Don't (1980)

From the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

If I won the pools or was in charge of the country I would soon sort out the unions, lazy, unemployed, students, immigration, housing, slums, wages, pollution, oil prices, vandalism, prison population, food scarcity . . . The proper solutions vary from the extreme of forced labour by conscription of vandals, lazy and unemployed, to the liberal idea of employing more social workers, sociologists. do-gooders and turning the Isle of Wight into a rest home for the workers who cannot cope with the stresses of the wages system.

Were it possible for both of these to realise their far off dreams it would be not long before they found out the reality of the capitalist system. The beast consistently refuses to take advice, and it controls you, regardless of all the information you might pump into the computers concerning world hunger, poverty, homelessness and lack of medical facilities.

The question remains—how do you bring the beast under control? In truth capitalism cannot be brought under control and it only exists because the majority of the working class support it and they continue to support capitalism when they repeatedly seek solutions from a system that only benefits the few who live off the exploited labour of the many.

Brian Johnson