Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers. Under capitalism, the fundamental contradiction in society is between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production. More and more workers come to work together in modern industry, which is capable of providing for the needs of all the people. But the means of production are in the hands of an ever-smaller number of billionaires whose only goal is to maximise profits.
In Marxist class terms, this contradiction translates into the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. There can never be class peace between exploiter and exploited, between boss and worker. The working class cannot end exploitation and poverty unless it overthrows the capitalist system. It must sweep away the nightmare of capitalism. Only socialism can respond to the just aspirations of the working class.
It is from the labour of working people that the capitalists have grown rich. The workers own no means of production and are forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers receive a wage that corresponds roughly to the value of labour power. Their surplus labour increases or helps increase capital. The working class has no role of direction in the division of labour and is subject to the rigid discipline of capitalist production. The workers produce the riches of society. It is their labour that turns the wheels of modern industry.
Capitalism cannot be fixed. It must be replaced by an economic system that replaces a worldwide system of production for need and wants and not profits. A world shared by all. Reorganizing our economic system into one that produces the things people need and want instead of production for profit will free the world.
Workers would contribute our labour to society and society would distribute the wealth that our labour produces equally among all people according to need and want. We could produce things that are designed to last ending “built-in obsolescence”—i.e., products designed to break down forcing us to continually replace them and creating enormous amounts of waste. We could take all the necessary measures to make sure that all production is safe for human beings and the environment because the cost of safe production would no longer be an issue. We would be able to automate industry to the fullest degree freeing up workers’ time for personal development and leisure. All borders would be torn down, and all the wealth produced by labour would belong to all, equally everywhere.
Our first concern would become the well-being of all life on Earth and the health of our planet. We have the modern-day wherewithal to carry this out. We have the ability with the world-wide-web to calculate all the things that are needed by people and design our products to fulfil those needs free of the profit motive. Instead of a tiny minority of capitalists stealing the wealth we workers produce, all that wealth could be put back into schools, housing, hospitals, clean water supplies, and cleaning up the oceans, air and land. We could restore our environment.
Socialism will put an end to the exploitation of man by man. It will bring freedom to all those oppressed by capital and open up a new period of history for working people. Gone will be the anarchy of capitalist production. The vast riches of our planet, its lands, forests, mineral resources, lakes and rivers as well as the means of production, for the common benefit of all. There will be an end to all exploitation. The wealth will be the property of the people and not of individual capitalists. Socialism will guarantee the well-being of all the people who will run society and the economy from top to bottom. The resources of society will be distributed according to the needs of the people, not to satisfy a few capitalists’ hungers for profits as is the case today. The quality of everyday life will improve. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. There will be no more needless destruction of our environment.
This is not a Utopian fantasy. The real fantasy is believing that the capitalist class will become more benevolent and that their wealth will trickle down to us. That’s the pipe dream!
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