Dysfunctional Capitalism

 

The point is not to reduce inequality, poverty, debt, or gas emissions a little or to increase the food supply and wages so that fewer people are hungry. Objectively, these problems should have been solved long ago. There is no reason for millions to go hungry in 2022.

 But the need is for a complete reset, a new direction, that favors the people as a whole and puts them center-stage. This means putting humanity not the narrow pursuit of maximum profit by the rich, at the center of everything and taking a new fresh path. The rich and their representatives are not going to usher in this new direction because it would mean making themselves completely obsolete. It is up to working people to collectively bring in the alternative.

There is no sign that economic turbulence, insecurity, and volatility will diminish in 2023 or 2024. We are in a deep all-sided economic crisis that is adversely affecting the social, cultural, and political spheres. The necessity for change that favors the people is presenting itself very forcefully at this time. The crisis of the capitalist economic system has become unusually severe. There is a rapid breakdown at all levels, which is why life is becoming more chaotic, anarchic and untenable.  Nothing lasts forever, everything is transient. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle has not disappeared under today’s unprecedented conditions. The dialectic lives even in these difficult times. It is up to working people to grasp this dialectic and use action with analysis to move humanity forward in a human-centered direction. It can be done and must be done.

 The economy is working mainly for a handful of people and cannot provide for the needs of all. And experience shows that the inability and unwillingness of the employing class to fix any major problems will increase in the coming years. An economy dominated by an extremely tiny minority is not going to produce solutions that favor the majority of people. Experience and research show that problems steadily go from bad to worse under existing political and economic arrangements. All the capitalist institutions are dysfunctional, outmoded, and incapable of giving expression to the interests of the people.

Democracy should not mean that people beg politicians  to “do the right thing.” Such supplication diverts large amounts of precious attention and energy away from focusing on and building our own collective power, analysis, and actions. It prevents us from relying on ourselves and seeing ourselves as the alternative to the status quo. Getting caught up in the nasty, self-serving, pragmatic, and unprincipled reformist politics, shenanigans, and chicanery of the parties of the rich hinders progress and prolongs misery and insecurity for all. It is a non-starter. It is not politically effective. Even incremental and small “advances” and “wins” are very hard to come by. 

Ceaseless money printing by central banks, price-fixing in major sectors of the economy (“greedflation”), never-ending supply-chain disruptions and delays, endless pay-the-rich schemes (e.g., public-private “partnerships”), constantly-growing debt at all levels, more inequality, intensifying stock market turbulence, out-of-control inflation, widespread poverty, and lower working and living standards for millions are signs of an economy that lost historical and social relevance long ago. It is an economy in dire need of a new aim and direction under the control of the workers who actually produce the wealth in society.

The economic and social fallout from an obsolete economic and political system continues at home and abroad. This is especially significant given the interconnected nature of everything and the fact that the rich and their political and media representatives are incapable of analyzing and theorizing the economy objectively and offer only more confusion and incoherence. While a fragmented chaotic economy devoid of conscious human intervention has been the norm for decades, it can be seen from the economic and social catastrophe unfolding globally that such an anachronistic economy is further disintegrating and wreaking more havoc on the peoples of the world. It is out of control and some have even called it a death spiral. The rich and their political and media representatives are becoming more irresponsible, incompetent, and ineffective with each passing day. Not a single major problem has been solved in decades and every day there is more traumatizing news about economic and social conditions around the world. People everywhere are fed-up, exhausted, and overwhelmed, including many “middle class” people. Only the wealthy few can escape the pain affecting the vast majority.

the rich and their entourage nonchalantly talk and act like lurching from crisis to crisis is somehow inevitable and unpreventable. The notion that the economic collapse confronting humanity is mysterious, incomprehensible, or hard to fix is irrational and self-serving to the extreme. The economy is not a mystery and can be directed quickly and properly to serve a pro-social aim. Everything needed to advance pro-social aims already exists. Workers already run everything and many people with valuable expertise in many fields can be brought together to advance a pro-social direction. Many serious chronic problems can be solved quickly with working people in charge of the wealth they collectively produce. Without political authority and power, however, pro-social changes will remain piece-meal and inadequate. Living and working standards will remain subpar for millions. Working people must have sovereign power over economic and political affairs. The aim and direction of the economy must not be set and controlled by big business because that leads only to more disasters.

Adapted from an article by Shawgi Tell at stell5@naz.edu.

 

The Myth of Scotland's Oil (1973)

 From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the victory of the Dundee by-election was regarded as a triumph by the Labour Party, the Scottish National Party must also have been elated by the large number of votes secured by their candidate who ran a close second. This would suggest that the Nats are making a comeback after a period in the doldrums following the party’s zenith in 1968, after Winifred Ewing’s election at Hamilton, when membership was claimed to be in excess of 90,000 with some 500 branches. At present members total some 60,000, with branches around 440.

Why the revival? Undoubtedly the rejuvenating shot in the arm came in the form of North Sea oil. The recent successes of the oil consortiums couldn’t have happened at a better time for the SNP, for two reasons. First—and this is the kernel of the Nationalist argument — the SNP have always asserted that the problems confronting Scotland resulted from the channelling of Scottish revenue directly into the coffers of the “English government’’ thereby preventing the Scottish worker from deriving any benefit from it (despite the obvious fact that his English counterpart doesn’t do too well either!). The advent of the Nats’ new sacred cow, oil, greatly strengthens this argument and has the added bonus of promising such offshoot titbits as rig-building, construction and service industries.

Second, the Nats had previously conceded (surprisingly) that in the early days of home-rule the standard of living would actually be lowered. The wealth they claim oil would bring to an independent Scotland allows them to discard this vote-loser, and the result is that many workers who were previously sceptical of home-rule are now expressing concern over “Scottish Oil” which goes, according to the SNP poster, “To London with Love”.

Who owns North Sea Oil ?

The territorial control of the world’s continental shelf areas was settled by the United Nations Continental Shelf Convention of 1958 when, by an agreement binding after 1969, countries bordering any particular section of continental shelf were given sovereign rights to explore and exploit the natural resources of the shelf. The North Sea continental shelf has since been divided up between Norway, Germany, Denmark, Holland and Britain. The first British round of licences for oil exploration was granted in 1964, several more having been made since, the latest in March 1972. By the end of 1972 at least six commercial-sized oil fields had been discovered in the Scottish sector together with other recent strikes (whose potential is still being assessed). They are:

• Forties Field which was the first and one of the biggest. Discovered by British Petroleum about a hundred miles east of Aberdeen. Eventual peak production will be in excess of 400,000 barrels per day (20 million tons per year).
• Montrose Field discovered about 30 miles south-east of the Forties Field by Amoco and thought to be capable of producing 100,000 barrels per day.
• Auk Field being brought by Shell into production at a rate of 40,000 barrels/day.
• Argyll Field is reckoned by Hamilton’s to be possibly in the 200,000 barrels/day range.
• Brent Field has Shell/Esso anticipating an eventual rate of over 300,000 barrels/day.
• Beryl Field Mobil are looking for a possible 300,000 barrels/day here.

The Face of Prosperity

Under London rule, argue the Nationalists in a new pamphlet The Reality of Scotland’s Oil by Nicholas Dekker, only 9 per cent of the taxes and royalties from this oil will go to Scotland. Under home-rule, however, the Nats claim that by 1980 (assuming that it will take five years to develop an oilfield in the North Sea) new fields discovered during 1973, 1974 and 1975 could bring production up to 150 million tons per year with an estimated gross value of £2,250 million, of which something like £1,400 million or over per annum could tumble into a Scottish exchequer. Coupled with an assumed 50 per cent of “Scottish participation” (investment of capital) in production and of 40 per cent or 60 per cent in ancillary costs (based on above figures), total potential worth to a Scottish economy would be 85 per cent or 90 per cent of gross value—£1,900 million to £2,000 [million] per annum.

This money can, insist the SNP, “be used to secure for all time, prosperity, security, and a satisfying life style for all the people of Scotland”. Among the many promises (play it again, Sam!) would be vastly improved provision for the old, the sick and needy, and the wiping out of the chronic housing problem. Thus armed, the SNP are preparing to contest every Scottish scat at the next General Election.

. . . and its Reverse

Socialists constantly expose the fallacy of home-rule, pointing as examples to other self-governed countries such as Libya, Venezuela, Russia, and even America, where workers derive little if any benefit from oil produced locally. Indeed the opposite can result as is the case in Aberdeen where the oil boom has resulted in a property price-spiral far surpassing anything in Scotland (in fact reaching parity with English property prices) with such bizarre examples as the two-apartment tenement flat which fetched a price of over £4,000!

Equally unsound is the argument that the oil industry must inevitably produce an increase in the number of jobs available. For it could also mean a drop in the demand for other fuels, notably coal, with redundancies in those industries and their offshoots. Not only that, but many of the “new” jobs will, if the SNP have their way, simply have been taken from workers already doing them in England, so it’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Jock, a situation which in no way benefits the workers as a class.

Who Benefits ?

Perhaps the biggest fallacy of all is the Nats’ vision of the anticipated wealth from oil being used exclusively to provide a heaven on earth for Scottish workers. Of course, as the Nats themselves admit, the oil companies will have to have it made worth their while if they are to put up the “vast sums of risk capital to finance search and exploration” and so will the “private and semi-private Scottish capital” they talk about. Also, the cost of government, including the armies of civil servants which any modern capitalist nation must have to administer its affairs, will have to be paid for, and obviously no government can afford to neglect to defend such a valuable property as its oil fields so it will have to provide for defence either independently or through NATO. So, one way and another, there can be little left with which to fulfil the grandiose promises being made. We can confidently assert that the benefit of oil in Scotland will go, as elsewhere in the world, to the owners and the most that Scottish workers can expect from the oil boom is . . . work and wages!

Finally, it’s worth considering that if the North Sea does produce a supply of oil of any significance in relation to world fuel supplies, and bearing in mind the recent panic measures taken by President Nixon, the scramble for oil could become intensified (rapidly expanding Japan, already using 50,000 million gallons a year, estimates treble consumption by the 1980’s). And as trade war sometimes develops into armed war, the tragic result could be that workers living in Scotland could well find themselves, like those in Iceland, being called upon to take up arms to defend “their” oil.

A. McNeill

Things Are Becoming Clearer

 

No government is able to foretell the prosperity or the failure of its industries. They may guess and perhaps sometimes be right — which will allow them to claim special powers — but it all rests upon the market, which itself is anarchic and uncontrollable. Of course, when a government is able to publish figures which are seen as hopeful — falling unemployment or lower prices for example — Chancellors are quick to claim credit for them. It is only when the statistics tell a different story — when the jobless are increasing or prices spiralling — that governments take refuge in the excuse that they have been hit by the equivalent of a snow blizzard in August.

Capitalism and its unpleasant side-effects ride roughshod over us all (like some giant steamroller crushing and flattening creativity, talent, feelings and our natural inclinations) for example, so-called “education” does little more than pour out a certain quota of information and indoctrination, necessary to turn out more compliant wage slaves. We’re constantly encouraged to work against nature in order to get by under this system. Despite a system that tries to knock it out of them, every hour of every day, people are social animals and work with each other. it’s overwhelmingly clear, that in our lives greed, selfishness and couldn’t-care-less attitude are merely a result of human conditioning, drummed into us all.

 We are so accustomed to dealing with money that we have come to think in its terms and find it difficult to imagine a world without it. It is the money system that restricts choice and freedom. Capitalism is inherently violent. It relies on seizing the means of sustenance from people and forcing them to labour in a hierarchical structure in order to purchase what they need to survive in an established market system. This involves establishing a repressive legal structure which enforces adherence to this system. It is rooted in class domination. Conflict and coercion are at its core. It has people whose lives simply don’t “matter” and they are turned into enemies, minorities, refugees, migrants, the poor and the mentally ill. The capitalist system whose underlying tendency towards the ever-increasing concentration of wealth repeatedly humiliates, de-legitimises, and discredits the vulnerable. They endure collateral damage because capitalism doesn’t care about them and it is indifferent to its cruelty. What if, for example, immigrants were simply seen as fellow humans, and helped? Basic human needs are utterly unfulfilled at every level and most politicians and most of the media view problems as just us-vs.-them. A hungry family? Forget them. The capitalists have long worked to discourage activism on the part of the people,

Everyone can see that living conditions are worsening  Every person has experienced the cost of living rises in food and fuel. Wages and salaries are not keeping up with inflation, and debt, inequality, and insecurity are growing everywhere. No amount of politician's distractions can hide the harsh reality people are undergoing.  No longer can it be concealed by disinformation or propaganda charades. Despite contradictory news headlines every week, the rich and their political, media, and think tank representatives continue to work overtime to foster the illusion that the global economy is strong, booming, and resilient. The future, according to them, looks bright. Nothing could be further from the truth. The rich remain out of touch and are determined to advance an agenda that will bring greater pain for the people to protect their profits if it is not opposed every step of the way.

Despite the disheartening and depressing developments occurring across the world, despair and despondency, while understandable, are not inevitable. Anger and hope can galvanise people into action. It actually makes working for change more critical. There is no need to sit back and watch helplessly as the whole world goes to hell. People are not readily expressing their doubts, worries and fears, but these are just beneath the surface nevertheless. They may as yet not be questioning, but the questions are formulating in their minds. There is no bigger question than how bad will things get before we begin to take action and are we going to do everything possible to make our world a better place for our children and their children? And the answer, surely, must be yes.

There is no doubt, that people are growing more clear-sighted. It was Abraham Lincoln who said –“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”

 

Scottish Company Intimidates African Workers

 More than 1,000 former and current employees of James Finlay Kenya Ltd (JFK) are suing the company for damages at Scotland's supreme civil court, the Court of Session. The workers claim they suffered musculoskeletal injuries while working for Aberdeen-registered JFK at its farms in the Kericho region of Kenya. They have signed up to group proceedings - a class action lawsuit - in the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

Last month the firm won a temporary injunction from a court in Nairobi, stopping workers from pursuing the case. Having failed to stop the lawsuit from going ahead, the company opened up a second front in the legal battle by seeking an order from the Employment and Labour Relations Court in Nairobi. It argued that the Scottish case was an "an assault on the sovereignty of the Republic of Kenya" and violated the country's constitution. The court granted an interim anti-suit injunction, bringing the Scottish case to a temporary halt and preventing anyone else from joining the class action.

Lawyers acting for the tea pickers have now won an order from the Court of Session, telling JFK not to continue with the Kenyan action.

They argued that JFK's conduct has been calculated to intimidate the workers and prevent them from having lawful access to the Scottish courts for resolution of a bona fide dispute. They accused JFK of engaging in a "deliberate campaign to defeat the ends of justice and cause distress". The names of the workers involved in the case were published in a national newspapers and pinned to notice boards on the tea farms. The judge, Lord Braid, said the workers' lawyers had put forward a "strong prima facie case" that JFK's actions had been "vexatious and oppressive".

Scottish firm ordered to halt legal action in Kenyan tea pickers case - BBC News

End Complacency. Start Campaigning

 

There are many reasons why socialists want a complete change in the basis of society and why we want a new society based on common ownership and production solely for use. Today we have poverty amidst plenty, international rivalry leading to wars, the destruction of the planet’s environment because of the profit motive – the list goes on and on. Approaching a billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger. Capitalism corrupts everything it touches. In this society the cash nexus is everything. Get up off your knees and organise for a world based on production solely for use. You owe it to your children and their children.

Socialism means a system of life in which the instrument of labour will be common property. Consequently, the fruits of labour under such conditions will be freely available to all. There will be no need for the workers to buy and sell that which they own as a result of their collective effort. Organised distribution, democratically controlled according to a definite plan based upon social needs will replace wages and such-like features of capitalism. Such a system can replace the existing chaos in which you suffer, just as soon as you are ready to establish it by means of your political power. When you realise the need for this you will have no time left to waste on the Labour Party which tinker with effects while leaving causes untouched. You will get on with the job in the only way possible, i.e., by joining and helping forward the work of the Socialist Party.

We say that the workers must first understand socialism, then organise politically and then use the vote to gain control of the political machinery. After securing control, only then will the real and enormous task of changing the economic basis of society begin.

Any airy platitudes to the effect that the trades union movement will be a midwife in attendance at the birth of socialism will be sheer wind chewing and humbug unless the trades unionists can direct their own destiny in the first place. All socialists who are members of their trade union work within the structure of their union to make their fellow-workers understand and appreciate the position of the Socialist Party. With this understanding clearly fixed in the minds of the majority of trade unionists, their unions will become live, fearless and potent bodies in the class struggle, and will play their part in the birth of a new society in which the means of wealth production and distribution will be commonly owned and democratically administered in the interests of the community as a whole. Socialism is the only hope of the working class, of which the trade unionist is a part.

Reminiscent of the boy who, by putting his finger over the hole in the dyke, hoped to stem the flood, reformers waste their time and energies in trying to alleviate the direct effects of capitalism, instead of striving to abolish the cause. Capitalist reforms scratch the surface leaving the underlying problems untouched. While perhaps the worst anomalies are removed, others more subtle become increasingly apparent. It will take more than palliatives to remove the consequences of poverty in a world of plenty. It will take a complete change in the social system to bring about production solely for people’s needs, and not in order to make a profit such as obtained to-day. Poverty for the many is inherent in the capitalist system, and we must work for socialism in order to remove it. By socialism, we do not mean public utility corporations, state control and the National Health Service, which pass for it with some of our less well-informed fellow-workers. By socialism, we mean a system in which all who are able to participate in production, and everyone receive what he or she needs. Only under socialism can the heart-breaking effects of poverty be removed and all have an opportunity of living the good life as well as enjoying a healthy life.

As socialists, however, we give thought to the effects that will be forthcoming in the future. We do not underestimate the enormous obstacles in the path to socialism. The greatest obstacle is getting the workers to understand and want socialism.

William Morris and Revolution

 

William Morris was a 19th-century poet, arts and crafts designer and socialist agitator. He was a revolutionary socialist in the tradition of what might be called “Anglo-Marxism” or “impossibilism” rather than a “proto-Leninist” as he is sometimes depicted to be by the Left.

Morris’s views were that capitalism cannot be tamed, only overthrown, and that any other approach was a diversion from the ‘real task', that the function of a socialist party is to ‘make socialists’ and that anything short of that was a waste of time and effort. Morris did envisage that the changeover to socialism would involve some degree of violence—he introduces this into his description of how socialism came to be established in News from Nowhere—but this was never the essence of what he meant by “revolution”  and it is misleading to suggest that Morris was advocating violence as a socialist tactic as opposed to expecting the violence to be started by those opposed to the socialist revolution.

 

Morris was quite clear about what he meant by “revolution”. As he put it in the opening paragraph of his How We Live and How We Might Live:

 

“The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people’s ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can’t help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change in the basis of society.”

This is exactly our definition too. “Revolution” means a change in the basis of society, irrespective of whether or not this happens to involve violence. It also implies that this change will be fairly rapid rather than a prolonged, gradual one, so that terms such as “overthrow” and “upheaval” are not out of place. It’s our view the fact that these days, the socialist revolution could be carried out more or less peacefully, with a socialist-minded majority using existing elective institutions to win control of political power and employing this to overthrow capitalism. In other words, we don’t see Morris’s description in News from Nowhere of how socialism came to be established as a likely scenario today.

The Russian revolution but this was never the sort of revolution Morris (or ourselves) advocated. It was a political revolution that led to a social revolution—a change in the basis of society—but from feudalism to capitalism via a prolonged period of state capitalism rather than from capitalism to socialism. Since this was only a change from one class society to another it could be, and was, carried out by a minority some of whose members became the new ruling class. 

 The sort of revolution William Morris had (and we have) in mind is about a majority revolution from class society to a class-free society, not about a minority revolution from one class society to another. Unfortunately, these latter types of revolutions described themselves as “socialist” and it is their failure to bring about the equality associated with the word “socialism” that has led people to conclude that there is no revolutionary answer and indeed that trying to achieve one will only make things worse. We refuse to accept this defeatist conclusion that we say that Morris’s policy of making socialists is still the most constructive activity that those who want a better world should engage in at the present time.