RM is right in asserting that no other economic system has benefited humanity as capitalism has.
No doubt the same could have been said of feudalism by serfs hundreds of years ago. Where he errs is in arguing that "capitalism provides the best opportunities to improve economic well-being for all".
No one is denying that capitalism has moved into a higher gear. From now on an increasing number of machines and devices will become "smart". They will perform tasks automatically whenever the predetermined "trigger" is pressed.
For society, this increases the mass of surplus value being produced enormously. For a socialist world it will be an absolute boon in its removal of drudgery from human beings. For capitalism, it will increase the already huge embarrassment of riches. It will increase and sustain the scourge of unemployment for years to come.
The scarcity that all markets depend on, the scarcity which provides the excuse for keeping workers working hard, and consuming only enough to carry them on to the next pay day, will have to be imposed more oppressively.
More surveillance systems and more control procedures will be needed to protect the interests of the powerful, to ensure men, women and children of the working class do only what they are allowed to do, and go only where they are allowed to go.
The consequences of all this are the more rapid depletion and waste of resources, the more inevitable pollution of the planet with the rubbish that this society generates in increasing quantity and toxicity. We will see crop failures throughout the world, which will accelerate malnourishment levels, making the present figure of 840 million malnourished look small.
The securing of scarcer resources – water and oil – is forecast to spark many wars in the years to come, resulting in the deaths of millions.
Capitalism does not present us with a future of peace and plenty, as RM suggests, but one of doom and gloom.
What's the difference?
Televised debates between the stooges of capitalism are a stroke of genius.
As representatives of parties with a proud history of serving as the executive arm of British capitalism while in office, they have managed to agree about more or less everything, yet still convey to viewers the impression that have been having a vigorous debate and that they differ widely on policy.
Very talented.
Let's be realistic. While there are historical reasons for the existence of the separate parties into which these career politicians are organised, the differences between them are superficial and often sham.
All of them stand for capitalism, its wages system and its production for profit.
The capitalist class is not particularly concerned about which of them wins, as long as one of them does, even if it doesn't like one party to stay in power too long in case the politicians involved overdo the cronyism and the corruption.
Which of them wins doesn't matter to waged and salaried workers either, even if many are tempted to choose what they regard as the lesser evil – Tweedledum in preference to Tweedledummer.
That is generally perceived by critics of capitalism to be the Labour Party, despite the fact it has danced to the tune of capitalism every time it has been in office.
Though I cannot forecast the exact outcome of the coming general election, what I can predict is that, come the final announcement, the capitalist class will have won again.
We will continue to exist in a two-class system in which every aspect of our lives is subordinated to the worst exigencies of the drive to make profit.
We will still have wars, unemployment, crime and 1,000 other social ills – and, try as he will, the winner of the coming election will be powerless to tackle any of them.
He will not control capitalism – it will control him!
Rottenness of capitalism
It would be hard to imagine any assortment of lunatics devising a scheme for organising the political and economic affairs of humankind that would be more absurd than the system of world capitalism, currently exposed in all its rottenness.
Outside its appalling boom-slump syndrome (which currently and conclusively demonstrates that it is beyond the control of its alleged experts, its politicians, the capitalists themselves and their agents) it gives us wars, world hunger, insecurity, alienation and the monumental waste which now threatens the entire biosphere.
Historically, capitalism, despite its inherent evils, played a progressive role in that it banished feudalism and made the means of production social.
Today, its lunacies are simply an embargo on the rational production of goods and services.
Real wealth is produced, and can only be produced, by the application of human labour-power to nature-given resources.
The claims to ownership of the latter by a relatively small class of money shufflers derives from the historic usurpation of those means.
We, the working class, the producers of all real wealth, now have the power in our numbers to democratically reject the spurious claims of ownership of our means of life.
With the political will, we can create a world where goods and services will be used to provide the needs of humanity rather than accumulating even more wealth for an economically redundant class of parasites.
John Bissett,
Scarborough Parade,
Hebburn
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