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Capitalism crashes - what to replace it with?
 international |
anti-capitalism |
opinion/analysis
 Thursday November 27, 2008 10:05 by Workers Solidarity - WSM (WS 106) wsm_ireland at yahoo dot com
The financial markets have taken a hammering. Speculators (that’s a rich person’s word for ‘gambler’) lost incredible sums of borrowed cash in bets on everything from mortgage values to the possible price of wheat in 2011. Banks who lent out far more money than they actually had needed governments to step in with billions to bail them out. In some countries the state took them over. Unfortunately, capitalism is not collapsing. Nothing massively unexpected has happened. If the ‘economists’ who turned up on every news programme this Autumn really didn’t know there was going to be a crash at some stage they should think of changing jobs.
Capitalism is definitely going into a slump. Production is slowing down, employment is falling, investment is drying up, wages are starting to fall behind inflation, less is being bought. We didn’t know exactly when the boom would end; we don’t know exactly how deep this slump will be – but we do know the boom/slump cycle is, and always has been, an integral part of that system.
Even if capitalism suffered a massive worldwide crash of such a magnitude that production almost ceased entirely (and there is no sign of that), it would not, in itself, mean the end of that particular system.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that capitalism is a social system. It is a way that people have dealings with each other in their everyday lives. There have been other systems in the past, like barbarism, slavery and feudalism. Nothing need be fixed for all time.
Today we live under capitalism, where the means of production and distribution are owned by a small ruling class, the capitalists. The driving reason for this class’s existence is to make a profit. Wage or salary earners, with our dependants, are the great majority of the population and make up the working class.
That is the dominant social relationship. The majority are used to make profit for a small minority. Unfortunately, most people are not yet thinking about ending this particular relationship, and no social system simply fades away because it’s unfair or just hugely inefficient. A social system gets kicked off the stage of history when it is physically overthrown and replaced by a different one.
Some would have us believe that capitalism can be gradually abolished through ‘public ownership’ or nationalisation. This odd idea possibly has its roots in the mistaken idea that either ‘old Labour’ or the Stalinist dictatorships represented some sort of socialism.
The relationship between workers and a state employer, like in the health service, does not differ in any significant way from the relationship between workers and private bosses. From the beginning of capitalism governments have tried to solve certain of the system’s problems through nationalisation, more accurately called state capitalism.
It does not change the essential structure of the capitalist system, of workers and bosses having different and opposed interests. Changing a social system is not about changing the people at the top, it’s about changing the relationship between people. So, state capitalism is in no sense a step towards socialism.
What then are we to replace the present set-up with? How about a system where production is organised to meet people’s needs, where it would be regarded as insanity to have building workers idle while others go without adequate housing, where the idea of paying farmers not to grow food while hunger is still a daily reality in much of the world would be seen as immoral. This can only work when the means of producing and distributing wealth are owned in common, by all of society. That’s the meaning of socialism.
How about a system that takes socialism and freedom to be of equal value? One where people can do as they wish so long as they don’t interfere with freedom of others? One where you can have a direct say in making the decisions that will effect you? One where control is in the hands of the majority through democratic assemblies and councils? That’s anarchism.
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This article is from Workers Solidairty 106, this is its first online publication
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Comments (7 of 7)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7Anywhere the creation of a socialist society has been attempted despite the best efforts of true believers who tried valiantly to properly implement it without exception leads to the rule of a dictator supported by an unelected unaccountable elite with sole control over all the economic assets of the country, heavily censored and state controlled media, a police state riven with corruption using an apparatus of arbitrary repression, imprisonment, torture and mass genocide against all dissenters and percieved opposition and free speech and coercion of labour and conscription into a huge expanded military that is used to quell internal rebellion, close the borders to anyone who wishes to escape and to threaten neighbouring states.
The system eventually collapses as economic productivity plummets, famine takes hold and the basic infrastructure of society and the repressive government disintegrates as devours itself from the inside.
Anyone who still believes in Marxist ideology in this day and age after the horror of the 20th century is either willfully ignorant, insane or mentally deficient.
Anyone who still consciously believes in capitalist ideology in this day and age after the horror of the 20th and 21st centuries is either willfully ignorant, insane, mentally deficient or university educated.
Your wrong there Jim on at least two counts
1. Workers Solidarity is an anarchist publication which whatever problems it may have make 'Marxist ideology' an unlikely one. Anarchism and Marxism split back in the early 1870's long, long before any of the examples you might cite and the difference was precisely over the question of whether or not state power could be used to introduce socialism. You can educate yourself on both the history and theoretical difference around this question at http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secHcon.html which should prevent you making such an elementary mistake in future.
This is not to say anarchism & Marxism have been completely isolated from each other in the years since - both people and ideas have moved back and forth across the divide and some organisations and individuals have even tried to straddle it. But they are certainly not the same thing, in particular on the question of state power!
2. There have been a number of experiments in creating an alternative society without using the state, some of these by people who called / call themselves anarchists, others were not. Some were very large scale, during the Spanish Civil War for instance some 7 million people took part in one of these within the republican zone. You can educate yourself about this at http://www.struggle.ws/spaindx.html Currently upwards of 1/4 of a million people are taking part in a similar experiment in Southern Mexico in the state of Chiapas, while smaller scale this has been ongoing since 1994.
"...university educated."
"You can educate yourself ..."
I know all about the re-education camps of the Soviet Union and what happened to the university educated in Cambodia thank you very much.
Anarchist ideology or anarchists themselves had nothing to do with either of the examples you have cited above Jim.
I think youll find that the terrible things that happened in both of those places and times are the very reason anarchism warns about the dangers of hierarchy,centralisation of power and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (supposedly through a single party or grouping)
As long as the core of the system is based on monetary profit, true change will not come about. If the core value was based on some sort of ethical credit, then maybe change can take place.
It would be hard to be greedy if greed was not a valuable thing
It is my opinion that those who believe socialism and caapatialism are on opposite ends of the political spectrum are incorrect - they are both to the right and inenvietably end up at the same end game i.e. a totalitarian state controlled by the elite to the expense of the common man (adptly demonstrated by Nazi Germany, Facist Italy or Comunnist Russia or China is there any real difference between them?- anacharism is to the complete left where there is no goverment rules are imposed and state control is tolerated nor accepted, however neither is the rule of law. Where the rule of law ( as defined by common law where inalienable rights are accepted not mercantile law) is respected and adhered to, where it is unacceptable to do harm to another through violence, fraud or theft / destruction of property and individual choices are accepted, where any compliance to the rules of a particular society only comes from the aggreement of the individual - then this type of collective can have many types of "societies" and people can choose which society to join if they wish to join a socialist society they can so giving up a portion of their labour in return for benifits to all of members of that society like health care etc.., if they do not wish to do so they can choose a different society which better adheres to their own ideals or opt out - any form of "society" which forces complusion through force always inenevitably ends up in the same place - controlled by the few at the expense of the masses. Freedom yes but with laws and responsibility lets us as human beings move from adolessons to adulthood, accept our responsibilities and then take our freedom, we dont need to be told how and in what we should live our lives but as adults understand with this freedom comes the requirement to be responsible.
Socialism, Capatialism Marxism Fasim it is just word games designeds to divide and hide the same motivations behind any of these complusory systems - power hungry people wishing to centralise power to their own benefit - I believe the struggle through out times has always between these two forces - those who wish to centralise power to their own benefit and the rest of us who want to retain our own power to live our lives as we see fit without encroachment from the rich / powerful whatever ism they may label themselves as
God Bless
and decentralise