At a superficial level capitalism is enjoying a triumphant period at present, but the old socialist warning that the system creates its own gravediggers is as relevant now as it was in the past
When socialists utter the slogan “One world and one people!” we are describing our conception of a world in which every single human being will be guaranteed the material needs of a full and happy life. It would be fatuous, of course, to say that socialism can deliver a “full and happy life” to every human being, but common ownership and democratic control of the means of life will not only guarantee every human being the right to contribute their skills and energies to the provision of goods and services, it will also give every person throughout the world the equal right to freely avail themselves of the goods and services they require. They will have the same free access to their self-determined needs; everyone will have complete material security and the idea of accumulating wealth, either in its material form or as represented by money, will have no place in a socialist world.
This is not the case today. According to the various charities and the United Nations relief agencies, over fifteen million people on average die each year from hunger and hunger-related diseases. Additionally, millions of the deaths that are noted as resulting from “natural causes” are the result of indirect poverty and could be prevented by the provision of decent food, good housing and proper medical care. If we had socialism now the millions threatened in the year ahead would be spared. These millions desperately need socialism!
The Belfast Telegraph recently cited the case of a young worker employed by Burger King who, for a five-hour stint earned £1.00—yes one pound sterling, not enough to buy himself a hamburger! His employers, it was stated, make casual staff clock off and wait in a staff room during slack periods, paying them only when they are actually working during busy periods. The newspaper did not indicate that Burger King had developed a new twist in the crime war, because robbing workers is, of course, a legal practice in capitalist society.
In Northern Ireland, the case is of some interest because all the mouthpieces of capitalism are assuring us that the infamously low-paid slavery' associated with tourism is part of the “peace dividend”. More generally, it reflects the condition of workers in Britain and further afield now that government has emaciated the unions and given the green light to employers to intensify the exploitation of their workers through part-time working and contract employment.
Beneath official poverty line
Again, local, but reflecting the national scene, is a report issued on 25 September by the Save the Children Fund. The report backs earlier research in claiming that 37.5 percent of children in Northern Ireland are living beneath the official poverty line and that the death rate among these children is 50 percent higher than among other children. This in Britain, one of five richest states in the world where the incautiously comfortable would vehemently deny that part of the “Third World” is situated in a housing estate a mere couple of miles from where they live.
Symptomatic, too, of working class life today in Britain are the notices appearing in Job Centres encouraging workers to accept the low-paid jobs on offer with the happy news that they might be entitled to state income support to bring them up to the recognised poverty level.
But it is not only the poor and the low-paid who are suffering the lash of a triumphant capitalism. Professionals and middle and junior management are being hounded for increased “efficiency”—in other words, better results or else! Ironically, the hounding comes from the top, from overpaid directors who themselves are frequently as secure as a football team manager. Often the house, cars, schools and status are appurtenances of the job and these invariably impose a sickening servility and tension on people who thought the reward for acting as Gauleiter for a bunch of capitalists was a life of economic security.
It was easy, in the period of relatively full employment, for many workers to have the illusion that capitalism had changed. There had in fact been no basic change but the illusion was fed by the employment situation following the war and the effect of this on the bargaining power of the unions in some sections of industry. But, even then, in what might be regarded as the halcyon days of capitalism, the age-old problems of the system flourished and it was largely hope, expressed in the rhetoric of the Left, that created the illusion that life was going to get better.
In the different countries of the world we have had capitalism run by “communists”, labourites, liberals, conservatives, et al. By the Right, the Left and the Centre. Surely, if the system could have been civilised, there has been the motive, the intent and the collective intelligence to extirpate its problems long before now.
Distribution
The problem of production has been solved. Unquestionably, today the potential exists to provide adequately for the whole of the human family but we have failed to solve the problem of distribution which remains fatally flawed by the needs of the profit system.
Today, for millions of people throughout the world there is only despair. In Britain the official figure for unemployment is disguised by the fact that for many there is no monetary incentive in registering as unemployed. Increasingly now, too, employers are employing part-time or contract labour which not only denies workers the notion of security and such benefits as holiday and redundancy pay but which acts as a means of intensifying exploitation. In its totality, the new regime (which is in no way threatened by the prospect of a Labour government), represents the death of hope for meaningful reform and the return of a particularly virulent form of working class exploitation.
The reader may put the question that heads this article to his or herself. Do you need socialism? If you really think about it, about the present and about the future, we can only conclude that you will add the word “urgently!”.
Richard Montague
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