a sustainable environment.

Where production is skewed to the maximisation of profit, a society can have massive productive capacities. It can have enough to feed, clothe, and house its whole population to a very high standard. But it can still have massive poverty, homelessness, and inadequate health care. You only have to look at the United States, where there are some of the highest rates of poverty in the developed world and where tens of millions have no access to affordable health care. What possible excuse can there be for that in a society with such enormous wealth and productive capacities?

Workers desperately need a political movement of our own. A movement which puts our interests first because it is a movement by, for and of us. Since the system we live under, capitalism, is based on our exploitation, such a movement needs to be explicitly anti-capitalist. It needs to aim for the overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by a new truly socialist society, based on organising production to meet the human needs of all rather than private profit for a rich few. One part of building such a movement for the Socialist Party is running in elections, to challenge the parties which defend and manage exploitation and oppression and to get our ideas out to the widest possible audience.