Under capitalism, we’ll get more business as usual. The much cited Green New Deal, does not bring about root-and-branch change but is a movement to prop up the capitalist system that brings so much misery to so many people. It fosters the idea that “green capitalism” will somehow save the day. Simply reforming capitalism still results in all our present-day social ills remaining.
The
capitalist system operates all over the world. It is nothing but
exploitation. In modern conditions, with the high productivity
achieved by technology, we are capable of producing the value of our
pay-packets many times over. The difference between what we produce
and what we get paid (called surplus-value) is used by the boss-class
for their own purposes — more capital, profits including puffed-up
directors’ salaries, advertising, law ’n' order and defence budgets, to name but a
few. The quest for profits has turned the world into such a dreadful
place that the very word civilisation stinks.
The saying “Where
there’s muck there’s brass” can be turned on its head to make
better sense: "Where there’s brass there’s muck”.
In other
words, profits pollute.
As
long as capitalism continues, it will always be business-as-usual.
The internal logic of the capitalist system requires continual
growth, which means expansion of production. Because production is
for private profit and competition is relentless, growth and cost
cutting is necessary to maintain profitability — and continually
increasing profitability is the actual goal. If a corporation doesn’t
expand, its competitor will and put it out of business. Because of
the built-in pressure to maintain profits in the face of relentless
competition, corporations continually must reduce costs, employee
wages not excepted. Production is moved to low-wage countries with
fewer regulations, enabling not only more pollution but driving up
energy and carbon-dioxide costs with the need for transportation
across greater distances. Leaving capitalism intact means allowing
“markets” to make a wide array of social decisions — and
markets are nothing more than the aggregate interests of the most
powerful industrialists and financiers. An economy that must expand
will do so and it will ensure a government is in charge that permits
it to do so. System change is necessary.
Only socialism has the
capability of shutting down entire industries and overhauling the
world’s whole economic structure. A socialist economy is one based
on meeting human need and which is in harmony with the environment,
not one made for private profit that externalises environmental and
other costs for society to pay. A healthy natural world is what keeps
us healthy and alive. The consequences of business-as-usual will be
apocalyptic. Socialism or barbarism remains humanity’s choices.
In
time we are confident that socialist understanding will develop. Why
are we so confident, you ask? After all, the socialist movement is
still very small and most workers reject its message. Our
answer is that socialist understanding derives from the experienced,
known facts of capitalist life; from the fact that you are living in
that certain sort of society where everything you make belongs to
“them”, where all the housing is controlled by “them”, where
food and all other necessities can only be bought from “them”,
where you struggle to hold down your jobs — tedious, mindless,
monotonous, maddening, boring jobs, but which are our meal-tickets
for survival. “Them”
are the surplus-value eaters, with legal title to ownership of
factories, farms or mines, who control everything produced by you
and our like.
We say this system only lasts because most
people are contented with it and continue to go on voting for the
likes of “them” to run an ruin our lives. We
say democracy can be used in our interests, to get rid of the whole
profits and prices system.
Let
the revolution begin.
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