Firstly let's not be ashamed to say what we really mean. Economics and politics which ultimately govern our lives need to be understood in the context of history and experience.
Marx and Engels opened their Communist Manifesto in 1848 with the famous sentence : ‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism’. They ended it with “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. In it the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite”.
Is that relevant today?
The manifesto accused the rulers of society (the bourgeosie) of creating a society in which private property exists for only one tenth of the members of that society and “its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths”. In 1997, the year New Labour came to power, Britain's richest 1,000 citizens were worth a combined wealth of £98 billion.
Ten years later those same richest 1,000 were worth a combined wealth of just over £300bn - a staggering 204 per cent increase.
The amount of wealth in the hands of the richest 1 per cent of the population is higher than at any time since before the second world war and one per cent of the workforce currently earns 17 times more than the bottom 10 per cent.
Capitalist society (which is not simply a term of abuse but the actual economic system we live in) is based on the rule of private property, on the exploitation and oppression of workers by a handful of finance owners in whose hands all the wealth created is concentrated. The current recession and income inequality in this country is not therefore an act of nature but symptomatic of the fact that the economic system we live in is actually incapable of controlling the lust of greed it has unleashed.
As Marx articulated the main conflict in society is between the social nature of production and the private ownership of the means of production, i.e. the productive forces of all of us as workers and the restrictive private property and finance relations that exist between the two. Explaining the nature of capital Marx ridiculed the myth that it came from thrifty men who “saved” from their meagre livings. In fact capital accumulation came from direct open robbery. Huge quantities of gold, silver and other riches were looted from the Americas, India and vast fortunes were made from Africa as its people were forced into slavery. That history is vitally important to understand today.
In Britain a long series of Acts legalised the theft of common land from the peasantry, land which was then enclosed by even bigger landowners for more profitable capitalist development of agriculture. By driving the workers from their soil and ensuring the separation of labourers from the means of production, an army of landless ‘free’ workers, (then called the proletariat), was created. This formed the basis of the society and system we live in today.
What Marx understood was that as capitalism grows production would be based on larger units, more seemingly efficient organisation and more intensive exploitation of workers. People were now ‘free’ to have jobs on condition that over and above the wages they were paid, they provided a surplus value to be kept by the owners of the means of production – this ‘indirect robbery’ is the source of all profit – whether rent , interest or from the sale of goods.
The owners of capital who usurped and monopolised all the advantages of this economic process then created the imperialist empire and the scramble for subjugation of ‘lower ’ races by ‘higher ’ones. Imperialism is simply the ugly monster spawned and bred by the economic system. The policies of imperialism serve the needs of the monopoly who control power and wealth in society. It certainly does not serve humanity by creating mass unemployment, poverty and daily misery for millions of human beings.
Driven by its gluttonous greed for private profits, capitalism, through imperialism, has fattened itself on the ruthless exploitation of masses of people in all continents. Its crimes are endless and it has left a long and bloody trail culminating in the war for oil today in Iraq. Now three power blocs are engaged in rivalry and an intensifying struggle for resources around the world.
Socialists hold the view that economic system and society should be run for the peoples benefit not for the private profit of capitalists. The ‘commanding heights‘ of the economy, as they were known ,would be publicly owned in order that production and distribution could be socially controlled and planned. Only that would guarantee everyone had the right to a job, a home, education, health care, decent social care, benefits and a safe environment.
There would be no right to exploit and oppress others. Freedom would be seen as the people collectively controlling their society and environment to develop its abilities and interests in the benefit of all.
Is that or was that, really a pipe dream?
Well if history has taught us anything it is that such a society will never be achieved by the moralising liberalism of social democracy aimed at humanising a system that actually cares little for working men and women.
This fact is illustrated clearly by the International Labour Organization's (ILO) recent proclamation that there will be a total of 239 million people unemployed throughout the world by the end of 2009. The ILO says that a total of 59 million people have joined the ranks of the unemployed since the beginning of the financial meltdown in 2007. That is a worldwide scandal but what do we do about it?
For all the warm words of ethical socialism New Labour has not done a thing to end the casino economy of capitalism dominated by the greed creed. The upcoming election will not either. The MP’s we elect though do make decisions that will seriously affect all our lives. These people shape the laws that govern us, the taxes we pay and the public services our government provides. How can we ensure the questions that matter to our members and families are addressed not only in the froth of a campaign but consistently and comprehensively over time without alienating members or boring them.
In the context of these changing political times and UNISON's current review of political fund effectivenesss it would be interesting to hear how UNISON Active readers believe we can make ‘political education‘ a meaningful concept as opposed to an empty slogan?