If capitalism continues, poverty, unemployment, insecurity and war will always be with us. Poverty for the masses, riches for the few. Wages for the workers barely sufficient to keep them alive; profits for the capitalists sufficient to keep them in indolent luxury. And unemployment. Has Beveridge shown us the way out? Why, of course not. Given conditions of production and distribution for sale and profit-making, when commodities find no market factories close down and widespread unemployment occurs. Great Britain since 1920 has had an unemployed army ranging from one to three millions, and the U.S.A.—that country of "high" wages and refrigerators—had figures reaching heights of 11 million. Poverty together with unemployment and perpetual economic insecurity are in themselves sufficient condemnation of capitalism. Besides all this, however, the various national sections of the world capitalist class periodically fall out with each other. No longer can their disagreements over private property issues be settled around conference tables; wars are declared and millions are massacred and maimed.
[From an article by Samuel Leight, Socialist Standard, February 1945]
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