The Case for Socialism, Part One
By Jason Schulman • Jul 6th, 2007 • Category: TheoryBy Jason Schulman
The Essence of Capitalism
Our world one where people exist for the sake of the economy and not, as it should be, the other way around. This insane world is, above all, a capitalist world.
Capitalism doesn’t simply mean the private ownership of corporate property-”the means of production,” as socialists often say. Capitalism is an economic system based on dominance of production-for-profit. In such a system the individual, privately owned enterprise represents nothing other than a particular interest. It acts as if it were the center of the universe. It lays hold of as much means of production and raw materials as it can and employs as many workers as its resources and its sales prospects enable it to, without asking itself if these resources and this labor power might not be more useful in another field of activity. It produces as many of its particular commodity as it can dispose of on the market without asking itself if other goods might not be more useful for society. And it is even prepared to attempt to wage a “psychological war” against the whole population, through advertising, in order to convince people that they have a need for a particular commodity. The logic of capitalism is to turn everything into a commodity, into something that exists only to make a profit.
The capitalist class, which consists of the primary owners, executives and financiers of capitalist firms, appropriates the surplus of the value created by those who have to sell their labor power in order to survive-that is, the majority of the population, which is what socialists are talking about when we use the term “working class.” (If you have to work for a boss, and you lack managerial authority, then you’re in the working class.) This asymmetry of power means that while capitalists might pay workers a “living wage,” the value of this wage is always less than the value of the commodities produced by the workers’ labor, since if capital can’t make a profit it won’t employ workers. Under capitalism, the only “needs” recognized as legitimate are those that appear through a market exchange and the ability to pay (”effective demand,” as economists revealingly call it). This is so even if food is exported from famine-stricken areas or houses stand empty because they can’t be sold while thousands of people are homeless. By contrast, a rational need from a socialist standpoint is one related to guaranteeing provision of food, shelter, clothing, and access to recreation and education for all.
The upper sector of the capitalist class is the ruling class, the class with the greatest amount of power, because it’s the class that controls employment and monopolizes economic decision-making. Even when politicians that represent capital aren’t directly controlling the government, all state officials under capitalism are always constrained by the need for business confidence and continued private investment. Hence, reforming capitalism is difficult and it often can’t be done at all without mass political mobilization and social unrest. This structural inequality erodes the promise of political democracy, perhaps nowhere more obviously so than in the United States. Voting under capitalism doesn’t include the right to decide on what corporations should do, whom they employ or who gets the profits.
The inherent irrationality of capitalism, of the dictatorship of market forces, is that the object of economic growth is economic growth itself, not the satisfaction of human needs. Capitalism treats human life itself as a “production cost.” Work, the activity through which humanity appropriates its environment, is a compulsion, opposed to relaxation, to leisure, to “real” life. Production is ruler of the world; when one produces, one sacrifices one’s time during work in order to enjoy life afterwards, in a way usually disconnected from the nature of the work, which is just a means of survival. And even when the whip of the capitalist market is somewhat softened by state regulation, the system remains ruled by impersonal laws that inevitably impose themselves on the will of every individual.
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Jason Schulman is on the Editorial Boards of Democratic Left (www.dsausa.org/dl/index.html ) and New Politics (www.newpol.org).
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