Socialist Studies
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What
Is Capitalism?
Socialist Studies has always insisted on the necessity
for the workers to gain control of the machinery of government before
trying to set up Socialism.
Capitalism
is a system of society based on the class ownership of the means of
production and distribution in which wealth is produced by propertyless
wage workers, to be sold on a market with a view to profit. Capitalism,
therefore, is a class society with a privileged few living off the
labour of the exploited many. It existed in Russia under Lenin and
his successors; it exists today in Vietnam, Cuba and China just as
it does in Britain and the US.
The
basic contradiction of capitalism is between social production and
class ownership. For, while the actual work of producing the wealth
is done by the co-operative labour of millions, the means of production
and the products belong to a section of society only, the capitalists.
It is this contradiction that causes modern social problems since
it means that production cannot be carried on to meet human needs.
Consequently, where such needs conflict with the profit-making of
the privileged few, the needs come second or not at all.
Human
needs are only met under capitalism to the extent that they can be
paid for. This is no problem to the rich but it is, as is well known,
to the men and women who have to work for wages or salaries and who
make up the working class.
The
working class is defined by socialists in a precise and scientific
way. The working class is composed of the men and women who, excluded
from ownership of the means of production and distribution, are forced
by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies in
order to get a living.
For
the purpose of this definition a worker is not distinguished by the
way he dresses, talks, by where he lives or the job he does, but by
how he gets his living. Anybody who has to work for wages is a worker.
In Britain over 90 per cent of the adult population are workers, the
rest being small businessmen and the wealthy.
Since
under capitalism the worker depends on his wage or salary in order
to live, it is clearly very important to understand what governs the
rate of wages. Wages are in fact a price, the price of the mental
and physical energies a man sells to his employer. They are not a
reward for having worked nor a share in the product nor even the price
of the work done. Receiving a pay packet or a salary cheque is a buying
and selling transaction no different in principle from the sale of
a pair of shoes or a motor car.
The
price of a person's ability to work -or as Marx, who first saw this
clearly, called it, his "labour power" -is fixed
in much the same way as that of a pair of shoes or a motor car, very
roughly, by the amount of labour used up in producing and maintaining
it, by its value. It can thus be seen that a person's wage can never
in the long run amount to much more than will cover the costs he must
incur to keep himself fit to work, with additions for his or her family
and training. An engineer with a university degree gets more than
an unskilled labourer because it costs more to train and keep the
engineer.
The
wages system is a form of rationing. It restricts a worker's consumption
to what he needs to keep himself in efficient working order. It means
that he is deprived of the best that is available in food, clothing,
housing, entertainment, travel and the like. This is made all the
worse because there could, on the basis of modern technology, be plenty
of the best for everyone. It is made worse still because it is the
workers who produce all the wealth, the best that the rich enjoy as
well as the utility items they themselves consume.
That
the workers are exploited under capitalism is not hard to grasp. Exploitation
does not mean that workers are shackled to the factory bench or the
office desk and terrorised by bullying foreman or managers (who themselves
are workers). It merely means that they get less as wages than what
they produce is worth. There is no need to go into a complicated economic
analysis to prove this. Suffice to say that, since the only way in
which wealth can be produced is by human beings applying their mental
and physical energies to materials found in nature, any society in
which a few live well without having to work must, on the face of
it, be based on the exploitation of those who do not work.
That
this is so under capitalism is clear when the peculiar quality of
labour power is known. Labour power can produce a value greater than
its own so that whoever buys it and puts it to use can reap the benefit
of this; which is precisely what the capitalist employer does. He
buys the labour power for wages, puts the men and women who are selling
it to work in his factory with his tools on his materials, and realises
a surplus when he has sold the finished product. The source of this
surplus, with its divisions profit, rent and interest, is the unpaid
labour of the workers.
Because
capitalism is based on the class ownership of the means of production
and distribution and the accompanying exploitation of the workers,
depriving them of the fruits of their labour, there is an irreconcilable
conflict of interest between the working class and the capitalist
class. This is the class struggle which goes on all the time over
the ownership of the wealth of society. Its obvious features are strikes
and lockouts, trade unions and employers' associations.
These
are the main weapons and organisations of the two sides in the industrial
field. In the political field the capitalists have the government
on their side. Their ownership and control of industry rests on their
control of political power through their political parties, and as
long as this is so, the purpose of the government is to preserve the
capitalists' monopoly of the means of wealth production. This is why
in the end all governments must take the side of employers, by protecting
their ownership of property, by declaring states of emergency, by
using troops to break strikes, by imposing wage freezes, by passing
anti-union laws. It is also why the workers must organise politically
into a socialist party with a policy based on recognition of this
class struggle and its irreconcilable nature.
Capitalism
is the cause of the social problems that afflict the workers today.
Under capitalism the workers are, in the strictest sense, poor, that
is, they lack the means to afford the best that is available. People
often talk of their being a housing problem, but there is no such
problem. There is no reason why enough good houses for all should
not be built. The materials exist; so do the building workers and
the architects. What, then, stands in the way? The simple fact is
that there is not a market for good houses since most people cannot
afford to pay for them, and never will be because of the restrictions
of the wages system.
So
what is called the housing problem is really but an aspect of the
poverty problem or, what is the same thing -since it is the other
side of the coin -the class monopoly of the means of production.
A
little thought will show how capitalism, besides ensuring that the
workers stay poor, needs them to be poor. If they could get their
living without having to sell their mental and physical energies to
the capitalists then the system could not function for who would do
the work? By "poor" we do not mean "destitute"
though this is an extreme form of poverty. Certainly, as long as capitalism
lasts there will be a considerable minority of people who cannot stand
the pace and so fall into destitution and have to be kept out of the
poor law (for that is what it is even if it is given some fancy name
like "supplementary benefit"). The mass of the workers
escape this, at least when they are working, because a man who does
not get regular meals is a bad worker. That is why wages are generally
enough to allow a man to keep himself fit to work.
Housing
is just one aspect of the poverty problem. The same applies to the
other necessities of life, clothing, shelter, education, travel and
entertainment. Here again, in a world of potential plenty the consumption
of the workers is restricted by the size of their wage packets and
salary cheques.
Capitalism
cannot produce to satisfy human needs as production is always geared
to meeting market demand at a profit. This means that production is
restricted to what people can pay for. But what people can pay for
and what they want are two different things so that the profit system
acts as a fetter on production and a barrier to a society of abundance.
It is also responsible for the periodic ups and downs of production
known as the business cycle.
One
thing should now be clear about capitalism -it can never be made to
work in the interests of workers. It is based on their poverty and
exploitation and can only work in the interests of the privileged
owning class. A recognition of this is one of the basic principles
of Socialist Studies. It can be summed up in the
sentence "capitalism cannot be reformed" (at least
not so as to be run in the interests of workers). Grasp this and you
can quickly see the futility of tinkering with capitalism and trying
to tackle each problem on its own.
To
solve their problems the workers must abolish capitalism and replace
it with Socialism. This will involve a social revolution changing
the basis of society from class to common ownership of the means of
wealth production. When society owns and democratically controls the
means of life then men and women can begin to organise production
to satisfy their needs. Production solely for use can take the place
of the anti-social principle of production for profit. Exploitation
will be ended and a world of abundance made possible.
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