The crisis: an
open letter to
trade unionists
Fellow Workers,
Capitalism is once again in the middle of one of its periodic
economic crises, this time a bigger one than in the recent past. And,
as usual, we are the victims. This crisis has been caused, as all
capitalist crises are, by the uncontrollable pursuit of profits that
drives the capitalist economy.
With all capitalist businesses chasing profits, one sector of the
economy inevitably overexpands in relation to what it can sell. This
time it was the US house-building sector. Its overexpansion had an
immediate effect on the banking sector which, in its chase after
profits, had been engaging in dubious practices. This in turn had a
knock-on effect on other sectors and is still working its way through
the economy. Which is where we are today, with closed factories and
rising unemployment alongside unmet needs.
Unemployment in Britain is expected to reach 3 million, maybe
even before the end of the year. Faced with this economic tsunami, the
government has been helpless. They have bailed-out the banks but, apart
from that, all they have done is to print more money, but this won’t
get production going again. It will just stoke up inflation for later.
It looks as if this Labour government will end like all previous Labour
governments – leaving office with more unemployed than when they took
over. So showing once again that governments can’t control the way
capitalism works.
The capitalist economy will eventually recover but of its own
accord, not because of anything the government might do. And not
without first putting the working class through many more months of
additional misery.
Recovery will only come when the rate of profit is restored.
Which employers are actively seeking to bring about by imposing wage
freezes, even wage cuts, watering down pension schemes, and anything
else they can think of to reduce their labour costs. Some have even had
the cheek to ask their employees to work for nothing. Meanwhile both
the Labour government and the Tory opposition are insisting that public
sector workers will have to suffer too.
Workers should fight back. But the crisis has shifted the balance
of forces even more in favour of employers. In the best of
circumstances, when production is expanding and there is a labour
shortage, unions have to work hard to get wages to go up a bit more
than inflation. Now, with falling production and rising unemployment,
unions can only try to put a brake on the downward slide, only try to
stop things getting worse, .
Ask yourself this: Why should we have to fight the same battles
over and over again? Is this the only future? Yes, within the context
of the capitalist system of production for profit, it is. But
capitalism is not the only possible way of organising the production
and distribution of the things we need. There is an alternative.
Workers can and should organise to end capitalism which forces
them to work for wages to live. We should organise to replace it with a
system based on producing the things we need simply because we need
them and not to make a profit. Production for use, not production for
profit. But we can’t control what is produced unless we also own and
control the means of production. In short, we need socialism, the
common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
To achieve this, workers need to take political action. We need
to organise not just in trade unions but also as a political party with
socialism as its aim and policy. This the Labour Party never was, even
though it was originally set up and financed by the trade unions. Its
policy was to work for reforms within capitalism. Labour governments
did bring in some reforms, but they were never able to make capitalism
work in the interests of workers. That's just not possible. All of them
ended up merely managing capitalism and in the only way it can ever be
– as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off
profits extracted from the unpaid labour of wage and salary workers.
Instead of Labour changing capitalism, capitalism has changed Labour
into the miserable band of self-seeking apologists for capitalism that
everybody today can see they are. It’s high time the unions stop
financing this capitalist party, as some have already done.
Some are suggesting that, now that existing Labour Party has
failed, the unions should set up a new Labour party. That would be a
mistake. Labour reformism has failed once and it would fail again. So,
let’s not go down that road a second time. Let’s learn the lesson of
history that no government can manipulate capitalism to ensure
permanent full employment and steadily rising wages, the TUC’s illusion
(and not only theirs) of a radiant future. Which, even if possible,
would still leave the exploitation of wage-labour for profit on which
capitalism is based.
No, what is needed is, as we said, a party with socialism as its
aim and policy, an instrument workers can use to win control of
political power with a view to ending capitalist ownership and the
wages system and to bring in the common ownership of the means of
production so that these can be used to meet people’s needs in
accordance with the principle “from each according to their abilities,
to each according to their needs”.
Socialism is still the hope of humanity. Let’s work for it.
The Executive Committee,
The Socialist Party of Great Britain.
August 2009
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