Capitalist Despotism or Socialist Liberty

The left wing has a lot of problems such as understanding how the system of capitalism operates. It is basically an economic system where such terms as profits, wages, exploitation, refer to economic phenomena. 

Capitalist economics, the economics from the business and commerce point of view, is the economics that is taught in the schools and universities. It is the economics that is used by the media and government officials for propaganda purposes, etc. Consequently, business economics is the only one that the average person comes in contact with. Very few are familiar with Marxist economics. Since people are unfamiliar with socialist economics, they draw on the only economic information they are familiar with– the capitalist economic analysis, fraudulent ideas are smuggled into daily discourse by academic theoreticians who do not have the best of intentions.

In a capitalist society, however, where all the lands and the natural resources of the earth, and all the instruments of production and distribution (railroads, mines, factories, etc.) are already privately owned and controlled, Labour, the world’s true magic-maker, is shut off from the productive processes and from the power of producing a living, or of earning a living, except upon the terms laid down by the capitalist class.

This is true in spite of the fact that all the capital in all the world is incapable of producing one loaf of bread, one pair of shoes, one house, one suit of clothes. Not one wheel would ever turn productively, not one machine would ever operate, not one train would ever move without the hands and brains of labour.

Capital is utterly incapable of increasing itself. Unless he is able to filch the swag from some other capitalist who has exploited labour, the only way a capitalist may force his capital to multiply and bear the fruit of still more capital, is by the employment of labor. Without the hands and brains of labor, capital would remain forever stationary. 

Capitalism brought an increasingly greater concentration of industrial production in factories and mills, with ownership concentrated in the hands of a small class of capitalists. Stripped of any means of survival other than the sale of their labour power; workers were forced to compete against each other, thereby enabling profit-hungry capitalists to drive down wages and force long hours and inhuman conditions on the masses of people. In this situation of wage-slavery, workers are bound to resist. 

What has the rule of capitalist autocrats brought to us?

In a world, fertile enough to feed everybody, by their private ownership, and anarchistic control, they have given us  underfed children, constant want, everlasting insecurity against hunger for the majority of the people.

The rule of capitalist anarchy has given us increasing unemployment and closed factories despite a desperate need for the factory products. Capitalist rule has brought poverty and despair to the productive many, and idleness and power to the unproductive few. It has filled our prisons with those who have been forced down into “crime” through poverty and despair.

There Is Only One Real Solution – Socialism

Industrial democracy means the rule of the workers as opposed to what we have known all our lives-the rule of autocracy, or the rule of the capitalist few. Nothing has ever been done for the working class until the workers began to exercise power to force these things. Nobody but yourselves is going to do anything for you now. You must organise politically, and carry on the work of education as you have never done before. And what you want done you will have to do yourselves.

There is only one thing that will cure the world of wars, of poverty, of unemployment, insecurity and parasitism, and that is socialism, where social planning and system shall take the place of the capitalist anarchy that has brought the foundations of the social structures tumbling down in chaos about us. In socialism, there will be no wages at all. There will be no prices or market values in the sense of goods obtainable only on the basis of paying for them. Goods are produced for the use of men and women and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. Men and women, inside socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. People will no longer be fettered by the necessity of working not only for their own material maintenance, but for the bosses’ even more material profits, will be freed to live more fully. The time that each must work will be small, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful. Socialism is the ONLY answer.

For a higher civilisation and a better world

In Marxist analysis, capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers through wage labour. Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out long ago, separated the producer from his or her tools. The owner of the tools (factories, machinery, transport, etc.) buys labour power (or hires workers, as we would say) to operate them. The more they produce, the higher his profit. When it is not profitable to produce, he lays off the workers. Under capitalism, labour is never paid enough to buy back all that is produced. If it were, the capitalist would not retain a margin of profit, since it is the difference between what is paid to labor and what the capitalist receives for his products that determines his profit.

Once the workers have introduced a socialist system of production, then more production will mean more for everybody. The more we produce, the more we would eat. The more backlog of products we would have, the less we would work until we had used them up. This will be so because socialism will wipe out the distinction between the owners of the machine and the users of the machine. The working class will become the owners AND operators. The separation between the worker and the means of production introduced by capitalism will be ended by socialism. Until such a socialist system prevails, wage labor will remain a commodity to be bought on the market by capital. The wages of labor will continue to be determined by the cost of living. It must therefore be the aim of labor to fight for higher wage rates and a shorter work week and let the capitalists worry about production. As with any commodity, the value of labor power is based on the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the worker’s maintenance and reproduction. This cost must be covered by the workers’ wage. Thus the wage is not an individual payment; it also has to maintain all family members who do not work. This value is not just the bare minimum needed for physical survival. To repeat, then, productive labor under capitalism is labor that produces surplus-value for a capitalist. To produce surplus-value, workers must sell their labor-power to a capitalist.

The aim of the Socialist Party is the abolition of class rule and class conflict, with all their evil consequences, and the development of a  society in which the few shall no longer be able to enjoy luxury and ease at the expense of overwork, want, and insecurity for the majority. This is today a practicable idea. So great have science and technology increased our productive capacity that an abundance of all the good things of life for the whole population could be produced without subjecting any person to drudgery or exhausting toil. The continued existence of poverty  can be overcome.

To assure plenty, security, leisure, and freedom for all, it is necessary that the existing property system, the existing forms of economic control and distribution of wealth, be changed. Property institutions are the creatures of law. By law they have been changed in ages past, and by law they can and must be changed in the years to come.

The Socialist Party does not condemn personal possessions. It condemns the private ownership of the socially necessary means of production, under which the workers are employed only on such terms as assure and unearned income to the owners and are thrown into unemployment whenever the owners cannot profit by their labour. Only by the common ownership and democratic control of such productive wealth, doing away with exploitation and making the satisfaction of human wants the ruling motive in production, can the ideal of a class-free society be realised. The interest of the wage-working class demands this change.

The choice before us is either to permit the uncontrolled development of capitalism to concentrate all power further into the hands of an oligarchy  and reduce working people to abject servitude, or to assert the right and duty of the people to control and remodel its economic life.

The first principle of the Socialist Party is the wholehearted dedication to democracy. No dictatorship, whatever its avowed purpose, can be trusted to bring liberty, plenty, and peace. The institutions of political democracy must be defended. The appeal to insurrection  must be repudiated. It is unnecessary and unjustifiable in any country where the orderly and peaceful methods of democracy are available,

In the name of freedom, in the name of honesty, in the name of civilisation itself, for the good of those now alive and of the future generations yet unborn, we call upon the workers of the  world to join us in winning the good new world which is within our reach.

Socialist Standard No. 1393 September 2020

 

No. 1393 September 2020

Socialist-Standard-September 2020 PDF version

No. 1393 Socialist Standard September 2020 Contents

• Editorial: How real is democracy today?

• Pathfinders: Two fingers to the virus and Big Bang in Beirut

• ‘Made in Leicester’

• A is for Alpha

• Cooking the Books: What is poverty?

• Selfishness

• Material World: Vaccine development: another market failure

• Capitalism and Democracy : Part 1

• What do protests signify and why so many?

• Imperialism Part 2: Super-profits and the labour aristocracy

• Crime and Capital

• Population growth: women choose

• Proper Gander

• Reviews

• 50 Years Ago: Labour Party hypocrites & Summer School Report

• Meetings

• Rear View

 

Set your course for socialism

There is only one road that leads to a socialist society: the workers have to learn:

Firstly, that they are slaves; 

Secondly, how they are enslaved; 

Thirdly, the revolutionary changes necessary to achieve their freedom; 

and lastly, how to accomplish this revolution.

A majority of the workers must understand these things.

Socialism as State ownership of the means of wealth production is a generally accepted notion. This definition has been accepted and advocated by many as a remedy for working-class ills. We are told that  nationalisation is a step towards socialism because under it, they say, the workers will have a measure of control. This is altogether false, as a glance any state enterprise will show—the workers in those concerns being more dependent and having less freedom, if anything, than those under private enterprise. Not only so, the the workers, instead of insisting on a measure of control, are more likely to be side-tracked, like all civil servants, into the belief that discipline and organisation is the necessary complement of state efficiency in the interests of the "general public." To To make of the workers state-employees is in no way socialism in action. It does not speed the progress towards socialism. On the contrary, it leads the workers up a blind alley, wasting their energies on something that does not materially change their conditions, and leaving them apathetic and ignorant as to the cause of their failure. Common ownership of the means of wealth production alone gives control; that is why the Socialist Party declares that until the workers organise politically to gain possession of the means of wealth production all the schemes to give them a share of control are impossibilist dreams. Within capitalism the antagonism of interests between the two classes manifests itself. The workers have yet to learn that this antagonism is not only destructive of schemes of share in control, but is the germ of a conscious antagonism that can never be abolished until the means of life are the common property of society—not the common property of the capitalist class through State ownership, nationalisation, or national control—controlled by the people through a democratic administration of production and distribution for use instead of for profit.

The first test of a socialist party is the recognition that the working class of all lands, having no interests in common with any section of the master class, but all alike suffering under the same form of wage slavery, must unite worldwide for the overthrow of capitalism. Our message is to the worker, and exposes the labour fraud at the same time that it declares the real enemy of the worker to be the capitalist class. Who or what would decide which belonged to the workers and which to the capitalists? Only the naked force of the State. The truth would then be revealed that the capitalists are robbers, that the wages system is a blind, and that might is right. The workers might then listen to the Socialist Party, and, spurred on by the knowledge they would thus acquire, commence to organise in real earnest for socialism.

The Socialist Party does not pretend to foretell the future. All that we claim is that we understands the present, with its class ownership of the means of life and the consequent enslavement of our class. The defenders of the ruling class deny this enslavement and assert that socialism would result in loss of liberty to the individual. It is evident, however, that class ownership and control implies a class that is subjugated and therefore without liberty.

Socialism, on the other hand, being a system of society where the means of life are owned in common and democratically controlled, must give the maximum freedom to the individual because there is equality of ownership and control. Under capitalism the worker is subjected to restrictions and rules, and subjugated to a discipline which would be hard to beat. It is only the master class that possesses liberty, and their liberty means working class slavery. The poverty of the working class persists because the social system is out of harmony with the means and methods of production; and this causes numerous conflicts between capitalists and workers. Social relationships, the relations between man and man, or between class and class, do not stand still; and the cause of their change is the evolution of the material things—tools, machinery, etc.,— on which humanity depends for its subsistence.

 Throughout history, from the dawn of time, when beset with threats and dangers on every hand, mankind treasured its freedom above everything else, and associating with fellow humans on a basis of equality, and controlled social actions democratically. Humanity’s confidence in, and adherence to, these two principles, carried it safely through the ages before civilisation. The abandonment of these principles was the beginning of the long class rule, in which successive ruling classes have robbed the workers of the results of their toil, from chattel slavery to serfdom to wage slavery—where the bondage  is veiled by the so-called freedom of contract. It is a system of poverty and squalor on the one hand, and enormous wealth and power on the other.

 The ensuing task of harmonising the social system with the more highly developed means of production is wholly that of the working class, and must be carried through against the conscious antagonism of the master class.  Socialism can be established as soon as there is a majority of socialists. The first step, therefore, is to make socialists. The next step will be the organisation of production in such a manner that the workers have complete control — not a share in management. First must come ownership: until that is effected the workers can have no control, either over the means or methods of production, or over their own conditions of employment.

There is no question of morality or justice about this expropriation of the capitalist class. The wonder is that the workers have tolerated the system so long. A small class in society owns all those things required by man to produce for himself the necessaries of life. This small class imposes slavery on those who do not own. To free themselves from slavery must be the desire and the aim of the working class. But they must have confidence, based on knowledge, in their associated power to arrange the details of production and distribution for use. Without a ruling class they can still carry on, producing wealth for their own use and consumption. Let them, first, understand ; second, take possession, and exercising full control, face the future determined to use nature's gifts for the well-being and happiness of society free, at last, from the withering blight of class rule.

Workers, for your own sakes and for humanity's sake study socialist ideas! Then, when you understand, you will organise to establish it and so emancipate yourselves from the shackles of wage-slavery on the one hand, and rid yourselves forever from that awful menaces of poverty and war. 

We need socialism

Socialism is built on three principles, all vital to one another. These principles are: social ownership of the means of production, egalitarianism, and social democracy. Our goal is a new social order based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of our people and resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty and exploitation. The socialist option is the only alternative to capitalism. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. These failures puts a campaign for the socialist alternative as an immediate demand. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society. It will be accomplished by democratizing all levels of society. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers through lay-offs, shut-downs and neglect of health and safety. Socialism will dissolve the economic of management privilege by relying on the creativity of people.  We believe in the ability of working people to administer their own productive institutions democratically. We do not offer a blueprint to a better future. The capitalist system must be replaced by socialist democracy. That is the burning issue of our era, the only hope of humanity. Our planet is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. But today the great majority of our people are faced with the threat of poverty, ever-rising prices, deteriorating health, education and other social services. A handful of capitalists control our world and make vast profits on the labour of the working people and the natural resources of the land. All the major means of production - the factories, forests, farms, fisheries and mines are in the hands of a few capitalists.

Capitalism is a system of exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation. The capitalists get rich from the fruit of our labour. At the end of the week a worker collects their pay. The capitalists and their apologetic flunkeys claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, workers get paid for only a small part of what they produce. For example, workers on average each produced new goods and services to the value of$1,000 each week. However they each received an average of $500 wages per week. The rest, the surplus value, goes straight into the hands of the capitalists and their flunkeys. The bosses get rich, not because they have "taken risks" or "worked harder," as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and get fewer workers to do more work, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. If the bosses think they can make more profit somewhere else, they just close their factories and throw the workers out on the street. Capitalists try to profit in the short run, but their individual greed eventually throws the whole system into turmoil, leading the working class and people to suffer. This anarchic system wastes a great deal of social wealth. People live in misery so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can live in luxury.The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. There is only room for a few capitalists - at any time the great majority must work and be robbed. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or resist it.

Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Today the whole system of production is socially interdependent, but it is controlled by private hands. In place of private control of social production there must be social ownership if society's problems are to be addressed. The problems of capitalism - exploitation, anarchy of production, speculation and crisis, oppression and the whole system of injustice - arise from the self interest of the tiny group of capitalists. Socialism will be won through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Having overthrown the capitalist class, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests in society. Socialism will be a better society, one which will present unprecedented possibilities for the improvement of common peoples' lives. Because working people will control the great wealth they produce, they will be fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be a resounding liberating and transforming force. Socialism will not mean  government control. Today we often hear of state ownership and  control of the railways or post office as "creeping socialism". But under capitalism the state serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class. When the government intervenes it does so to help, not hurt, capitalism. Rational planning will replace anarchy. Coordination and planning of the broad outlines of production by public agencies will aim at building an economy that will be stable, benefit the people. Directing the productive capacity to human needs will require a variety of economic methods and experiments. There could be a combination of central planning, local coordination. Various policies might be used with changing conditions. But no matter what means are chosen, a socialist economy must uphold the basic principles of social ownership, production for the people's needs, and the elimination of exploitation. Factories and other productive facilities will be modernised to eliminate backbreaking labour and ecological damage. Productivity gains will be used to shorten the working day and improve living standards, rather than create unemployment. Construction of housing, schools, medical, cultural and sporting facilities for working people will be a priority.

With socialism, goods and services will be distributed on the basis of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. No longer will bankers, landlords and investors live off the labour of others. To protect and administer socialism, the people will establish a socialist people's democracy, a genuine democracy for the masses of people. The people will elect officials and representatives at all levels of government and the economy. There will be the right of recall and referendum. Socialist democracy would be far broader than what is possible today because the voices of the people would be heard, not simply those of the rich. Classes will have disappeared, the state will "wither" away, and an exciting new era of human freedom and prosperity will arise.