October 2022

People often defend the capitalist market system on the grounds that the ‘price mechanism’ is the most effective and realistic way to regulate production and consumption. But because price only reflects paying potential, not actual need, this often leads to bonkers outcomes, like milk being poured down drains.

Right now there’s a global energy crisis, due to the Iran war. But UK electricity providers are telling consumers to use more power, not less. Why? Because the government expects a glut of renewable power this summer, and will have to shut down solar and wind plants, and reimburse providers for lost revenue via expensive ‘constraint payments’ (Guardian, 14 April).

Socialism, where everything is free, would be so much simpler!

Most crude oil (88%) refined in the US comes from fields in the US, Canada and Mexico, all a long way from the chaos currently being wreaked by the latest Middle East war. Yet average retail petrol prices in the US have risen by over 30% since January.

The reason? Along with every other major raw material, crude oil is subject to a world market price, so a major disruption to supplies, be it caused by war or an economic bottleneck, will have a global effect.

The lesson? National governments (however big the country!) have little influence over the world market. In particular, any politician who promises to control prices is lying through their teeth.

There are over 13 million people in the UK living in relative poverty (which means in a household with income below 60% of the average income). This includes four million children and nearly 1.7 million pensioners. The figures are for the year to March last year, during which the total rose by half a million.

The Work and Pensions Minister described the situation as ‘wholly unacceptable’. This is right of course, but, like all politicians, she has no understanding of the causes. It’s due to capitalism, a system which, in the midst of potential abundance, relies on poverty and inequality as a means of coercing people into wage labour and hence exploitation.

Referring to employment as wage slavery is sometimes seen as an exaggeration. After all people who work for a wage or salary are not owned by other individuals and their labour is not enforced by law and violence.

Capitalism is seen as providing freedom. But is it anything more than an appearance of freedom? While you are free to walk away from your job, you can’t walk away from the need to survive, the need for food and shelter. That’s what makes you a wage slave. The system holds you in place not with chains of iron as in the past but with chains of necessity. Only the cooperative, moneyless, free access society that socialists advocate will remove those chains.