Let’s talk politics (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once every four or five years the great thinkers of our time are given ample opportunity to explain to us where their ideas went wrong. For surely the ideas of such great intellects as John Major, Neil Kinnock, Paddy Ashdown et al must have gone badly wrong, or we wouldn't be living in a society where there are more homeless yet more empty houses and more unemployed builders than ever before; more starving people, yet more food destroyed or prevented from being grown than ever before; more understanding of the needs of our planet, yet greater destruction of its resources than ever before. The list is endless, but we shouldn't really expect any apologies from the self-appointed gurus, because according to their doctrine—the doctrine of capitalism—it has always been like this and always will be.

Socialists would be forced to agree with this depressing outlook if we still lived in a society that could only provide comforts and necessities for a certain proportion of the population. However, the technological advances in production which could only have been achieved under a competitive system such as capitalism have left that system as an obstruction preventing the majority from enjoying the fruits of those advances. Capitalism has outlived its historical usefulness and needs to be replaced by a more efficient system, socialism, if the potential it has created is to be realised.

This is very different, though, from what we are going to hear emanating from the party platforms which are projected into our living rooms. We will be asked to believe that the problems facing society today are the fault of certain individuals, parties, policies, workers, or anything other than the system itself. Their arguments will be backed up by millions of pounds-worth of advertising and airplay to help convince us. They will talk about such impersonal phenomena as “the market”, "the stock exchange”, “inflation”, “the unemployment problem”, and “the economy”, and put forward sophisticated formulae for the eradication of the many facets of poverty most of us encounter in our daily lives.

Limiting the debate

In putting forward these formulae, the professional conmen and women of these political parties seek to obscure the definition of politics behind a screen of rhetoric designed to confuse or bemuse the voter. They aim either to make the political arena seem so complicated that the ordinary person could not possibly hope to understand it, or else to alienate the working class from political thought and action by making it seem irrelevant to the problems of daily life. By confining and designing political debate within the limits of the existing system, these representatives of the ruling class leave workers little option but to become baffled or bemused by the “pass the parcel" policies of the left and the right.

Socialists, in complete contrast to all the apologists for capitalism, refuse to confine the political agenda within the straightjacket of the present system, but seek instead to replace that system altogether. Socialists therefore enter the political field with one simple aim—to end capitalism and replace it with the superior system of socialism.

Socialists claim that in order to change society people must first understand the fundamental principles of the system they wish to change. Otherwise they risk making purely cosmetic changes, leaving the system intact. The present system we live under is called "capitalism”. One of the principal characteristics of capitalism, socialists contend, is the separation of society into two main classes. Firstly, there is the ruling class who own the means of production and the vast majority of the material wealth of the planet, even though they make up only a small minority of the population. Secondly, there is the working class, who constitute the vast majority of the population, but who are forced by economic necessity to sell their physical and mental energies to the ruling class in return for a wage or salary. Therefore, socialists argue, any progress from capitalism to socialism must involve the dismantling of this class system.

Socialists contend that capitalism is by its nature a political system. It affects everybody all of the time. It is not confined within national borders or dependent upon the existence of particular electoral systems. However, capitalism has not always existed. The political systems of feudalism and slave-based societies preceded it and flourished for many hundreds of years. Since capitalism has not always been with us, there is no reason to believe that it will always exist in the future. It is merely a passing phase of human development and as such is no more "natural" or “eternal” than any of its predecessors.

Just as all of us are affected constantly by the political system of capitalism, so each of us is forced to act politically innumerable times each day. Contrary to what our leaders would have us believe, political action is not confined to the election booth or to a small elite group. Every time we go to the newsagents to buy a newspaper, we are performing a political act, no matter which paper we buy. Each time we buy an item of fruit we are acting in a political way, no matter from which country that fruit originates. The procuring of any commodity, be it food, shelter, labour power, in exchange for a sum of money, is a political act, since the very existence of money depends on political acquiescence to a system that supports its use.

Money is political

But these self-proclaimed prophets of what amounts to utopian capitalism never tell us about the political nature of money. Instead, they offer a society where employers and workers, rich and poor, takers and givers, can live in harmony. This wonderful state of affairs is to be reached through a redistribution of money amongst the aforementioned groups without changing the nature of those groups or abandoning the need for money. How is it possible to have workers, who give, and employers, who take, in a society of equals? Even the political illusionists cannot come up with the mysterious formula for this magic trick. Instead, they tell us that money is a natural part of “society", that the one cannot exist without the other, and therefore conclude that money is essential

From within capitalism this may appear to be true. However, if you look at the Earth from the ground it appears to be flat. Looks can be deceptive. Money, like capitalism, has not always existed, but is a human social invention. For thousands of years societies flourished without the use of money. Even until quite recently, prior to the development of capitalism as a world-wide system, most populations lived their whole lives where money played little or no part in the social relationships. This is hard for us to comprehend now, living as we do under the world-wide grip of capitalism, but even a quick glance at social history shows it to be true.

With the advent of property, and the greater variety of production, a universal means of valuation was required to regulate exchange. Money performed this function. However it did so in societies that were far from able to provide for peoples needs. As well as defining value, in the form of price, money also acted as a means of rationing. Today money retains these two functions, of valuation, converted by the pressures of supply and demand into a price, and of rationing, where we are limited in our access to the commodities produced by society, by the amount of money we possess. So, if there are two glasses in front of me, one filled with beer, the other empty, and I have no money, under the present system I will not be able to drink from either. The second glass denies me access to beer for the physical reason that it doesn't contain any, the first for a purely political reason: I have no money. In socialism this barrier would not exist.

Socialists believe that, in common with capitalism, money has outlived its usefulness, since technology has now produced the means of providing all humanity with all their material needs. If money lost its value altogether, the value of all socially manufactured products could only be measured in terms of their usefulness. The collecting of worthless paper currency would be merely a pastime of museum curators or sentimental ex-capitalists. With production geared to satisfying human needs, and with the means of providing for such needs being available, as they already are, the idea of anything being bought or sold would become ridiculous. Distribution would be based on need rather than ability to pay.

So, as the election approaches, workers have the choice of being taken in by the hollow' promises and impossible dreams of these small-screen egomaniacs, or else of keeping them on video-tape for later viewing as an historical comedy once the insane Comedy of Terrors known as capitalism has been replaced by the sane and humane alternative of socialism. The workers of this country—of the world—have the choice, but they may not have that choice for too much longer.

Capitalism may provide a bleaker alternative in the form of a nuclear holocaust or some "natural" environmental disaster. Either way the days of capitalism’s reign are numbered, and it is only the human race as a whole who can decide who shall be the beneficiaries of its demise. The fate of young and old, male and female, the yet unborn of all races, hangs upon that decision.

J. C.