A letter sent by a Socialist Party member to his local evening newspaper.
The Chancellor asserts "We must deal with the World as it is, not as we would like it to be". By 'the world' he of course means the 'Economy'. He speaks from the point of view of his Employers. The capitalist class: that tiny minority who use prices & wages to take rent, interest & profit out of the unpaid labour of the working class. Without necessarily having to lift a finger themselves. The economic 'world' is shaped in their image. From their point of view, the statement makes sense. Anything and everything goes to maintain and improve 'profitability' : austerity, cuts, unemployment and even war. For the Few, the owning class, those who hold all the resources of the world for their personal gain, it makes sense. Whatever the cost to the general population.
From the point of view of the majority of wage-earners the statement is nonsense. Albert Hall, (letters, June 20), points out that his 80-plus years have not seen a single day without war, somewhere. He confuses cause and effect when he blames the arms dealers for this. Capitalism only produces, it can only produce, for sale at a profit. Thus, there'll always be a market for arms. As arms are expensive, it's only the rich that can buy them. People, companies or nations with something to gain or defend fuel arms production.
Competition is the daily game of Capitalism. Companies and nations compete to sell their products. They compete for Ownership of natural resources, and dominance over trade routes and labour and other markets. War is nothing but the almost inevitable continuation of 'normal' commerce by more extreme means. It's the wage-earners who do the fighting and dying and have their communities destroyed. But always for nothing. Whoever ends up owning whatever in their Thieves' Quarrel it's guaranteed it's never you or I.
Boom then bust economics, (i.e. 'the world as it is'), is an equally inevitable outcome of competitive production for the profit of the Few. Marx pointed this out nearly 200 years ago. Modern economists have begun, albeit reluctantly, to acknowledge this. Of course, they are slower to admit that 300 years of all flavours of governments have already tried all possible permutations of 'cures' for the 'stop/go' nature of competitive market-production - and failed. The population always pays. It's paying again : it will always be paying. Austerity, cuts, unemployment and even war. Never in the history of social exploitation have so Many given so much to so Few. The only solution? Really?
Their money merely prevents or allows activity, according only to the prospect of their profit. Largely, as we see once again, it prevents. There's no shortage of money. It doesn't evaporate! It's safe in their pockets. Where it always is. Their banks won't lend to fund business because conditions aren't profitable. Not till wages and other 'costs' like health and social services are slashed. It's going on all over the world!
The Chancellor's statement is nonsense from the majority wage-earners' point of view. The capitalists' world is not forged in our image. Their world is not designed to run in our interest, for our benefit. We should never settle to deal - cope - with their world as it is.
We, the working class, the wage-earners, already cooperate fully and adequately amongst ourselves. Daily, every day, in our families and at our work-places, we organise to provide the necessaries of life. We arrange and do all the work. We should re-forge the world in our own image. We can, and indeed should, re-cast 'the world as we would like it to be'.
End the anarchy of competition that serves only the Few and blights the Many. We who built the world by our labour in common should now take back it's Ownership in common. Then we can self-organise production directly for use, only. Make labour voluntary and access free for all. As it is in every home. Make money itself redundant! Do away with the ridiculous and expensive paraphernalia of prices, wages, rent, interest & profit. Put a final end to war and crises. Only the conscious, political action of the majority working class, worldwide, can do this. That's something worthwhile to work for!
Perhaps we are always too busy struggling to survive capitalism to recognise it for the leech on our backs that is keeping us down?
"Capitaclysm"
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