Which Way to a Better Life? (1995)

Editorial from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have only have one life: this one. There is no afterlife, nor does reincarnation exist. This life is the only life we have, and the only way we humans can improve it is by our own collective action. No Messiah or other Saviour is going to come and lead us to a better life. We are on our own.

Things here on Earth could certainly do with improving. According to the United Nations, more than a billion on the planet live in a state of absolute poverty. Some 550 million go to bed hungry each night. More than 1.5 billion lack access to clean drinking water and sanitation.

This is in a world where, at the same time, resources are wasted on the manufacture and development—and always, somewhere, sometime, the use—of missiles, bombers, fighters, warships, tanks, rockets, bombs, mines, guns and other weapons of individual and mass destruction; and where each year food is dumped because the price is not right and where farmers, in the most productive parts are paid to "set aside" their land from agriculture and not produce food.

Can something be done about this? Yes. if we set aside all the anti-human dogmas about "original sin" and "misused free will" to be found in the sacred texts and theologies of all religions and look at the situation objectively and rationally. If we do this we can sec that the root cause of mass human suffering is that wealth today is not produced directly to satisfy human needs but for sale on some market with a view to profit.

The things we need to live and enjoy life are produced today only if there’s a financial profit in it for the private firms, state concerns and rich individuals who own and control the world's productive resources. It is this that causes the economic and military rivalry and the neglect of human needs we see all around us. And these will go on as long as sectional (private or nation-state) ownership and production for profit continue.

The collective human action that is needed to improve human life on Earth is democratic action to make the resources of the world the common heritage of all humanity. It is only on this basis that we humans, without Messiahs, prophets, gods or any other type of super-being, can freely direct production towards the satisfaction of our needs and so ensure that every man. woman and child on this planet has adequate access to food, clothes, housing and all the other things needed to live an enjoyable life.

That’s the real answer to religion's false claim; to concentrate single-mindedly on making life on Earth— and. when we get there, on the moon and on the other planets—the best possible. After all. it’s the only life all humans are ever going to have.

What’s wrong with capitalism? (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

We could fill several issues of the Socialist Standard with details about the problems caused by capitalism, but let’s see how much we can say within the confines of a single article.

One pervasive aspect of capitalism is poverty. By this we do not mean destitution, as when people literally cannot afford food or clothing or a place to live. There are certainly plenty of homeless people in Britain, but poverty is far more pervasive than this. It involves people not having access to what they want or need, and having to make do with second- or third-best. Shopping at a cheap supermarket,  waiting for the sales to buy what you want, telling the kids they can’t have what they’ve set their hearts on - all these are examples of poverty. So is living in a house that’s too small for your family, or booking the cheapest holiday you can find. And so is working after your anticipated retirement age because your pension will not be big enough. Another illustration is the amount of debt with which people get landed, an average of £16,000 for each man, woman and child in the UK, and therefore much more than that for many individuals. Every day around a hundred people become bankrupt - the ultimate expression of how poverty causes people to live beyond their means.

It’s not just that the vast majority are forced to go without; it’s also that a relatively small number of people live in the lap of luxury. This inequality is not a matter of your neighbour having a bigger car than you or being able to afford two yearly holidays abroad. Instead we are referring to the millionaires and billionaires who own land, companies or shares, and don’t have to worry about two-for-the-price-of-one offers or whether they can afford a night out on Saturday. These people live in grand mansions, probably have a holiday home or two as well, own their own private jets, and employ armies of servants to look after them. Moreover, it’s not they who do the useful work in society: those who drive the buses, teach the children or work in factories or offices are the ones who suffer poverty. Socialists argue that there are two classes under capitalism: the working class (who work for wages and always struggle to make ends meet) and the capitalist class (who receive their income from rent or profit and get the lion’s share of wealth). Belonging to the working class is what makes you poor.

It also means you are likely to suffer from stress of one kind or another. This is partly the result of the daily fight with poverty, but there are many other sources of stress for workers. Many jobs are boring or dangerous, and many more offer little satisfaction to those who do them. Worrying about deadlines or targets, or feeling at the whim of your boss’s moods - all these increase the stress due to employment. And the farther you climb up the “career ladder”, the chances are the more responsibility you will bear and hence the more stress you will encounter. Add to this the insecurity of many jobs and the consequent fear of unemployment. Then there’s the stress of the daily journey to work, whether by car or public transport. Life under capitalism means worries and more worries.

A term sometimes used for people’s general feeling of unhappiness and rejection is alienation, a notion intended to cover the idea of rootlessness, of not belonging to a community, of being isolated, of seeing no real goal in life, of being powerless under the wheels of the capitalist juggernaut. Capitalism views people not as human beings with feelings and desires but as economic units, only useful if you can create profits. So people far too often relate to each other by means of money or comparable considerations (what’s in it for me?), rather than by cooperating with other humans. We are essentially viewed as individuals, not as part of a society. Many social ills can be attributed to alienation, from casual violence to suicide. The pressures of capitalism are not just financial but permeate all aspects of a dog-eat-dog social system.

One reason why people feel stressed and alienated is the lack of democracy which obtains under capitalism. It is true that in Britain there is more or less free speech and the opportunity to elect councillors and MPs. But there is no real democracy in the sense of people having control over their lives. Rather, we are subject to the decisions of others, both within and outside our workplaces. Decisions about shutting factories or moving an office to another part of the country are taken by a small group of bosses rather than the people most closely affected. Often it is the impersonal force of the market which determines what happens. Companies may be closed down or merged because they do not make “enough” profit, not because they do not produce anything useful. All political and economic decisions, whether about the siting of houses or quarries or new roads or whatever, are made within the context of a social system that puts profit above human need, and in such a system there can be no proper democracy, however many democratic institutions exist.

We mentioned above that many jobs are unhealthy and even dangerous. The violence inherent in capitalism is yet another problem thrown up by it. Industrial accidents and the violence perpetrated by many of those on the receiving end of capitalism’s oppression are vivid illustrations of the system’s shortcomings. There is also the ever-present danger of full-scale war. In the course of the twentieth century the nature of warfare changed, from a situation where victims were primarily combatants to one where it is now overwhelmingly civilians that are killed or maimed. Consider too that wars are fought in the interest of the capitalist class, as in the quest for sources of raw materials - oil wars are just a particularly clear case of this. Workers therefore kill and are killed on behalf of a bunch of wealthy parasites.

It is true that capitalism has had a tremendous transforming impact on the world, and that workers nowadays live longer and more rewarding lives than those in the days before the development of industry. However, comparisons should be made not with the distant past but with the present and future potential of Socialism. Judged by this yardstick, and on its own terms, there is so much wrong with capitalism that it is more than high time it was done away with.

Paul Bennett

Is there an alternative? (2010)

Book Review from the July 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Mark Fisher, Zero Books, 2010

Mark Fisher’s very short book is a quick and entertaining read and makes a good companion to David Harvey (see above/last month). Where Harvey focuses mostly on the how and why of the capitalist crisis, exploring its historical, geographical and economic aspects, Fisher instead looks at how recent developments have impacted on the cultural and psychological spheres. It has led us to a situation where, he argues, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. The deathly legacy of Thatcher’s insistence that “there is no alternative’ lingers on.

Fisher’s insights are drawn partly from the heads of philosophers and partly from his own personal experience. The philosophers he quotes are famous for their obscurity and difficulty, but Fisher does a good job of making their ideas accessible for the general reader. That will put readers in a better position to decide for themselves whether the obscurity is worth penetrating.

Fisher is more interesting and amusing when he turns to his personal experience in Britain’s education system. It’s hard not to sympathise with him as he does his best to inspire dozing teenagers with learned cultural-studies discourses on Doctor Who while they slouch across their desks, plugged into their iPods, snacking on crisps. And that’s the most rewarding part of Fisher’s job. The rest of it is spent filling out forms trying to convince bureaucrats that what he has just done is of some worth in the capitalist market place.

But I’ll counter Fisher’s personal experience with my own. I, too, was once a teenage student, dozing on my desk while a professor tried his best to knock some education into me. But outside of the classroom, I was enjoying and making the most of a period of never-to-be-repeated freedom (from parental control, from capitalist work, from the responsibilities of adult and family life), and pursuing my own interests, including educating myself in socialist politics. Of course I’m not suggesting that all Fisher’s students are doing likewise. But the point is that he doesn’t know what they are doing. At a minimum, you’d have to ask them to find out.

A study of history and the social sciences, particularly anthropology, consistently reveals that things are rarely quite as they seem. Workers are never quite as oppressed and docile as they figure in the imaginations of Marxist professors. Management control is never as total as the managers and bosses dream. We are never as lost in the unrealities of television and the spectacle as French philosophers imagine. There’s always a hidden undercurrent of imaginative engagement and resistance. It’s always much more rewarding when an author has gone to the trouble of finding it and encouraging its development than denying its existence and wallowing in gloom.

Fisher concludes with some political proposals that he dresses up as exciting and new, but is mostly old fare – for example, the reinvigoration of the left, the awakening of a ‘public’ consciousness, more worker control over the labour process, popular control over the state, and so on. But to end on a positive note of agreement, Fisher at least points in vaguely the right direction if you’re after a convincing answer to the question in the subtitle of the book. Yes, there is an alternative, he says, but the working class will have to organise politically if it ever wants to see it.

Stuart Watkins