In the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Marx and Engels advocated revolutionary change in society to address the severe social problems facing the working class. Capitalism was “a fetter on production” reflected in periodic economic crises and trade depressions in which “previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed”.
The objective of the Manifesto was for the working class to organise consciously and politically within a Socialist Party to replace capitalism with Socialism. Socialism, a distinct social system in its own right, was to be established in order for the forces of production (including social labour) to be released from the anti-social impediment imposed upon the means of production and distribution by capitalist class relations. Instead, production and distribution would take place just to meet human need not the pursuit of profit. And human creativity, denied a universal expression by the existence of wage labour and the labour market, would be a central feature of work within an association of free men and women.
However, from 1917 onwards, the necessity for Socialism as a practical alternative to capitalism was confused with the establishment of large scale nationalisation or state capitalism, over most of the world; first in Russia, then in Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, and Cuba. Matters were made worse in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union when its erroneous association with Socialism/Communism temporarily overshadowed the sound and valid case for the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society. Socialism was no longer seen as a necessity but something to be avoided and the writings of Marx became very unfashionable.
The failure of Russian state capitalism and the introduction of market reforms in China during the 1980’s gave way to a dogmatic, albeit false, belief that there was no alternative to the market, to buying and selling, wage labour and the profit motive. Capitalism, we were told, was efficient and innovative, the best of all possible worlds. “Trickle-down” economics would ensure that all would enjoy and benefit from the social wealth created by the magic of the free market.
By the mid-1990’s, market fundamentalists projected a vision of a capitalist utopia based on free markets and free trade with the prospect of minimum governments and no State interference in commodity production and exchange for profit. Globalisation was the universal panacea for any social problem that existed in the world, whether it was poverty, war, starvation, illiteracy and poor health. Consequently, the media began to disseminate the message that there was no need to consider an alternative social system to capitalism; there was no necessity to replace the wages system with Socialism. Capitalism was to last forever.
The prospect of a growth was broadly accepted by the government leaders of the world, economists, non-government organisations, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank and other political institutions. Any dissent to this utopian vision was written off as idealistic, impractical, and even dangerous. According to Gordon Brown there was to be “no more boom and bust”. That was until 2008. How fast “all fixed, fast frozen” ideas began to melt away. A utopian crisis free capitalism of sustained economic growth was just that; utopian. Capitalism can never meet the needs of all society. Capitalism and never be stable and free from contradictions.
In an article “A Lost decade looms and there is no escape” (Times 27 August 2012), Bruce Short, manager of Murray International Trust, lamented at the impotence of economists and economic policy makers to end the trade depression. He wrote:
“Policy makers had resolved to lower interest rates and money printing but that would not drag the developed world out of a down-turn that could easily last another decade…There are no policy options – no fiscal policy or monetary policy options. The chances of orthodox policy giving any relief are extremely low. They can’t do anything”.
So, it is back to the future. The necessity for the establishment of Socialism first put forward in the Communist Manifesto, although it never went away in the first place. And for five very good reasons:
· The natural environment cannot sustain the capitalist global growth model based on current Western European and US consumer patterns (see Ecological Footprint, Wikipedia). Already, there are the entrenched social and environmental problems generated by global warming, pollution, waste and deforestation; all negative by-products of commodity production and exchange for profit.
· International rivalry over, trade routes, areas of strategic influence, raw resources like oil, gas and water, is causing continual conflict and war. Global instability gives a lie to the free-market doctrine of the “minimal state”. Governments are becoming more intrusive, coercive and violent not less. Weapon production is increasing not falling. More and more resources are being invested by governments in internal security and tactics to prevent riots and civil disorder, particularly unemployment, food riots and protests against austerity measures. While capitalism lasts the State will always remain “The executive of the bourgeoisie”.
· The class struggle fought over the intensity and extent of exploitation is still causing class conflict, strikes, a violent State response to protests, increasing dissent, a rise in the questioning of capitalism and the potential for the formation of Socialist working class majority necessary to establish Socialism.
· Economists and politicians cannot prevent periodic trade depressions from taking place and causing high levels of unemployment, distress and uncertainty; there are now over 19 million workers unemployed in the Euro zone alone some 11.7 per cent of the workforce (Eurostat 2013). World-wide, 197 million workers are unemployed out of a global workforce of 2.8 billion workers (ILO UN 2013). The current economic depression is one of many in capitalism’s destructive history and it will not be the last.
- The abject poverty, hunger, poor sanitation and housing most of the world’s population endures – about 25,000 people die every day of hunger (UN 2012)
The deliberate underuse of the forces of production to produce and distribute goods and services caused by the restrictive limits imposed by markets and profitability undermines the utopian belief that capitalism can ever be considered a social system capable of resolving social problems. In fact, the social problems of war, environmental damage, the class struggle, hunger and unemployment are caused by capitalism in the first place.
The revolutionary insight given by Marx and Engels of capitalism as an anti-social barrier preventing the needs of all society from being met adequately and comprehensibly continues to hold true today. Capitalism cannot produce to satisfy human needs because its motive is profit-making restricting production to what people can pay for. What people can pay for and what they want are two different things with the profit system, as Marx showed, acting as a “fetter” on production and a barrier to a society of abundance. And capitalism also causes problems associated with the trade cycle. There is a desperate need for shelter across the world, but raw resources are not being mined, building materials are being stock-piled because they cannot be sold, machines are lying idle because they are unprofitable to be used, construction workers are unemployed because capitalists cannot profitable employ them. The conscious and political action of a Socialist majority is still an urgent necessity. More so, given capitalism’s violent historical track record throughout the Twentieth century and the first two decades of the current one in causing death, destruction and misery to millions of people in two World Wars and hundreds of minor conflicts including recent wars in Iraq Afghanistan, Libya and Mali. The alternative facing the world’s working class is a stark one; either Socialism or barbarism.
