Wallace's Corner

A socialist perspective on today's events

Microsoft: The Anti-Trust Ruling Changes Nothing

5 April 2000

After a two year court battle U.S. federal judges issued a verdict that Microsoft Corporation (owned by Bill Gates, the richest man in the world) was acting in a monopolistic manner, blocking rivals in a takeover of the market for internet browser software and computer operating systems.

With that ruling Bill Gates saw about $12 billion (U.S.) of his personal fortune disappear. It was a mere bruise to Gates who personally estimates his net worth at $90 billion. Microsoft has revenues of $19.7 billion.

Anti-trust activists were gleeful at the ruling. Media such as Canada's national Globe and Mail applauded the decision as a necessary move to harmonize capitalism:

What everyone can see without any doubt is that the instinct of the United States to treat capitalism as if it were a cholesterol-rich circulatory system has been reaffirmed. That is, while businesses are pumping the lifeblood of economic change through a society, they also have a tendency to clog up competitive arteries.
("Ruling on Microsoft: The market rules", Globe and Mail editorial, April 4, 2000).

The next day tremors were felt as stockmarkets in technology shares plunged dramatically throwing investors into a wave of terror bemoaning their debts in purchasing over-valued stock. Once again, as in the past few years, some market analysts feared that the financial world would come crashing down about their heads. Government politicians took to the TV cameras to try and assure everyone that capitalism was safe.

While the these stories grabbed the headlines of the national dailies, buried further in the back were two other stories with more relevant news to the condition of the working class.

A recent study by independent economist Monica Townson prepared for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives states that about 2.2 million Canadian women (almost 19 per cent) are poor. It's the most in two decades. Poverty rates have hardly changed since 1970. Government policies (whether of the left-wing, liberal or conservative variety) in the anti-poverty "crusade", changes in the "social safety net" and unemployment insurance have miserably failed to make an impact.

On a larger scale, UN officials now indicate that some 16 million people living in the Horn of Africa may face starvation due to prolonged drought. In Ethiopia alone 8 million people are at risk. Thousands of refugees are migrating to towns and camps. While food is being pledged by aid services, it will not be enough to avert the hunger.

What lessons to Socialists draw from all this?

  1. That unfettered capitalism always tends to monopoly power as evidenced by the rise of Bill Gates' Microsoft corporation;
  2. That the State is the administrative body of capitalism to ensure the continued existence of capitalism to the benefit of the capitalist class as a whole. Anti-trust laws do not impede capitalism, but ensures stability of that class as evidenced by the court ruling against Microsoft;
  3. That the capitalist system is not a stable system, but one in continuous flux of boom and bust as evidenced by the panic of rising and falling stocks;
  4. That wealth in capitalist society is concentrated and controlled in fewer and fewer hands as evidenced by the few billionaires such as Bill Gates versus the millions living in poverty in advanced capitalist countries and the millions on the verge of starvation in developing ones;
  5. That reforms to the capitalist system, charity and aid are no solutions to the ills endured by the working class as evidenced by the decades of failed governmental initiatives;

We presently live in a commodified world of buy and sell, where everything is exploited for cash, for profit. All the wealth of society is created by a working class that owns and controls very little. Our destinies are tied to the movement of capital, to markets. Our dreams are not even our own. They are the dreams manufactured by corporate image, by Chrysler, Microsoft, Disney in a world geared to exploitation without end.

It is time for working people to understand that capitalism is a dismal system, an anachronism that must be shelved in favour of a system in which we as a whole control and make our own destiny, collectively, democratically. And that is what we call Socialism.

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