If\n you were to compile a list of essential workers that your community has\n been reliant on during the Coronavirus crisis, you\u2019d very likely not \ninclude billionaires, CEOs, businessmen, bankers, economists or the \nroyals or that class of people who live off rent, interest and profit. \nYour list would include workers we encounter every day and whose \noccupations we had hitherto taken for granted. Your list would \nundoubtedly include medical workers, shop staff, \u2018bin men\u2019, delivery \ndrivers, those working in power plants or working in front-line \nmaintenance of the technology society needs etc. In short, you\u2019d cite \nmembers of the class that sells its physical and mental abilities for a \nwage or salary in order to live \u2013 the working class. In her recent \naddress to the nation about the coronavirus crisis, the queen began her \nbrief message with a recognition of the importance of such workers to a \nsociety in crisis and, unwittingly, revealing the utter uselessness of \nher own institution to society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We keep the world going<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This\n class, the working class, runs the world and it is important to grasp \nthis fact. It is we, members of this majority class, who build the \ncities and railway networks, the bridges and roads, the docks and \nairports. It is we who staff the hospitals and schools, who empty the \nbins and go down the sewers. It is we who fish the oceans and tend the \nforests, work the farm and till the land and plantations. It is we, the \nworking class, who produce everything society needs from a pin to an \noil-rig, who provide all of its services. If we can do all of this off \nour own bats, then assuredly, we can continue to do so without a \nprofit-greedy minority watching over us and, more, in our own interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To\n be sure, the ruling class of capitalists and their executive, the \ngovernments of the world, have no monopoly on our skills and abilities. \nThese belong to us. Moreover, it is we who are responsible for the \ninventions that have benefited humanity and the improvements in \nproductive techniques. Most inventions and improvements are the result \nof those who do the actual work, thinking up easier and faster ways of \ncompleting a task, the result of ideas being passed down from generation\n to generation, each one improving the techniques of the previous. If \nthose who work have given the world so much, in the past say 2,000 \nyears, then how much more are we capable of providing in a world devoid \nof the artificial constraints of profit? Needless to say, any vaccine \nfor the coronavirus will be the result of the hard work of \nsalary-earning scientists, not some fat-arsed apologist for the profit \nsystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\n is easy to cite the advantages of capitalism over previous economic \nsystems. Many people believe that capitalism, though not perfect, is the\n only system possible. One thing is certain, though \u2013 if we follow the \ncapitalist trajectory, we\u2019re in for some pretty troublesome times. \nCapitalism has undoubtedly raised the productive potential of humanity \nand it is now quite possible to provide a comfortable standard of living\n for every human on the planet. But, to reiterate, capitalism now stands\n as a barrier to the full and improved use of the world\u2019s productive and\n distributive forces. In a world of potential abundance, the unceasing \nquest for profit imposes on our global society widespread artificial \nscarcity. Hundreds of millions of humans are consigned to a life of \nabject poverty, whilst the majority live lives filled with uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our\n ability to imagine has brought us so very far, from the days when our \nancestors chipped away at flint to produce the first tools, to the \nsending of scientific probes to the surface of Mars, the setting up of \nthe worldwide web, and the mapping of the human genome. Is it really \nsuch a huge leap of the imagination to now envisage a social system that\n can take over from the present capitalist order of things? Is it just \ntoo daring to imagine humans consigning poverty, disease, hunger and war\n to some pre-historic age?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do\n we really need leaders deciding our lives for us, when collectively we \nare far more capable of deciding what is best? Do we really need \ngovernments administering our lives when what is really needed is the \nadministration of the things we need to live in peace and security? Must\n every decision made by our elites be first of all weighed on the scales\n of profit, tilted always in their favour?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can\u2019t be reformed to work for us<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One\n thing is certain: capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the\n world\u2019s suffering billions, because reform does not address the basic \ncontradiction between profit and need. The world\u2019s leaders cannot be \ndepended upon because they can only ever act as the executive of \ncorporate capitalism. The expansion of democracy, while welcome, serves \nlittle function if all candidates at election time can only offer \nvariations on the same basic set of policies that keep capitalism in the\n ascendancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capitalism\n must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive, if the planet is to\n survive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be \nglobal and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase \nborders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false \nconcepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with \nit buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this we need to \nestablish a different global social system \u2013 a society in which there is\n common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth\u2019s natural and\n industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to \nlive in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other \nreason than that they are needed \u2013 socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\n is now no utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in a world without \nwaste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the \nbenefits of civilisation. That much is assured. We certainly have the \nscience, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the \nwill \u2013 the global desire for change that can make that next great \nhistorical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own\n destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the \nartificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own \ninterests. And how soon this happens depends upon us all \u2013 each and \nevery one of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of\n course, many, even our detractors, will agree that such a socialist \nworld would be a beautiful place to live in, but that \u2018human nature\u2019 \nwill always be a barrier to its establishment, because humans are \u2018by \nnature\u2019 greedy, selfish and aggressive. It quickly becomes apparent that\n what they are describing is not human nature as such, but various \ntraits of human behaviour exhibited under particular circumstances. \nSocialists maintain that human behaviour is shaped by the kind of system\n people are brought up to live in \u2013 that it is not our consciousness \nthat determines our social existence but our social existence which \ndetermines our consciousness. Nobody is born a racist or a patriot, a \nbigot or with a belief in gods. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a\n rapist, and our alleged greed for money is no more a function of the \nnatural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In general, the ideas the common people hold have been acquired \nsecond-hand, passed down from the ruling class above us. This is because\n the class which owns and controls the productive process also controls \nthe intellectual life process in general. Any anti-social behaviour is \nlikewise influenced by our social circumstances at any given time, i.e.,\n when we are poor, depressed, afraid, lonely, angry and frustrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In most cases, those who produce the world\u2019s wealth (some 95 percent \nof the world\u2019s population) have had that second-rate education that \nmakes free thought difficult \u2013 an upbringing that conditions us to \naccept without question the ideas of our betters and superiors. Indeed, \nthe education system is geared to perpetuate the rule of an elite, \ninsofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with \nthe status quo. Children may well recite that 8 times 8 equals 64, but \nhow many will ask about the cause of wars or query the destruction of \nfood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Socialists hold that because we can adapt our behaviour, the desire \nto cooperate should not be viewed as irrational. We hold that humans \nare, \u2018by nature\u2019, cooperative and that we work best when faced with the \nworst and that our humanity shines through when the odds are stacked \nagainst us. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood \nand organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of\n people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work \u2013 \nall of this without financial incentive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When\n the call went out for volunteers to help the NHS during the current \ncrisis, over 700,000 offered their services. Elsewhere, in Britain and \naround the world, countless millions have stepped forward to help the \nmost vulnerable in society and in every way imaginable and with social \nmedia flooded with countless acts of selflessness and solidarity and, \noften, carried out by those with the least to give. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Today,\n world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction, if not \nthrough existential threats to the planet through nuclear war and \nclimate change, then through the threat of pandemics which lays bare the\n utter incompetence of the profit system when faced with crisis. The \nreason this obnoxious system survives is because we have been \nconditioned to accept it, but we are not born to perpetuate it. Rest \nassured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Normality is not normal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\n is perhaps \u2018natural\u2019 for people to want to return to something \nresembling a pre-Covid-19 world, to get \u2018back to normal\u2019, for family and\n friends to meet up and continue as before, to love and to care and to \nshare, which is the essence of human nature. But let\u2019s remember what \nthis normality really means for many of us. It is a world where every \naspect of life is subordinated to the worst excesses of the drive to \nmake profit on the part of a minority owning and controlling class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Normality\n is a world where almost 800 million are chronically malnourished and \nwhere 25,000 children die each day from hunger or related illness. At \nthe same time, the governments of the world order the destruction of \nvast mountains of food to keep prices high, stockpile food until it rots\n and pay farmers to take land out of production because the laws of \nsupply and demand insist that overproduction is bad for the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Normality is a world where some 150 million of our fellow humans are \nhomeless, many sleeping rough on the streets of the world\u2019s cities, with\n 1.6 billion lacking adequate housing, yet there is no shortage of \nvacant buildings \u2013 countless millions of acres of empty living space in \nthe major cities of the world \u2013 and certainly no shortage of building \nmaterials or skilled builders and craftsmen presently out of work. \nAgain, we find that the market not only dictates who does and does not \neat, but who does and does not sleep comfortably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Normality is a planet on which over one billion of our fellow humans \nhave no access to clean water and 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation, \nand the growing scarcity of fresh water is calculated to spark many wars\n across the globe in the coming decades. Meanwhile, the technology \nexists to desalinate millions of gallons each day and to set up \ntreatment plants capable of cleaning the dirtiest water. However, there \nis not much profit in selling something which covers five-sixths of the \nplanet, so the investment never comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While millions of children die each year of curable diseases and \nwhile we still await breakthroughs in medical science that can cure the \npresently incurable, we find there are literally thousands of scientists\n around the world employed in weapons programmes \u2013 paid by their \nrespective governments to devise new methods of murder, including germ \nwarfare, the deaths from which could dwarf those of the current \npandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The list is as endless as it is insane. At every turn we find \nevidence of how capitalism destroys us physically and mentally, \nretarding real human development. At every turn we come smack up against\n the iron law of our age \u2013 \u2018can\u2019t pay, can\u2019t have\u2019. At every turn we \nfind capitalism running wild like a rabid dog, infecting all it comes \ninto contact with, a pandemic that is rarely recognised for what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If\n we return to \u2018normality\u2019, let\u2019s hope it is with an increased awareness \nof our own worth, capabilities and potential, a recognition that it\u2019s \nthe workers who run the world, no matter how seemingly menial the job, \nand how interdependent we are on each other. Whilst our leaders, in the \nface of crisis, resemble more each day the character in Edvard Munch\u2019s The Scream, <\/em>let us not lose sight of the fact it was the workers who kept society going and rid the world of Covid-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n JOHN BISSETT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From Socialist Standard<\/em> No-1389-May-2020<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n