1 Cover Image
2 Contents
3 Editorial
Is it the Big One?
3 Introduction
4 Pathfinders
Capitalism’s Model Behaviour
5 Merchandise & Publications
6 Material World
Humanitarian Intervention
7 Simon the Sociobiologist (cartoon)
8 Pieces Together
Contacts
9 Who pays for health care?
This year is the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service.Workers like it, but capitalists don’t, at least not any more. Why?
10 (as above continued)
11 Cooking the Books 1
Sinned against not sinners
12 The Selfish Capitalism hypothesis
Oliver James doesn’t like “Selfish Capitalism” and wants to return to the “Unselfish Capitalism” he imagines once existed.
13 (as above continued)
14 The end of the market
Is there an alternative to the market and what is it?
15 (as above continued)
16 Beyond capitalism – making everyone count
Under capitalism most people don’t get the chance to develop their capacities.
17 (as above continued)
18 Cloudy view from the summit
Last month’s G8 Summit in the far north of Japan was typical of meetings of the heads of state these days.
19 Cooking the Books 2
The world could produce more food
20 Book Reviews
Sick Society
Stan Cox: Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine.
Gray Matter
John Gray: Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia.
21 Book Reviews
Descriptive economics
Economics for Everyone. By Jim Stanford.
Reclaiming Marx's “Capital.” By Andrew Kliman.
22 Obituary
Les Cox
22 50 Years Ago
Depression
22 Principles
Our Object and Declaration of Principles
23 Greasy Pole
David Davis Freedom’s Champion?
24 Voice From the Back
Learning About Capitalism; The
Mad House Of Capitalism; How
Capitalism Operates, and more.
24 Free Lunch
(cartoon)
24 Cover image
Editorial
Is it the Big One?
There’s a joke amongst stock exchange gamblers about the analyst who predicted nine of the last three bear markets. The same could be said about some critics of capitalism who have been predicting the next Great Depression since 1945.
Capitalism is an uncontrollable system and another 1930s slump cannot be ruled out. But history never repeats itself exactly, not even as a farce (not that a repeat of the horrendous 1930s could be viewed as a farce). Every slump or recession is different because capitalism is anarchic and unpredictable. In fact, if it wasn’t then capitalist governments might have a better chance of developing some policies to avoid them.
The socialist case against capitalism is not dependent on capitalism being in a slump.Even in times of “prosperity” capitalism does not, and cannot serve the interests of the majority who are obliged to sell themselves for a wage or a salary to get a living. Unemployment may be lower and real wages may be rising slowly, but the basic fact of profits being derived from the unpaid labour of those who work remains. And profit-seeking dominates decisions about what, where and how to produce. Priorities are distorted as profits always come before meeting needs.
Obviously more people are discontented in a slump than at other times but history does not provide any evidence that slump conditions are consistently better for getting across the socialist message. The priority for an unemployed person is a job or rather the money needed to buy things that goes with a job. Socialism could indeed immediately solve this problem by ensuring that everyone’s material needs were met, but socialism cannot be established until and unless a majority want it and are prepared to take the necessary political action to get it. Socialists, however, cannot produce this immediately by waving a wand. In the meantime unemployed people want a job and have been known to follow all sorts of demagogues who promise them this.
Socialists do not subscribe to the view “the worse, the better”. Even so, slump conditions do expose the irrationality of capitalism. Closed factories alongside unemployment queues. People in bad housing alongside stockpiles of bricks. People in need of food alongside food mountains and, worse, food bonfires. In short, poverty amidst potential plenty.
But are we heading for another big slump? Nobody knows. Capitalist opinion is divided. Anatole Kaletsky, writing in the Times (17 July), reported that “according to the overwhelming majority of financial analysts in the City of London and Wall Street, the world is now in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s”. He disagrees. He regards this merely as a panic reaction amongst bankers who are seeing their expected profits disappear.
Socialists don’t know either but the very fact that another big slump cannot be ruled out confirms in itself that capitalism is an irrational and uncontrollable economic system. The sooner it is got rid of and replaced by a system under human control and geared to serving human needs the better.
The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism.
Our aim is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we are advocating in this journal.
We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism.
We are not a reformist party with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.
We use every possible opportunity to make new socialists. We publish pamphlets and books, as well as CDs, DVDs and various other informative material.
We also give talks and take part in debates; attend rallies, meetings and demos; run educational conferences; host internet discussion forums, make films presenting our ideas, and contest elections when practical. Socialist literature is available in Arabic, Bengali, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish as well as English.
The more of you who join the Socialist Party the more we will be able to get our ideas across, the more experiences we will be able to draw on and greater will be the new ideas for building the movement which you will be able to bring us.
The Socialist Party is an organisation of equals. There is no leader and there are no followers.
So, if you are going to join we want you to be sure that you agree fully with what we stand for and that we are satisfied that you understand the case for socialism.
| Socialist Standard August 2008 |
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