‘THE FREE market economy,’ in other words capitalism, ‘is unquestionably the best, and indeed the only sustainable, means of increasing the living standards of everyone in a country’, Tory PM Theresa May insisted yesterday, defending capitalism after ten years of falling living standards, and after Labour leader Corbyn attacked Britain’s ‘failed’ capitalism in his speech to the Labour Party Conference.
peaking from the Bank of England, May reiterated her Party’s plan for permanent austerity. She said that ‘continuing to deal with our debts’, is the only way to strengthen the economy. Corbyn told the Labour Party Conference in Brighton on Wednesday: ‘The capitalist system still faces a crisis of legitimacy stemming from the crash.
‘Labour is looking not just to repair the damage done by austerity but to transform our economy with a new and dynamic role for the public sector particularly where the private sector has evidently failed.’
Corbyn declared: ‘Now is the time for the government to take a more active role in restructuring our economy.’ Absurdly, Corbyn is seeking to give capitalism back some legitimacy! Capitalism, however, cannot be ‘restructured’ to serve the interests of the working class. The exact opposite is true. It is not a system facing ‘a crisis of legitimacy’, it is, in fact, a system in its death agony, having dug its own grave, and produced its own gravediggers, the working class.
It is a system which serves the interests of the ruling class and is lashing out with increasing viciousness as its latest and most intense economic crisis develops. May described capitalism in her speech yesterday morning as ‘the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created.
‘It was the new combination which led societies out of darkness and stagnation and into the light of the modern age.’
This is true for 1640 and 1789, the period of the English and French revolutions, but in terms of capitalism today, when the system is gearing up for another great crash and a nuclear war, she is simply being absurd.
Early capitalism in the 19th century introduced the working class to the progress of very long working days for very low wages, decades that saw periodic booms and even greater slumps. The epoch of imperialism, with the big banks in charge, has seen the mass slaughter of two world wars, and mass starvation, exploitation, homelessness, death and disease, amidst a paradise for the rich.
Historically, of course capitalism was a tremendous step forward out of the backwardness of feudalism. The development of mass production, the industrial revolution, has developed the means to feed, clothe and house every human on this planet.
However, capitalism, long ago ceased to be a progressive force and now poses a real threat to the whole of humankind in the form of nuclear war, with the US threatening to wipe North Korea off the face of the world.
Although capitalism has the means to provide everyone with what they need to live, as long as the wealth is firmly secured in the hands of the 1%, despite huge advances in science and technology, billions of people are left without even the most basic requirements of human life.
The advent of automation sees the bosses aspiring for a ‘modern capitalist’ society where hundreds of millions of workers can be dispensed with while the ruling class summons up Uber slaves as it requires them.
Capitalism can no longer take humanity an inch forward. In fact, in its attempts to drive humanity back, it threatens the very existence of the human race. Automation in fact provides the basis for communism – a society as Marx said: ‘From each according to his ability to each according to his need.’ But first of all the working class must take the power.
Karl Marx insisted that the working class is the only truly revolutionary class because it cannot become the master of the forces of production, except by abolishing the capitalist system of production itself. In the Communist Manifesto Marx wrote: ‘What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers.’
This is the essence of today’s situation. The working class is being left with no alternative but to take the power and smash capitalism. What it needs is its revolutionary leadership. This is why you, the reader, must join the WRP at once!
