Have you noticed how many more problems there are today to bother us? There has never been a time in the memory of any of us when there was quite such a rumpus in the world as there is today. War, mass poverty, crime in the streets, Civil Rights demonstrations, dominate the front pages of the press and provide grist for TV and radio networks.
Doesn’t it make you wonder why it is that, in spite of all the well-meaning attempts to eradicate these horrors; in spite of the marvelous advance in technology and in friendship among different peoples; these problems remain? Socialists contend that the trouble originates in the type of society we live under. Let us approach the problems with an analogy from fiction.
Most of us are acquainted with the story of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. All Aladdin had to do was to rub the lamp and a genie appeared out of nowhere to provide whatever might be his wish. So, although Aladdin did no work, he wound up with all the affluence of an oriented potentate of those times simply because he had control over the magic lamp.
It would almost seem that this is how capitalism works. The capitalists do not use a magic lamp to acquire their wealth, they simply rub their magic checkbooks. Once rubbed, the genie appears in the shape of a multitude of working people who hasten to do the master’s bidding. They swarm into his factories, his shops, his mines, his forests and wherever he may order them to swarm. And they produce all of his manufactured goods and his services even to the factories, transportation, and stores which they also operate.
What does this collective genie receive as payment for all this wealth, this mass of goods beyond the imagination of Aladdin or his genie? It is obvious that a horse or a machine must receive a minimum of oats or oil to keep functioning. It is also obvious that horses and machines — despite all care — do break down and ultimately do have to be replaced. And this is just what happens to our modem genie, the working class. Workers receive for their efforts a wage, or a salary, which is sufficient on the average to keep them functioning, to repair them when they break down, and to replace them with their own offspring when they are old. No more than did Aladdin participate in the production of wealth do the modern Aladdins, the capitalists.
Now in the case of Aladdin, the sudden production of vast amounts of wealth created no problems because it could be accomplished at his whim. It was not a continuous process, and whoever it was who did the actual work were somewhere out in limbo and not around to flaunt their poverty in the face of the Master. But such is not the case in the society we are considering, for although future civilizations might well look back on our times as something hard to believe as true, there is nothing fictional or magic about It. Nothing, that is, but the fiction that is fed in the schools, churches, press, radio and TV, the fiction that the workers (our modem genie) and the capitalists our up-to-date Aladdin), have a common Interest; and that it is theoretically possible for workers to rise out of their poverty and insecurity into the affluence and ease of the capitalists simply through their own efforts.
But the case of Aladdin's genie and that of the working class is different in another respect. There is no indication within the pages of The Arabian Nights that Aladdin’s slave desired, or even thought of, freedom. Class society in fact, however, is entirely different and the chief problem with which the capitalists must contend is minimizing the class struggle which rages despite the headlining propaganda of the mass media. The time will surely come when that modern genie, the working class, will realize that riots, demonstrations, and support of wars is not the answer. They will, we are confident, grow to understand that they must organize on the political front and organize for one purpose only, the abolition of capitalism and the introduction of a system based upon production for use rather than for sale on the market with a view to profit. There will be, under socialism, a different kind of genie — a genie made up of automated and computerized equipment, a mechanical genie who can release mankind from drudgery permitting to all the enjoyment of leisure under a sane system of society.
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