Poverty in Capitalism

 

Poverty is the fate of the working class in present-day society. From poverty spring the many subsidiary evils to which a lot of the would-be re-constructors direct their main attention. Poor housing and unemployment are only problems for the poor. Ill-health and crime are largely the results of poverty. The most glaring contradiction of capitalism is the abject poverty that exists besides the super-abundance of wealth. In any effort to reconstruct society it will not be sufficient to attempt to alleviate poverty, it must end. Socialism alone shows the way. If the wages system is retained then poverty will be retained, for the two are inseparable. The end of the wages system will ensure an end of all poverty. Capitalism has shown us the enormous powers of production that humankind can wield. All such powers have not yet been unleashed. Capitalism has arrived at a stage where it must limit the expansion of productive powers in the interest of profit. Socialism will release all pent-up forces and enable working people to produce wealth in such abundance that a condition of poverty, as we know it to-day, will not be conceivable.

Men and women’s ability to work we call “labour-power,” and wages are the price they get when it is sold to an employer. This labour-power is a commodity, produced to be sold, and the price it fetches is determined, as is the price of all commodities, by agencies outside the individual owner’s control. Price is the monetary reflection of value, and value is determined by the amount of social effort necessary to replace the commodity. So wages fluctuate around a certain point, the cost of reproducing man’s power to labour. No amount of legislation within capitalism, no philanthropic effort can alter this fundamental economic law. All attempts to remove poverty by price control, minimum wage rates, family benefits payments, or any form of currency juggling fall to pieces against this “law of wages.”

To-day, wealth is produced for profit; workers receive wages for producing it, and it then passes into the hands of the owners of the means of production. The total value that the workers produce is greater than the amount they receive in wages. The surplus accrues to the owners and becomes divided among all sections of the owning-class, landlords, industrialists and investors. But in the process, in order that the owning-class may enjoy the privilege that ownership implies, the wealth must be sold; it must be converted into money. So out goes the product of the workers’ toil, out into a world-market to compete with similar products produced by similar workers in other countries. And from the ensuing competition follows the struggle for trade routes, for spheres of influence, for control of sources of raw materials, for empires. From this source, also, comes international diplomacy, tariffs, State subsidies, trading blocs, political pacts, military alliances and war.

No amount of tinkering with the effects of a system of production for profit will eliminate this competition. It can be raised from a local plane to a national one by State control, it can be raised from a national plane to a continental one such as the European Union, but it cannot be eliminated without at the same time eliminating the private property basis of present-day society. To guarantee against further and more disastrous wars socialism alone offers a way.War, that most colossal of all tragedies, must be ended for all time. All are agreed upon this. Only socialism offers a guarantee of a permanently peaceful future. Wars are unleashing forces that will sharpen the class conflicts of the future, that will present the administrators of capitalism, no matter who they may be, with a task of such magnitude that they will not be able to trifle with half measures.

 

Unless the socialist proposition for the revolutionising of society is accepted, and struggled for, by the majority of the workers after the war, then capitalism will forever present us with some problems that will have tragic results. For that purpose it is necessary to organise consciously, politically and democratically for the conquest of the machinery of government in order that this machinery may be converted from an instrument of oppression into an agent of emancipation.

The reformation of capitalism will avail them nought. It is the historic task of the working people to abolish the last of the class societies and to establish a class-free one. To this end alone they should bend their present energies and  effort. Their object must be to establish a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. Anything other than that will not be a reconstruction but merely a reshuffle.

To build the world we want, we must work together

 

A common defence of capitalism is that nowadays millions of people are investors, directly or indirectly, in industry. Pension funds, insurance policies and unit trusts are cited as examples. The suggestion is that wealth is more evenly distributed. The whole argument bears all the marks of a public relations trick to gain popular support for Big Business and the Stock Exchange against any measures they feel might harm their interests. There has been a shift from individual to institutional investors on the stock exchanges though not all these institutions hold shares “in trust for the people.’’ The insurance companies and banks are profit-making bodies whose own shares are traded on the stock exchange. It is difficult to see how the growth of institutional investors is a justification of capitalism. In fact it makes the basic absurdity of capitalism—social production yet sectional ownership—even more obvious. When the joint-stock company appeared a hundred or so years ago, Marx wrote that in separating management from ownership it meant that “the capitalist disappears as superfluous from the productive process." Engels was less polite. He spoke of “parasites”. The long list of social functions the capitalists imagined they had has gone: as individuals they can no longer claim to be the main source of finance for industry. Even this function, only necessary under capitalism, is now carried out by anonymous institutions. The individual capitalist — one-time alleged abstainer, organiser and risk-taker —is shown to be superfluous even in the realm of finance.

Having even a few thousand pounds worth of savings doesn’t turn anybody into a capitalist. Even the slaves in Ancient Rome had a fund called a peculium, collected from tips, which they could use to buy their freedom when old. A capitalist is someone who has enough wealth to live without having to sell his mental and physical energies. The real solution should be obvious: convert the already socially-operated means of wealth-production into the property of the whole community. Then production can be organised for use without the restrictions of profit-making, finance and commerce.

 Greed is not a characteristic of working men and women. In fact, the working class is the most charitable body of men ever known to history. Inadequately housed, shabbily dressed, underpaid and overworked, the workers make do with only a tiny portion of the wealth they produce so that the capitalist class can live in idle luxury. In fact, a socialist book written at the turn of the 20^th Century had the title “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.”

When the working class throughout the world has grasped that there is a socialist alternative to. the capitalist system it will use its immense numbers to capture political power. It will make use of the parliamentary machinery to achieve the revolutionary transformation of society. There is, however, unlikely to be very much blood about at the time. The workers, who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population, will be able to smother any attempt at resistance by a dissident minority. The alternatives facing the working class are socialism or capitalism. There is no middle path nor any compromise with capital possible. None in the Socialist Party would think of referring it to the State as though it were some sort of benevolent society looking after working-class interests. Socialists realise that the State is the executive committee of the ruling class and that it only has a basis in a class-divided social system. We socialists know better.

Many are devising plans for making the world a better place to live in. Ideas thus generated find expression in schemes for remedying the outstanding evils of which the majority of people are victims—unemployment, insecurity, poverty, and war. The Socialist Party claims, and proves, that these evils cannot be remedied within the framework of the existing social order. Nothing less than social revolution offers a sound basis for social reconstruction. The abolition of private ownership of the means and instruments of production and distribution, the end of the wages system, the production of wealth solely for use instead of for profit—this, and nothing else, will provide the foundation for the construction of the social system that we so urgently desire. Any planning for a better new world that does not include these fundamental changes is doomed to bring disappointment to those who hope to experience substantial improvements.

Economic insecurity is bred of capitalism. Men and women are related to one another in a capitalist world, not as individuals, but as commodity owners. The buying and selling of commodities, including the workers’ energies, is the essence of this system. Buying and selling gives rise to competition, competition breeds struggle, and in the struggle no man can claim to be absolutely secure; any adverse turn of the struggle may reduce him to the ranks of the most poverty stricken.Ownership of land, machinery, factories, mines, railways, road transport, sea transport, etc., places some men in the privileged position of employing others. Non-ownership and, in consequence, the necessity to live by selling their physical and mental energies, makes other men seek employment. Socialism, by placing the means of wealth production under the democratic ownership and control of the whole of the community will ensure that everyone contributes to the common effort without entering into contract with his fellows on the basis of economic privilege.

Given common ownership of the means of production and distribution, the wealth produced by the common effort will be accessible to all. Modern scientific methods of production ensure that there shall be plenty and none need be short of the essentials and comforts of life. With the social store available to every one according to their needs, the dependence of wives on their husbands, of children on their fathers, of the sick and aged on charity, of men on their ability to hold down a job, will vanish. Each will enjoy the security afforded by all.

We have heard it all before

 

Most in the Socialist Party will agree that of all the questions put to them in their attempt to explain socialism to our fellow workers, “Who will do the dirty work” is among the most common. In fact, sooner or later during the process of convincing a worker, it is almost certain to come up.

We all know what is meant by the question. The enquirer is not alluding to the sharp practices of his masters, the betrayals of labour leaders, nor yet to our own exploitation. It refers to some of the jobs that are looked upon as dirty and degrading, and to which many fellow workers seem doomed to perform by the very nature of things.

They never mean those conducting autopsies, up to their elbows in blood and gore but those working in abattoirs, the badly paid dirty work.

Our proposition is that socialism is quite different from and vastly superior to trying to run capitalism. In all countries the mass of the population live in constant poverty, in fear of losing their employment, and in fear of losing their lives in capitalism's wars—for wars and crises are just as much part of capitalism as are millionaires.

The  Materialist Conception of History is one of the fundamental tenets of the socialist outlook. According to this theory ideas are the product of conditions, and not the other way round. Men have not started cut with original ideas of absolute liberty. Justice and equality and then striven to make a world that would fit them; what they have done is striven to make alterations in the economic and political framework that would fulfil their needs and then sanctified their proposals with moral maxims. Their ideas have been shaped by the world around and were limited by the social development so far attained and the immediate future which that development foreshadowed. Since the advent of private property, in the dim and distant past, moral, intellectual, political and religious ideas have been bound up with different forms of property ownership. These forms of property have split society into antagonistic classes which have engaged in bitter class struggles, each class striving to dominate society and serve its own interests As we look back through history we see that it is made up of these class conflicts and that it is they that are the vital thread from which progress has been woven— meaning by progress an ever wider adaptation to natural forces and the bringing nearer of the possibility of humanity, as a whole, achieving comfort, security and happiness.

Each new form of production has brought into being new social classes, a change in social relations, and a change in current ideas. The freeman and slave of antiquity looked upon the social world differently from the feudal lord and bondsman of the middle ages, and likewise capitalist and worker have different ideas from those of their mediaeval counterparts. To understand the ideas of a period it is necessary to examine the economic framework of the period from which the ideas are derived, because the economic framework is the dominating influence. Ideas carried over from old outworn systems are carried over into the new, in fact, as Marx puts it so well “the tradition of all past generations weighs like an Alp upon the brain of the living ” ; but these traditions are forced into the mould of the new system, though they may have some influence on the shape of the mould. The confused social outlook of a period, including the present, is the resultant of the mixture of ideas thrown up by the different classes that together make up society, but the prevailing, or the most insistent, ideas are those backed by the dominant class; and they remain so until another class becomes sufficiently conscious of its interests and strong enough to challenge the supremacy of the dominant class.

Each era in the history of mankind contains the voice of the past, the present and the future. The voice of the future is small and weak at first but grows stronger as time passes until it eventually becomes the voice of the present; mankind only takes up problems that it can solve since the problem only arises as a problem because the solution is contained within it. It is the solution that has forced the problem to the front.

Under capitalism where the means of wealth production are owned and controlled by a minority, technology is developed and applied in their interest with the aim of maximising profit. To blame technology, rather than capitalism, for our problems is a mistake which leads to wrong, indeed absurd, conclusions.

The industrial revolution, carried out as it was within the context of capitalism, certainly worsened the conditions of many people at the time but it also created the material basis for a socialist society of common ownership and free access to wealth.

It is neither possible nor desirable to abolish industrial technology. Without it we would have to go back to a much harsher form of living. What is required is to change the basis of society so that technology can be developed and applied in the interests of the majority and not for profit.

We are all in favour of humans living in a balanced, sustainable relationship with the rest of nature but, even in the field of ecology and the environment, industrial technology is useful, indeed essential. Renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind power, tidal power and so on all involve the necessary use of quite sophisticated machinery and equipment which we would not be able to make and operate without the technological knowledge acquired since the industrial revolution.

Such is the life of the worker

 

The ruling class must force the workers to forge the gilded chains that enslave them. The wage-slave is showing signs of bewilderment towards present day events. We cannot make head nor tail of the explanations politicians or economists  give us. The puzzled wage slave knows that things have gone wrong somewhere but we do not hit upon the cause, and feels inclined to blame oneself. For too long the working people have had their strength drained by poverty and economic insecurity. They have accepted their condition as being inevitable : content with the reform crumbs that have been grudgingly given after bitter struggles. As yet they know of no alternative. The slogans of the masters. “There have always been rich and poor” , “You must have capital and labour” ,‘‘Hard work never hurt anyone” ,‘‘The bosses have got the brains.” These phrases have dulled workers' political alertness, because, always hoping to rise in the social sphere by hard work, they eventually discover there is nothing on that road but toil and poverty. They do not know the alternative.

Capitalism is run by the capitalist class for one purpose only, the obtaining of a profit. Profits cannot be realised until goods are sold. The market of the world consists of the purchasing power of the people of the earth. In proportion to what is placed on the market the purchasing power of the producers is becoming relatively less. The trouble is further complicated by constant capital in the shape of machinery having always to be sold to capitalists; working men and women do not buy machinery. As the capitalist class have only claims on wealth yet to be produced they are finding things extremely difficult at the present time. 

Poverty is a social disease which has undermined the health of the working class. The “middle-class” suburbia, think the term poverty refers to the slum dwellers, of the homeless and beggars . It is never on their own doorstep. It is always the other person who is poor. The suburbanites desire to ‘‘get on” in the world. Being snobs, they try to find out what the other fellow does ‘‘in the city.” It is never called work. They receive a ‘‘salary,” not a wage.

 

They wear out their lives trying to keep up appearances and have been known to go without food in order to do so. Property-conscious, with shoddy clothes and affected speech, they ape their masters in an endeavour to hide their poverty. Their condition is wretched, for they are acting a lie throughout their lives. All have one fear — the fear of losing a job.

Not only do you produce the wealth that the capitalist class enjoy, but they control your thinking, and you are content despite your wretchedness, that this should be so. It is true you grumble—that is a safety valve, but animals do not whine and skulk in corners.

One can understand the capitalist class defending their power, prestige and property. They have got a lot to lose, but you have only your poverty.

You are the toiling millions who produce the wealth of the world, for others to enjoy. As yet, the capitalist class is not afraid of you, for they have got you where they want you, but when you begin to think in your own interests, they will not be so flagrant. The newspapers will not show a photo of super yachts with their millionaire oligarchs on board, and on the same page, mention the prevalence of food banks.

It is the above facts that are driving governments to indulge in all kinds of tricks and experiments to induce the worker to produce more per man hour. The wage slaves are re-acting well, they don’t like the idea of speeding up, their class instinct warns them that there is something wrong with what the leaders advocate; they smell treachery but can’t detect exactly where it is. Neither do they like the irksome restrictions that are everywhere in evidence. The country is fast becoming one huge slave camp and feelings of frustration are everywhere being revealed in the expression on the faces of those of our fellows we meet on the street and on the job.

The emancipation of the working class cannot be brought about by developing the mechanism of capitalist production; the present machinery was not designed for the wage slave’s benefit, but to exploit him or her. To achieve a state of society in which goods are produced solely for use, a complete transformation of the mechanism of production will be essential. Socialism means as great a change in the mode of production as in the mode of distribution. The society of the future is one of associated humanity; people must be the main consideration. The welfare of mankind is the sole aim of socialism. The aim and object will be quality, pure food, the best of clothing. homes that are homes—for everybody. Ours will be a world without money and without price. Labour applied to the natural resources of the earth will give us everything necessary for our existence and well-being. When the workers have the intelligence to abolish the wage system and establish their own social order we emerge into what may be described as a new world. 

Workers, rouse yourselves from your lethargy. Try to understand the world in which you exist. Join with us in working for a society where poverty and degradation will be replaced by comfort and a fulfilling life for all.