by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
As the late Bob Crow said: “I didn't become a trade unionist just to tweak capitalism. I want to smash capitalism and every rotten thing it stands for.”
When parties like the Social Democrats and the British Labour Party talk about making capitalism more human, giving capitalism a social conscience, and such, this is absolute and utter baloney. It cannot be done.
Capitalism carries in itself war in the same way as the clouds the rain. That said unless capitalism is smashed once and for all the threat of war will always hang over us all much like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.
But that is but one problem with capitalism. Capitalism also carries within itself the exploitation of both man and Nature, of the entire Planet, and everyone who is not totally blinded by the smoke and mirrors of the capitalist politicians should by now have realized that.
As far as capitalism and the capitalists, including the majority of politicians in the capitalist world, are concerned the economy must keep on growing and growing. This, however, is simply not possible on a finite Planet such is the Earth.
Capitalism cannot be reformed, and neither can the British Labour Party, and we also cannot make peace with capitalism. It does not work. Nor is it possible to give capitalism a human face. Capitalism and human face just does not compute in the same way as capitalism and peace does not; they are diametrically opposed to each other.
Capitalism needs war, an almost perpetual state of war, whether cold or hot, with perceived enemies, in order to function and needs the implied threat of military force as an extension of diplomacy in order to “open up markets” and to get access to raw materials. Or does anyone really believe that the wars that we have seen, especially after 1945, and especially those in which the capitalist nations have been involved, with the USA and Britain often in the forefront, have anything to do with freedom, democracy and human rights? Even more so those that came after Vietnam and after 9/11. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., and the issue over the Ukraine, are all about oil and other natural resources, primarily for the US corporations.
In other cases it is about Lebensraum, as the Nazis called it, that is to say expansion of country, such as in the case of the Zionist entity in Palestine where a Greater Israel is being envisaged and also many proxy-wars are being created to further that aim.
Capitalism also equals imperialism in that capitalist imperialism tries to carve out a sphere of influence – they don't like to call it empire – for its goods and services as well as from where to get raw materials on the cheap.
However, American corporatism and capitalism more or less openly is trying to achieve world domination by means of military might and that is but another reason why it is not possible to make peace with capitalism.
Capitalism is not the friend of the working people, the working class, but the enemy and all those that are wage slaves, and slaves to and of the state, must come to realize this if they really want to see and improvement of their lives and an improvement in standards of the Planet's condition.
Replacing “free-market” capitalism with state capitalism, as was done under Stalin, is not an answer either. Only when the means of production are truly in the hands of the workers (and not the state) will wage slavery and exploitation of man by man or man by state come to an end and so will wars.
© 2016
