The need for change

It is all very well being against something but if this is to be anything more than permanently protesting against some never-ending problem we've got to be for something too. Many in the"anti-capitalist" protests show themselves not to be against capitalism but against what some call "neo-liberalism". What they are for is a more regulated capitalism. They merely want to try to control capitalism, to make it more human, to suppress what they see as its worst excesses.

Neo-liberalism is a term coined by opponents of the policies pursued by many governments since the 80s of privatisation and deregulation, of allowing market forces to operate with less state interference. "Neo" because it was seen as a revival of the anti-state, laissez-faire philosophy of 19th century liberalism. As supporters of these policies often call them simply "capitalism", some opponents also presented themselves as "anti-capitalist". But this is a false distinction. Capitalism is not just private enterprise, free market capitalism. That is just one of the forms it has taken historically.

The essence of capitalism is not any form of ownership – whether legal property rights vested in individuals or companies, or state property from which bondholders draw a legalised income, or state property where a bureaucratic elite exercises a de facto control of it. Capitalism is indeed based on the exercise of a monopoly over the means of production by a minority, but so have other class societies such as ancient slave society, feudalism and oriental despotism. What distinguishes capitalism from them is the way in which the producing class is exploited – via the wages system. Denied free access to the means of production, the vast majority of the population are forced to sell their working abilities to an employer for a wage or a salary. Labour-power has the unique property of being able to produce a greater value than its own, but the employers have to pay only the value of the labour-power not the total value it produces. Socialists call the value which workers produce over and above their wages, and which goes to the employer, "surplus value". Capitalism is this economic mechanism of the extraction of surplus value from the wage-labour of the producing class and of the accumulation of most of it as new capital. Capitalism is an economic mechanism rather than a form of property ownership, a mechanism which is in fact compatible with various different forms of ownership. Wherever there is the exploitation of wage-labour for surplus value, there there is capitalism.

There is no such thing as capitalism without the state. That said, there are still degrees of state regulation at different times and in different countries. The state is supposed to represent the general capitalist interest, but in practice is subject to all sorts of lobbying and pressures from special interest groups who want it to make laws and regulations in their interest, to which it often gives in. It seems to be a pattern that, whenever capitalists are given a free hand to do what they want, they exaggerate and go for short-term benefits, even at the expense of their long-term interest so that eventually the state has to intervene to restrain them in their own interest. It is recognised even by pro-capitalist economists such as Nouriel Roubini who writes that "Companies are motivated to minimize costs, save money and stockpile cash, but this leads to less money in the hands of employees, which means they have less money to spend and flow back to companies -- thus weakening the capitalist system. 'What is individually rational for one firm is destructive in the aggregate' " Hence, his call for a more regulated capitalism to "re-fix" capitalism. The banks and other financial institutions are now widely seen by other sections of the capitalist class as having abused their freedom and thus landed the world capitalist system in the crisis it now finds itself in. This is why the cry is going up for the re-introduction of a stricter state regulation of financial institutions and dealings. But there will be nothing anti-capitalist about this. Just a return to the "regulated capitalism" that used to exist in this sector.

Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be stopped and the power of the capitalist class ended by concerted political action. As the Marxist economist David Harvey says, “no way that an anti-capitalist social order can be constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it and reworking the constitutional and institutional framework that currently supports private property, the market system and endless capital accumulation. To ignore the state and the dynamics of the inter-state system is therefore a ridiculous idea for any anti-capitalist movement to accept”. We agree. He also points out the importance of ideas and what is usually dismissed as "utopian" politics. Without a change in what people think about the prospects for change and for socialism there can be no alternative other than a return to some form of capitalism.

The only way to ensure that every person on the planet has an equal chance to enjoy a life free from material deprivation is a world where all the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, these can be used to provide enough for all, without social conflict and without plundering the Earth's resources or polluting the biosphere.