Reflections
Dear Editor
I think we can say that, if it doesn’t abolish capitalism, humanity doesn’t have a very long time, because capitalism is destroying the very planet we live on. As a system, it cannot go against its own raison d’être, which is the accumulation of capital. This is the very definition of capitalism, and life itself is sacrificed for it and must always be while the system lasts. Governments cannot resolve this because they are the representatives of capital. Their helmsmen (leaders, presidents, prime ministers, etc.) lead nothing. They cannot control capitalism. It controls them.
Nothing stands still; not in nature nor in society. Ironically, capitalism, with its very destructiveness, is socialism’s greatest ally. People, throughout history, become political when the environment they are in compels them to, and this is our hope.
It isn’t that the Socialist Party (that is, the real socialist movement for a stateless, classless, moneyless society) could ever convert the majority of the world’s workers through its political activity, but that the world’s workers themselves will come to the same conclusion as us through many independent routes and threads and coming to that conclusion (that the system of prices and profits, buying and selling, wage-slavery and capital accumulation must go, if we are to save the Earth and if our grandchildren are to live) without any need to study Marx or even to read a single book.
They will come to that conclusion because every reform they attempt, every conservation project they undertake, every patching-up attempt they make, every charitable endeavour of theirs, is punched to the ground by capitalism every day, it being the root cause of all of it: famine, war, poverty, pollution, destruction.
The threads are yet to come together, but I think they are heading in that direction, bit by bit, and independently of us socialists today. That may sound optimistic but the pessimistic alternative is that capitalism will never be got rid of, and will, instead, get rid of life on Earth. That is the distinct possibility. Maybe that will happen, and socialism remain a fond dream. So, are we to give up? I think giving up would be unethical.
It would be unethical toward not just our fellow humans, but all our fellow animals and our planet, and to all the yet unborn too.
A mass movement becomes a reality not one by one, but by tipping points being reached. Initial tipping points are the longest to reach, and successive ones more and more rapid. The first need only take a couple of thousand, after which the pace quickens thereafter – with tipping points also being reached independently in different parts of the globe before contact, after which the pace becomes a deluge.
And this last is why the capitalists’ state apparatuses would be helpless to stop it.
Anthony Walker
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