One tweak needed (2026)

From the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Societies in every part of the world are currently organised around the same, single feature – a system of production driven by the search for profit.

 

In other words, capitalist production, where most people work for wages while just a few scoop up the profit that the majority produces.

 

This system was progressive in the past – it promoted such a huge increase in industrial and agricultural productivity that every person in the world could now have access to all the goods and services needed for a reasonable life.

 

But a reasonable life for all is denied precisely because the system is driven by the profit motive. If there is no prospect of a profit, there is no question about it, there will be no production.   

 

At the same time, it’s a competitive system that inevitably forces individual capitals to expand or lose out to other capitals. But the competition is not (nor can be) subject to any overall planning, which results in the boom/bust pattern that has become a fact of life in the last 200 years, in which time capitalist production has come to predominate.

 

The need for expansion also results in war. Forget the rubbish about sovereignty and fighting for freedom. Modern war is all about markets, raw materials and transport routes.

 

And that inevitable expansion is becoming a major environmental threat too.

 

But hey! Don’t despair. That ‘one tweak’ in the headline? Take the world’s productive resources away from the minority and use those resources to produce for human need, not profit.

 

We know this sounds like a big ask, but remember, the world’s workers already run production from top to bottom. It makes sense for them to run it in their own interest.