In the Observer, the journalist Phillip Inman wrote an article “We need to talk about capitalism. But Labour won’t do it” (December 1, 2024). The article showed a scant understanding of capitalism and the wrong reasons why the Labour government won’t do anything about it.
Inman believes that the Labour government omits to discuss “the seismic developments in modern capitalism that are increasingly making us unhappy, unhealthy and belligerent in the way we debate politics”
The problem as he sees it is that the working class are faced with monopiles monopoly whose control over the sectors of the economy are generating “super-profits” through “profit maximization strategies”.
He points out that the working class, particularly those workers scraping a living and forced to use food banks, are buying trash food mainly because as consumers, workers have very little information on the food industry and how it manipulates buyers. He concludes that “The freedom to be ripped off is at the heart of liberal capitalism”. And the Labour government will do nothing about this food poverty because, like all governments they are on the side of the “faraway shareholders”.
Talking about capitalism
Socialists have had no difficulty in giving a definition of capitalism.
Capitalism is a social system set within human history. That is a good place to start. Capitalism has a beginning; it exists globally and it has a potential end in human history. No social system lasts forever.
Capitalism is also based upon the class ownership of the means of production and distribution. This includes the fossil fuel industry and the green renewable industry. Capitalism can be state, corporate or individual in its ownership. Nationalisation is state capitalism and has nothing to do with socialism.
The private ownership to the means of life is protected by the machinery of government, including the armed forces. Government is controlled by Parliament and politicians. Politicians exist to serve the general and sectional interests of the capitalist class. Some politicians are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry and some represent the interests of the renewable industry.
This brings us onto the capitalist class who form a minority within society. Capitalists invest capital into buying labour power for wages, natural materials, property, communication systems, transport buildings, distribution centres and so on, to produce commodities for exchange on the market for profit.
Profit is the motive which informs capital investment. Capital is invested to produce more capital as an anti-social objective in its own right. Under capitalism there is an imperative to accumulate capital under pain of competition. The function of the capitalist is to accumulate capital through the production and sale of commodities produced solely for profit and irrespective of social need.
“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!…Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake…” (Marx, Capital Volume 1, Ch. XXIV).
Capitalism is a class society with a privileged few living off the labour power of the exploited working class.
And the working class form a majority within the capitalist system. It is the workers who produce more social wealth than they receive in wages and salaries. This surplus wealth or, as Marx called it, ‘surplus value’, is the basis of the unearned income going to the capitalist class in the form of rent, interest and profit and the taxation to support the capitalist state.
And it is the machinery of government protecting the private ownership of the means of life that prevents workers directly producing what they need, taking what they and their families need and to solve environmental problems like global warming.
Talking about socialism
Phillip Inman’s discussion of capitalism leaves out socialism altogether. Yes, we need a discussion about capitalism and why it can never be reformed to work in the interest of the working class. We also need a discussion about what socialism means and why socialism is in the interest of the working class to establish.
You read a lot about socialism in the media. Bernie Sanders is supposed to be a socialist, so is Jeremy Corbyn. We were recently told on the front page of the “Sunday Times” that the EU was “socialist” (17 November 2024). Although it is fashionable again to be a called a socialist socialism is all too often confused with the failed nationalisation plans of the Labour Party or the economic inefficiency of the totalitarian states in what was once the Soviet Empire.
Socialism is none of these things. Socialism is not nationalisation; it does not mean a one-party state. In fact, we say socialism has never existed. There are socialists but no socialism. Socialism is the only system within which the social problems which now face workers, such as poor housing, not having enough to live on, inadequate health care and other hardships can be resolved.
However, within world capitalism there is a class struggle. It is a class struggle over the intensity and extent of class exploitation and the inability of workers to control and direct society to directly meet human need. It is primary a struggle over the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. that is the core aspect of capitalism that needs to be discussed; class interest and class struggle.
The class struggle is not only the motor force of history it signals that capitalism has a potential end in history.
The working-class majority has the power to change society in a revolutionary way. They can organise into socialist parties to abolish capitalism globally and replace the profit system with the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society.
Socialism will be an association of individual working together under the socialist principle: “from each according to ability to each according to their needs”.
So, what is socialism? Briefly it is a system of society based on the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution democratically controlled by and in the interests of the whole community. In other words, oil, gas, minerals, land, factories, as well as transport distribution and communication systems, and so on will be owned in common – worldwide – by the whole community.
Whereas capitalism is a society based upon the class exploitation of the working class by a capitalist minority who own and control the means of production and distribution, socialism will be a classless society of free men and women, no longer forced upon the labour market imprisoned within the wages system and exploited as a class.
And socialism will be democratic where the whole of society will determine directly or through delegates what is produced, for whom, how and where. Socialism will be a society of social equals, freely able to co-operate in the running of social affairs.
Socialism will be a world-wide social system without borders and nation states. Under capitalism our world is divided and competing national interests meaning all too often conflict and wars. Socialism will be a society based on co-operation, not competition and it will mean an end to capitalism’s endless conflicts.
Socialism will be a system of production and distribution where there will be direct access to what people need to live worthwhile lives. Socialism will be run in the interest of the great majority. Work will be voluntary and the organising principle will be:
“…from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs”
Before rejecting this as too utopian, just think a bit. Does this system – does capitalism – really work? If it does – it doesn’t work in our interests. Most workers are struggling to make ends meet. When we go shopping, we look at the prices first not its nutritional value, less so if it comes from a food bank. We are constantly struggling for higher wages and salaries. If we need housing, it’s because we can’t meet the prices asked. And this is a world where children starve because there’s a price tag on every loaf of bread and bowl of rice. How can anyone say this system really works?
In a socialist society production will take place solely and directly to meet social need not profit. There will be no wages, labour markets, employment, and the buying or selling of commodities.
At present, socialists are a minority so we do not offer detailed plans for a future socialist society. What we do say is that socialism cannot be established without first there being a socialist majority. To that end we need to build-up a world-wide and democratic socialist movement. A socialist majority will send socialist delegates to parliament or its equivalent for just one purpose -to gain control of the machinery of government. This will ensure the peaceful revolutionary change from capitalism to socialism.
Many people coming across socialism for the first time believe it to be idealistic, utopian or a “nice idea”. Maybe it is a nice idea but it is not merely that, and we say it’s certainly not utopian. Socialism is a practical proposition – the only way to deal with the many problems caused by capitalism. For instance, we have the potential to end starvation and to build decent housing. We have the technology to produce wholesome food, prevent rivers and seas being despoiled and provide efficient transport and communication systems. Capitalism prevents this from happening because its guiding principle is profit-making and capital accumulation. Social and co-operative labour already exists and has the potential to build a world fit for human beings.
The only real barrier preventing the establishment of socialism is the support capitalism enjoys from the millions of us who support the profit system. The barrier is not insurmountable despite the capitalist class and their politicians and mass media who are opposed to socialism. Socialism is within the grasp of any reasonable worker prepared to think for themselves. The barrier is only a lack of imagination and the will to make the seemingly impossible possible. Socialism is only ever a vote away; a vote by a socialist majority.
