It is essential for workers to have at least a basic understanding of capitalism before they can hope to become useful in the struggle for Socialism. Whilst one man cannot hope to know everything about society today, he can acquaint himself with the fundamentals. Unfortunately today most workers accept the prevailing ideas of the ruling class and the confused outlook that results from them. When many workers hear the Socialist case for the first time they are apt to dismiss it as utopian or an impossible dream. Socialism is however a materialist conception, that is an idea which has sprung directly from the real conditions and relations in society. Socialism as yet is an idea only but one which is based upon knowledge of the real world and not upon an ideal or religious feeling. The Christian ideas that “Christ died for our sins” or “Christ lives to save” are idealistic and have no basis in fact. (It would take a mist- enveloped religious mind to explain how Christ can be both dead and alive). The Socialist idea that capitalist society is divided into two different classes with mutually opposing interests is a fact. But it is one which the ruling class and their propagandists are always trying to obscure, talking instead of the “National Interest” and playing down class interests. Naturally the ruling class, being in a privileged position, want capitalism to continue ad infinitum, so that they can keep reaping-in the surplus-value produced for them by the working class.
Capitalism will remain as long as the majority of the working class want it to remain and allow it. Historically speaking capitalism is relatively new (about two hundred years) but already it has outlived its useful life. Whilst it was the necessary step for society to develop its productive forces and social production, it is essentially an anarchic and anti-social system. All past private-property societies have resulted in the exploitation of one class by another, but under capitalism it has taken a particular form, i.e. the wage-slave. The worker, owning virtually nothing of the means of life, must sell his abilities to the owners of capital for a wage. He is “free” to approach any potential employer for work, and the employer is free to employ him or not as the case may be.
Capitalist industries are geared to produce vast numbers of commodities which must be sold at a profit if they are to remain in business. That great organ of capitalist ideology the Daily Telegraph (14th June 1975) summed up the purpose of capitalist production very neatly:
Offices and factories will not be built unless it pays people to do so. In the same way there will be no investment in industry unless it is expected to produce a reasonable profit.
The aforesaid profit of course comes from the unpaid labour extracted from the working class at the point of production, and not from the shifting of sums of money by financial wizards from one industry to the next. When the worker goes home at the end of the week he leaves behind him his labour, now embodied in commodities with a certain value. The value of the wage which he takes home is invariably less than the value of the labour he leaves with his employer. The “reasonable profit” of the Daily Telegraph is created by human labour applied to materials; and from the capitalist point of view the larger the profit, the more “reasonable” the investment.
The London Brick Company Ltd. recently announced half yearly profits of about £5m., £2m. higher than expected, and immediately became a more “reasonable” proposition. It is worth pointing out that the housing problem is no less severe because of the profits of the London Brick Company, and for certain types of bricks there is now a three-month waiting period. On the other hand the capitalists are steering well clear of the Norton-Villiers concern at the time of writing because it looks like folding or at least severely curtailing production. Slumps and booms are as natural to capitalism as waves on the sea. At the moment there is a worldwide recession affecting many industries (but not all), and this is because the workers as a class have produced too many commodities for the world market. Because it is no longer profitable to employ them many workers will be laid off or put on short time, and they must suffer the hardships. The very goods that they alone have produced are denied them because they have produced too many! Booms, slumps and unemployment are inherent characteristics of capitalist society because the purpose behind production is the accumulation of profit and not the satisfaction of human needs.
With the abolition of private property (either state or individually owned) there will no longer be any classes in society, and for the first time production can be geared to the needs of society generally and not to the profit motive. All the paraphernalia of capitalism, i.e. money, wages, banks, insurance, armies, police etc., will cease to exist as the reason for their existence disappears. In the opinion of the writer, the only conceivable use for money in Socialist society would be as museum-pieces to show how backward previous societies had been.
Tony D'Arcy
Blogger's Note:
The following quotation from Karl Marx accompanied this article:
". . . a man who has not understood the present state of society may be expected to understand still less the movement which is tending to overthrow it and the literary expression of this revolutionary movement".Karl Marx, letter to P. V. Annekov, 28th December 1846.
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