A Working Class Future Depends on Getting Rid of Capitalism Not Just the Tories

Capitalism is in the middle of the biggest crisis it has seen since the 1930s. As well as facing economic bankruptcy there is no better evidence of its political bankruptcy than the carefully orchestrated party conferences that pass most of us by every autumn. Ed Miliband treated us to the bullshit of “sustainable capitalism”. Now we have the prospect of therichest and most complacent party of all issuing sound bites to “assure the markets” that UK debt is under control whilst pretending that this key issue for capitalist profit-making is what the rest of us should be worried about. The crisis that is out in the open everywhere has been building up for decades. Under governments of the left and right, all around the globe, the working class is becoming ever less well off, with more and more of us falling into the stagnant pit of low wages, unemployment, poverty and despair. Meanwhile the wealth of the elite doubles and triples, protected by government bailouts we are supposed to pay. But the drunken orgy of the rich has ended in a global disaster of a colossal scale, with even the governing politicians admitting that “we now face a crisis that is the economic equivalent of war” (Vince Cable). Trouble is, it’s we who weren’t invited to the party who are expected to suffer the hangover. About a million young people are rotting without a job, education or prospect of a future. Child poverty is massively up. In the UK Save the Children says the number living in “extreme poverty” due to the increased cost of fuel, food and energy has risen to 1.6 million, with 290,000 in London alone.

At the same time, youths are rioting out of frustration as the working class here and everywhere are ever more cheated in terms of wages, benefits, healthcare, education and the whole gamut of social services. Yet the rich have never been better off. Up to date figures that embarrass the well-off tend to be hard to come by, but in the UK: the poorest tenth of the population now have, between them, 1.3% ofthe country’s total income and the second poorest tenth have 4%. In contrast, the richest tenth have 31% and the second richest tenth have 15%. The income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined. poverty.org.uk.

This is before the present ferocious cuts which will only make things worse, no matter what the political lackeys of the rich may try to spin to pretend that we are all in this together.

Parliament is democracy for the rich

Our pain and their gross wealth and power, a social disaster which can only deepen, depends on us the working class accepting that the system has to be saved and if it means sacrificing our own and future generations, so be it. It’s not only the Tories who stand for capitalist profit-making. All the parliamentary parties subscribe to the capitalist system that inevitably produced this disaster; they all prescribe the same dose of mass misery, however packaged, to preserve the system whereby a wealthy few live on the basis of the value created by wage labour. Judging by the growing number of people who don’t vote at all in general elections we don’t need to spell out the fact that voting in a set of politicians for four or five years while the system of money-making and profit-chasing relentlessly carries on does not bring any substantial change. It is ironical then that many who consider themselves to be anti-capitalist and who are keen to see a working class fightback should limit their message to getting the present Government out. Without saying so, there is still the tired old belief that somehow Labour is “better” than the Tories. And if it isn’t, at least we can put pressure on Labour through the unions. There is absolutely nothing anti-capitalist about this. The unions are an integral part of the capitalist set-up and it is not surprising that their membership has declined dramatically in recent years because their role is to put the lid on the class struggle whenever they can and prevent it from posing anything like a threat to the system.

The Alternative is Anti-Capitalism

Long story short, it’s been getting worse for years. The entire system is guilty and whichever party you vote for will be obliged to inflict anti- working class policies because they are all capitalist parties. "Tories Out" only means "Labour In".

There is an alternative. Capitalism must be put down. It’s the only humane thing to do. It cannot be done through Unions and Parliament. The need to forge our own weapons of struggle is growing urgently necessary. In the process the basis for a higher form of democracy, workers’ democracy based on mass assemblies with instantly re-callable delegates,will show there is an alternative to capitalist parliaments. Unlike a capitalist election this will not happen overnight. In the long run we have to create a political movement to argue inside the workers’ assemblies for the overthrow of capitalism. This can never be done by a parliamentary party. Only a political organisation fighting for the communist programme can point the way towards a new world order. A world where money and the profits system no longer exists so no-one can enrich themselves from the labour of others, where hunger and poverty no longer exist because everyone takes part in directly deciding on the needs of the world community of “freely associated producers”.