The first Principle of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s Declaration of Principles gives a succinct definition of capitalism:
That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e. land, factories, railways etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
In other words, it’s the class ownership of the means of production and distribution by a minority class, which results in the majority of the population being dependent upon a wage or a salary for a living. Whilst banks, stock markets, bond markets and the like are very much part of the workings of capitalism, they are not all it consists of. Such institutions assist in the circulation of capital, but not in its production. Before things can be bought and sold, they first have to be produced by human labour plus materials.
Those people protesting outside St Paul’s Cathedral have “anti-capitalism” banners, but they probably have no clue as to what capitalism is. In fact, we know they are on shaky ground when such luminaries as The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan (backwards) Williams, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, ex banker and now an Anglican church Warden, Ken Costa, and a host of other celebrities, mouth their support for the aims of the demonstration. If indeed there are such aims!
The main thing that comes out of the demonstration is that the protestors want to see higher rates of tax for certain bankers. Williams wants to see a “Tobin” or Robin Hood tax on high flying city earners. But the mere fact that these high fliers have to turn up for work on a Monday morning, puts them among the peanut sellers of the would-be capitalist class.
For real wealth, we need to look to someone like Gina Rinehart, currently Australia’s richest person and expected to overtake the world’s No. 2 billionaire, Carlos Slim, and No. 1 Bill Gates in the Forbes Rich List. Her wealth is based on the outright ownership of large mining companies in Western Australia, and the currently booming demand for the products they yield from places like China and India. She is currently worth about $9 billion, Carlos Slim, about $46 billion, and Bill Gates about $56 billion, but what a meteoric rise! From Wikipedia we learn:
In 2007 she first appeared on Forbes List Australia’s 40 Richest, with an estimated wealth of US1.1 billion; more than doubling that the next year to
US2.4billion; and then, in spite of the global financial crisis, by 2011 had more than trebled to US$9 billion. Releasing the results in February 2011, Forbes was the first to name her as Australia’s richest person; with BRW conferring the same title in May that year. In June 2011, Citigroup estimated that she is on course to overtake Carlos Slim, the Mexican magnate worth £46 billion (US$74 billion) and Bill Gates, who is worth £35 billion (US$56 billion), mainly because she owns her companies outright. Using a price-to-earnings ratio or 11:1, “It is possible to see Rinehart’s portfolio of coal and iron ore production spinning off annual profits approaching US$10 billion,” giving her a “personal net worth valuation of more than US$100 billion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Rinehart)
No having to buy and sell Greek or Italian Bonds for her. No betting on derivatives or other fictional capital. She’s the real deal! She owns actual stuff, – capital! And she owns her companies outright, – no having to worry about pesky shareholders who might bellyache about her management (Unlike poor Richard Murdoch and his empire!) As far as we know, the Archbishop of Canterbury has not protested to anyone about her meteoric rise, nor her earnings! Presumably she pays the correct amount of Australian tax, so there would be no need to protest against her earnings? Would they call an Australian Tobin tax a “Ned Kelly” tax? With his usual precision, and not without wit, Marx nailed the Church of England’s view on private property in the first Preface to Capital:
“The Church of England would rather give up
38 of its 39 Articles than one 39th of its income”.
How perceptive he was! And how true that the established Church of England is thoroughly wedded to the ideas of capitalism, private property, and its apparent lasting “eternity” as a social system of class exploitation. Just like its God in fact! And whilst Archbishop Williams complains about highly paid workers in the city, the Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Flankbein told The Sunday Times about 2 years ago: “I’m doing God’s work”.
To explain he went on:
We’re very important,” Blankfein is quoted as saying in The Times of London. “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle http://articles.businessinsider.com/
Isn’t it nice and reassuring that the Almighty pays such keen attention to the niceties of capitalism; especially as it’s such a benevolent system of society and works in “virtuous cycles”? The 200 million odd workers in the world without jobs currently might feel slightly different about it.
The fact that Gina Rinehart’s companies sell a lot of their minerals, iron and coal to China, doesn’t mean that that particular “communist” country ignores the dictates of the “free market”, and Chinese companies can and do go elsewhere for their raw materials. And as usual, the local workers bear the brunt of rapacious capitalism. The BBC News reports of a Chinese run coal mine at Collum in Zambia, where the workers: “are furious with their Chinese bosses.” Apparently:
“At least 11 miners were allegedly shot by two Chinese managers during a protest about poor conditions in October. The long road leading up to the mine in the southern rural district of Sinazongwe is covered in black coal dust, but otherwise there is not a hint that the 21st Century has reached the area. And this is what has angered the miners. They feel that while the Chinese benefit from the mine and live comfortably; they remain in poverty often renting mud-walled huts lacking basic facilities.”
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11898960)
Welcome to the realities of capitalism. Those so-called “Communist” capitalists will treat you just as badly, if not worse than those “imperialist” capitalists. As something like 6000 plus miners, died in China’s mines in the last year, the African mine is continuing to fly the flag for rampant capitalism! Profit instead of human need, – at all costs!
Incidentally the Chinese mine managers in Africa were probably just workers like those they allegedly shot. Capitalism always gets its workers to do its dirty work. No doubt God looks the other way in the universe? When the government minister Mr Elijah Muchima visited the area, he told the Chinese mine director Mr. Xu:
“Your investment is important but our labour is more important….If you find that business is not profitable, close it down. Other people will come….”If it’s not profitable, go away. If it’s not profitable, you would not have been here for nine years.”
Mr Xu responded in apologetic fashion:
The mine director attributed his company’s poor pay to problems it faces in marketing its coal. “Our clients are mainly Zambian copper mines but sometimes they import coal from Zimbabwe,” Mr Xu said, speaking through an interpreter. Collum currently produces an average of 150,000 metric tonnes of coal, which earns the mine up to $6m (£4m) a year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11898960
A clear case of the tentacles of capitalism extending its thirst for profit even into the most undeveloped areas of the world causing its trademark problems of poverty, death and unemployment. The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently expressed his concern about the treatment of homosexuals in Uganda, but to date we await his opinion of the normal functioning of capitalism in Zambia.
Meanwhile back in Britain, the church officials are busily seeking the “spiritual” values of capitalism:
A former senior banker is to lead an initiative aimed at helping the City to reconnect with its moral foundations. Ken Costa, an Anglican church warden, has been asked by the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, to start a dialogue about ethical capitalism.
“Ethical capitalism” indeed! We will certainly need an army of theologians to explain what that expression means! The very essence of capitalism relies upon the exploitation of the workers, – wage slavery! Only a theologian could explain the ethics of “fair” exploitation. We include economists among the general term “theologians”, for their grasp of reality is just as flimsy, even if their particular god, profit, is a different one.
Costa continued:
“We split up the human person and said look you’re only a financial person, try and get financial returns, and forgot that there was ethical and a spiritual dimension to humans as well,” he said. “We’ve seen huge levels of stress. We’ve seen judgements that have had to be made without much wisdom, and we’ve seen a departure from the framework that the prime minister told us moral capitalism needed.”(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15619089)
To the employer, the worker is only a “human capital”, as indeed is the relationship between the employee and the employer. This is the reality of class society. Workers are only employed if a profit is anticipated from such employment. No Holy Ghost, no “spiritual dimension” or transcendent feelings are required. Only hard labour, – or else!
It would perhaps be kinder to people like Ken Costa to say that they represent the guilty conscience of capitalism, rather than write them off as starry-eyed utopian reformers who stand for the eternal exploitation of the working class. But whether it is either guilt or the misguided belief that reforms will resolve the problems faced by the working class under capitalism either description is valid. Both positions impede the clear and necessary understanding of capitalism by workers to consciously and politically replace the profit system with Socialism.
