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Know your enemy
Capitalism is
everywhere these days.Turn on the TV or open a paper and “capitalism”
is being talked about. And not just one capitalism – so many different
types !
There’s turbo-capitalism, free market capitalism, selfish capitalism,
crony capitalism, natural capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism, Chinese
capitalism, state capitalism, and even disaster capitalism.
The fact that the media are increasingly calling a spade a spade
in terms of the actual words they use is a positive development to be
accepted. It’s good to know your enemy and it helps if you can call it
by its real name.
But that’s not to say all these different types of “capitalism”
don’t themselves sow confusion. World socialists would argue that while
the outward appearance of an economic system may vary from region to
region or over time, at the level which matters, it all comes
down to the same thing. So what is the level that matters and what does
it all come down to ?
We would argue that an economic system should be judged on how
it produces and distributes wealth to its members. All round the world
we see cast-iron evidence that – whatever the supposed form of
capitalism practiced locally – capitalism itself is a system that is
failing the vast majority.
In the more mature capitalist areas useless goods are
increasingly produced that workers have to be persuaded to buy; in
younger capitalist regions humans starve in their thousands because
their suffering is invisible to the logic of the profit system. It
makes no difference whether there is a King or a President on the
banknote, it’s still capitalism, and the banknote is the part of
the unnecessary rationing system.
So what does capitalism all come down to ? In a nutshell
capitalism is about wealth being produced for sale on a market with a
view to ensuring a profit for the owner of the capital invested in the
production process (e.g. wages). All supposed “forms” of capitalism
must comply with this rule to make profit. That profit may be partially
hidden in a nationalised industry or obscure within the workings of a
co-operative enterprise, it makes no difference. The economic system as
a whole must carry on making a profit. If it does not, then investment
stops and production stops, and individual
businesses go to the wall. For states with significant state capitalist
enterprises, the reality may be held off for some time but ultimately
that state itself may become bankrupt.
What we have then is global capitalism arranged worldwide to satisfy
the needs of the small minority who live in various degrees of luxury,
off the unearned labour of the large majority, who live in various
degrees of poverty. We do not for a second deny that in terms of
standard of living there are enormous differences between workers
globally.But that difference (caused by
centuries of unequal development across the globe) in access to wealth
is insignificant compared to the gulf between the employing class and
the employed class living literally yards away from each other, whether
in Lagos or London
So forget the various versions of capitalism. Don’t waste time trying
to work out where selfish capitalism becomes unselfish capitalism, or
where turbo capitalism stops and laissez-faire starts. Look beyond the
label: the problem lies with capitalism itself.
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Introduction
The Socialist Party
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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.
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