Marxism, Anti-capitalism and the Mobilisation of the Political Left (Part 3)

September 24, 2010

Marxism

Over the past two articles, most of what I’ve been saying is straight out Marxism and I don’t have any beef with that. Marxs is a genius, frankly. His understanding of economic systems is dead-on and I agree what most of what he says, particularly that of anti-capitalism and the need for a more democratic distribution of power. Socialism is effectively softcore communism and I agree that socialism ought to be the future, however, I am apprehensive about socialism as a phase into communism. Maybe because I am not as “forwarded sighted” as Marx or I just can’t envision a class-less society, but I think that, at least in my lifetime, class is necessary to maintain social order. I think that Marx’s views on communism are perhaps too idealistic. It seems like he visions a utopia and personally, that’s too far forward than I have currently contemplated. Right now, I am interested in how we can stop capitalism and replace it with a system which won’t kill the planet and our own humanity. This much is relevant to me and everything that will probably happen in my life time, from then on it’s too difficult too judge.

Leading into my last point, I disagree with Marx that a revolution from the workers will be necessary to debunk capitalism. I believe that people win arguments through persuasion, not by overthrowing the discussion. Whatever happens in the future, I think the best approach is a transition from, not an upheaval of capitalism. Maybe there will be some upheaval from the workers, but you can’t just turn society on its head and rebuild from scratch, you must evolve from a base. This transition is already in motion, but for things to really get going it’s going to need mobilisation of the political left.

The Mobilisation of the Political Left

Capitalism will be defeated by the unrest of workers due to their activism against the grave consequences of modern capitalism. The greatest issues facing the world today are all due to the unrestrained free market: global warming, widening gap between rich and poor, monopolisation, depletion of natural resources, the obesity epidemic and the destruction of democracy are a handful of examples. These issues are too big for people to ignore, and with politics playing to the tune of big business, change has to occur from the ground up, so by the people. At one point, the workers will have to become fed up and revolt. There is no way we can continue to let the planet and our own human resources deplete before our own eyes.

In a world dominated by conservative politics attempting to reinforce the status quo, the left, who stand for the rights of people and the planet over profits, must mobilise. The problem with the left, however, is that they’ve been practically demonised out of existence in the public’s consciousness by the overwhelming power of the right. Frankly, media commentators (never we forget that the media is a mouthpiece for the right, in order to conserve its own interests), like, say Andrew Bolt, can’t even form proper criticisms of left-ish thinking besides the broken-record slander of being too radical, unrealistic, bad for business or simply flawed by the virtue of being “left”, of being something alternative to the free market.

People need to launch into action on these issues because the government obviously isn’t representing us when they won’t even support something as simple as gay marriages, despite the public clearly being in favour for it. People need to rally around these issues to force change. As activism and protests continue, the pressure placed on government increases, pushing it into the public agenda and then into the consideration of politicians. In just a few years, there’s been a major movement from the left regarding climate change, and now, climate change is a huge public issue. Unlike modern politics which disempowers people by choice of the “less worse” candidate, activism empowers people as the issues are those of the people. Once you get the snowball rolling, and people start realising “oh, we did this together, now we can work towards the next problem”, people can feel empowered, will act and change will occur.

So, to conclude, in order to defeat capitalism, I believe that the political left need to mobilise on the issues of our times, those consequences of the capitalist system. When mobilisation occurs through activism and pressure is placed on politicians to reform the system to meet the needs of the people, then proper discussion can begin on how to get out of this rut known as capitalism. By putting a lid on profits, and channelling the excess into public expenditure via increased taxation on big business, while at the same time, extending democracy into the workplace by allowing workers to own their production and therefore work for their profession and not for the company’s bottom line, the world will be a better place. We have some dark times ahead of us, however “the night is always darkest just before the dawn”.

Resources

Big Ideas that Changed the World – Democracy

Chris Harman – The Crisis Now

David Harvey – The Crisis Now

Arguments for Democracy – Tony Benn

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Marxism, Anti-capitalism and the Mobilisation of the Political Left (Part 2)

September 23, 2010

In Defence, But in Admitting Defeat

In defence of capitalism, the free market has brought many people out of poverty, stabilised our society and delivered us many wonderful products which have enhanced our lives. The problem, however, is that capitalism depends on growth and without it, everything goes to the shits (ie. world financial crisis). That is, when the number of people consuming/the amount that they’re consuming is not increasing or the means of production cannot be further cheapened, companies can’t make more money and therefore we have a crisis. As consumers and production are maxed out and can’t be squeezed any further, these crisis become like contractions when giving birth, they become longer, more frequent and more intense. Artificial growth, such as bailouts and economic stimulus work for a while, but they are a band aid solution as, in the end, the system needs growth through customers or cheaper production. So capitalism works and has worked for a while, and now, as resources strain, it’s beginning to choke and splutter, the future then is to witness the system spasm into its eventual death.

Aside: Conservative Politics and the Dominance of Capitalism

The last 30 years of politics have been a pivotal in securing the dominance of capitalism through conservative politics rather than reform to quell the negative impacts of capitalism. In the US, UK and Australia, the overwhelming majority of elected politicians over the past 30 years have served conservative interests vested in supporting the power structures of the corporate elite. George Bush Senior and Junior, Clinton, Thatcher, Blair, Howard have only forwarded the cause of capitalism.

The Answer

Capitalism obvious cannot and should not continue as it depends on continual growth which as we know is depleting the world of valuable resources (human and environmental). What we need is a new economic system, one that shifts the motivation of corporations away from profits and redirects them towards human need. We have the capacity to solve all the worlds problems if the systems of economics support it.

I believe in that socialism can break the profit motive and focus on human need through democratic ownership of production and taxation against greed.

Worker’s Owning the Means of Production

It’s funny how we say that companies are made up of people, when in fact its only a relative handful of people who are involved in the decision making. I don’t believe in centralised power. I think that the more people involved in making an important decision, the better the decision as different people will run into different ideas. I therefore think that it is right for workers to own the means of production. That is, each worker has a stake in the production side of the company. So workers therefore make up a greater balance of power and have more influence in the company (as the company is dependent on production). Then when it comes to making decisions the constituents go to the polls and vote. The workers, being professionals in what they do, understand their job more than anyone else and therefore they should have more right in influencing the workplace. As a teacher, I know what I need in the classroom, what I’m not getting and how some changes can help me teach better.

Now, I am not an advocate for communism, so unlike Mao and others, I’m quite aware that workers are workers, they’re not bosses, managers or CEOs, they don’t know how to run companies and nor should they, it’s not their job. (Animal Farm is a good metaphor for that). So, I believe that workers should have full entitlement over what matters to them and that’s the work place. Business, management, advertising and so forth ought to be handled by the people who understand it and they should have sufficient control over it. A hierarchy should be maintained, since some people choose to work harder than others and deserve that entitlement.

When workers own what they produce, a class structure is maintained, the right people are doing the right work and the balance between workers and bosses is fair, the workplace suddenly becomes more democratic.

(So much hinges on class and balancing of power, a dilemma of a more democratic work place which does not want to allow workers to overthrow bosses or bosses to rule over workers. However, despite the complexities of forming such systems, so long as workers control production, quality of life and the production will become the new motivation.)

Taxation on Corporate Capitalism

Pretty self-explanatory. By tightening the tax rate of corporations as profit increases, the motivation to earn more profits decreases, since once an upper limit is reach, all of the money goes to the public. High taxes on big business kill any incentive to make more money than is deemed necessary to run a business.

So by workers exercising more democratic control over the work they do and by limiting the amount of money a company can earn, the profit motive is replaced by a motivation to improve production. This would lead to more innovative and creative products, as opposed to following whatever makes money. It would also ensure that workers are happier since they have more control over their work and therefore their destinies.

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Marxism, Anti-capitalism and the Mobilisation of the Political Left (Part 1)

September 22, 2010

Every now and then I go on information binges in order to satisfy one of two needs. The first need is the need for research and fact-checking in preparation for an article. The second need is to meet my curiosity and what has really made me curious over the past year has been politics. Having run the gamut of my political curiosity, I’d like to present three articles covering my overall views on politics and the future and how I came to form these opinions. Please enjoy, key references can be found in the final article.

There’s been a series of movies which have kick-started my interest in politics, in order of importance they are The Corporation (full public download), Capitalism: A Love Story, Food Inc and Sicko. Each of these movies, either directly or implicitly links the capitalist system to injustices of human rights, health, food and the environment. I won’t go into each movie’s arguments—you’re better off watching them yourself—however, the shared point is the same.

Capitalism

Capitalism, having a free market where any company can enter the market place and secure capital (the measure of profit, be it money, land etc), is a naturally competitive system. That is, for a company to retain its position in the market it needs to be competitive, otherwise other companies will overtake it and swallow up their market share. The principle is therefore that in order to hold onto valuable market share, companies will work to produce continually better product. This is only an ideal. The easiest and most widely used technique to be competitive is to cheapen the means of production.

Think of the big companies of today, they all got their starts through cheapening the way their products were made. McDonalds turned the restaurant into an assembly line by having one personal repeat one menial task over and over, just like a factory. What this means is that McDonalds can produce more burgers, more cheaply and quicker than anyone else. The job requires no real expertise, so finding replacement workers is relatively easy. McDonald’s cracked the code for riding the free market almost 90 years ago, no wonder they have so much power today.

Of course, by cheapening production, there are detrimental side effects, here are some simple examples:

Humanity – workers participating in menial pointless tasks which make the best out of the system, but fail to serve the creative talents and humanity of the workers
Food – the cheapest to produce materials in food (salt and sugar) have obvious negative effects on health
Environment – having an environmentally friendly workplace costs money, it’s better to not care
Ideological – a competitive economic system breeds competitive culture, rather than a co-operative one

And the effects that these have on society are significant:

Humanity – workers looking forward to weekend and loathing work, a search and abuse of escapism (alcohol, drugs, video games, internet)
Food – the obesity epidemic, diabetes
Environment – the current environmental crisis
Ideological – rifts between cultural groups of people, racism

The heart of all this is the profit motive. The market is free, everyone is fighting to get their share and then keep hold of it, therefore if profit cannot continually be maintained, companies face extinction. Profit is therefore the chief motivation for all companies (if it wasn’t they’d die) and it takes priority over everything else (see examples above) which is to the detriment of the workers and the planet.

The other issue is that those with power (companies like Maccas who cracked the code early on) will always work to maintain their power. This is where big business spills into the political realm through lobbyists etc in order to serve their own needs and secure growth. That is, big business honchos enter politics to change policy to meet their needs.

This is why only the rich can eat healthy in America, since government legislation supports the production of salts, sugars and corn (the latter for making animals fat beyond their capacity) which make them cheap options in the supermarket as opposed to fruits and meat. CEOs from food corporations enter politics where they can change policy to serve their vested interests, such as the modification of legislation to benefit and facilitate the production of cheaper food. Let us not even begin to discuss how media corporations and banks skew politics and break democracy through their efforts to keep us consuming and thereby providing growth.

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