http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/09/30/britain-socialism-back/
Britain: Socialism is back!
Published On September 30, 2015 | By Hannah Sell | World Events
We can end cuts, crisis and capitalism
Hannah Sell is the deputy general secretary of the Socialist Party, the
sister party of Socialist Alternative in England & Wales
Socialism is back. For decades the pro-capitalist establishment
politicians that dominate parliament have told us that socialism is
irrelevant and outmoded.
Now the official leader of the opposition has been elected by a
landslide saying he is fighting for a society where: “We each care for
all, everyone caring for everybody else – I think it’s called socialism.”
The Blairite politicians that still dominate Labour’s machine, backed by
all the forces of the capitalistestablishment, are doing their best to
extinguish the spark of socialist ideas that has been lit but, whatever
happens in the Labour Party, they will fail.
Many of the young people who have been enthused by Jeremy Corbyn’s
election are anti-austerity, and perhaps anti-capitalist but not yet
socialist. But their first taste of socialist ideas are – far from being
irrelevant and outmoded – new and exciting to them.
Jeremy Corbyn
As one young attendee at a Corbyn election rally put it in the Guardian:
“People say he is an old left winger or an old Marxist but to my
generation his ideas seem quite new.”
Her generation has been failed by capitalism. Britain today is a country
where a baby is allowed to die living homeless with his parents in a car
because they had been evicted from one property and could not afford the
extortionate deposit for another. It is a country where more than a
million people are forced to use food banks to feed themselves and their
families.
It is a country where young people are saddled with a life time of debt
if they go to university, have no prospect of secure or affordable
housing, and are largely consigned to low paid, insecure work.
Anti-austerity
It is the growing rebellion at this endless austeritywhich has led to
both Jeremy Corbyn’s election and the search for an alternative to
capitalism. If you look up ’capitalism’ in the Collins English
Dictionary it suggests you compare it with the alternative – ’socialism’.
Socialist ideas have been developed over centuries in the course of
humanity’s fight for a better life. Today they remain the only viable
alternative in an increasingly unstable and brutal, capitalist world. It
is this reality that ensures that socialism is not a spent force but the
wave of the future.
Britain is a rich country. During four weeks of Jeremy Corbyn’s election
campaign alone the richest 1,000 people in Britain – with a combined
wealth of £547 billion – became £2.3 billion richer.
That £2.3 billion is enough to pay the grocery bills of all users of
foodbanks for at least two years. The problem in Britain is not a lack
of wealth, but the concentration of that wealth in a tiny number of hands.
This is also true globally; according to Oxfam the richest 85 people on
the planet – a double decker bus full – have the same amount of wealth
as the poorest half of the world’s population.
Super-rich
It is not much to expect a job with a living wage, a secure and
high-quality home, and a dignified retirement with a living income. Yet
in 21st century Britain these are becoming unobtainable luxuries for
millions.
The obstacle to achieving these modest aspirations is capitalism: a
system that puts the production of profit for the few – the millionaire
and billionaire capitalist owners of industry and the resources of
society – before the social needs of the majority – the multi-billion
poor and working class throughout the world.
Capitalism is an economic system which has the exploitation of the
working class at its heart. Profit, which provides its driving force is,
as Karl Marx – the founder of scientific socialism – explained over 150
years ago, “the unpaid labour of the working class”. From this flows all
the inequalities of capitalism.
In 2008 capitalism plunged into its worst crisis since the 1930s, which
is still ongoing. The crisis began in the finance and banking sector.
Yet the bankers in Britain have received £80 billion in bonuses since 2008.
Meanwhile, in one of the biggest con-tricks in history the lie was
systematically spread that the crisis was caused by the public sector
and that the only solution was privatisation, cuts and austerity. By
coincidence the cuts in public spending so far implemented are around
£80 billion.
Tories
The economic crisis is being used by the Tories, on behalf of the
capitalist class, to pursue a scorched earth policy against all of the
historical gains of working class people – the elements of socialism if
you like – that remain; the NHS, the right to claim benefits if you are
in need, pensions, the existence of council and social housing and so
on. This is an attempt to turn back the wheel of history to the 1930s,
or even to the Victorian era.
Despite mass opposition – including a public sector general strike in
2011 – they have so far gotten away with the misery of endless
austerity. As the Socialist Party has pointed out, however, in doing so
they have stored up enormous anger which would, when it found an outlet,
become a powerful movement against austerity.
In Scotland this was demonstrated in the independence referendum, in
England it has begun to find a voice in Jeremy Corbyn’s election.
The capitalist class, however, are desperate to crush, or if that isn’t
possible in the short term, to imprison and cow the anti-austerity
movement that has begun. To avoid this requires mobilising a movement
which stands firmly for the anti-austerity policies on which Corbyn was
elected such as nationalisation of rail and the energy companies, a £10
an hour minimum wage, free education, council house building, and repeal
of the anti-union laws.
Wealth
It is clear that even these very modest and limited demands are an
outrage to the capitalist class, who will fight tooth and nail against
any policy which transfers even a small amount of wealth from their
pockets into the pockets of the working and middle classes.
Hence the hysterical indignation at the supposedly ’inflation causing’
proposal for ’Peoples Quantative Easing’ (QE); whereas QE for the banks
was considered a ’sensible’ and ’rational’ policy. If the QE carried out
so far had been for the people rather than the banks every family in
Britain would have had an extra £24,000; this is what is outrageous to
big business!
The opposition of the capitalist class to reforms which are in the
interests of the majority is not new; it has been the case with every
gain our forebears made, from the right to strike to the NHS. History
has repeatedly shown that we will never push society forward by
attempting to reach a ’reasonable compromise’ with the 1%, but only by
standing firm and mobilising a mass movement in support of our just and
reasonable demands.
It is a mistake, for example, for Jeremy Corbyn to have limited his
proposal for renationalisation of the railways – supported by 72% of the
population – to a very gradual nationalisation which would mean only a
third of railway lines were in public hands by 2025.
Instead of waiting for the current franchises to expire we call for
immediate renationalisation of the railways, under democratic
working-class control. Compensation should be paid to small shareholders
but not a penny should go to the fat cats who have already made a
fortune from our railway system.
If a Corbyn-led government was to implement this and other socialist
policies it would be enormously popular with the majority, but would
face determined opposition from big business and the financial markets.
The new shadow chancellor John McDonnell has rightly said he stands for
the overthrow of capitalism.
Media
When asked by BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg if that is what he wanted
he said “it’s already happening, bit by bit”. But it is not possible to
gradually reform capitalism out of existence.
As long as they have power, the capitalist class will always be
relentless in taking back any gains won by the working and middle class
as soon as they get the opportunity – just as they have spent the last
decades trying to snatch back everything gained by previous generations.
Only by carrying through the process of taking control out of the hands
of the capitalists through to its conclusion would it be possible to
avoid this. This would mean nationalisation not just a handful of
industries but the commanding heights of the economy, in order to create
the basis for a socialist planned economy, under democratic workers’
control and management.
The capitalist media will shriek that this could never work, pointing to
what happened in Russia. But this supposed ’failure of socialism’ was
nothing of the kind.
Democracy
For the first time, in an extremely poor country, in 1917 the working
class took power and initially began to establish a planned economy
under democratic control. They understood, however, that it would not be
possible to build a democratic socialist society in one country,
particularly not one as poor and economically backward as Russia
Workers in other countries did attempt to follow ’the Russian road’ but
tragically did not succeed, leaving Russia isolated and allowing its
degeneration into a brutal bureaucratic dictatorship.
The coming to power of a socialist government in Britain or any other
economically advanced country in the future would be completely
different. Workers and the population are more educated, and have access
to modern technology.
Today
They would not allow a greedy, bureaucratic elite to usurp power. Real
workers’ democracy would mean the election of all officials, the right
of recall and for no official to receive more than the average wage of a
skilled worker.
At the same time, if workers in one country were to break with
capitalism it would not remain isolated, socialism would spread like
wildfire around the globe.
The creation of a society which was able to provide decent housing, free
education and well-paid work for all, and also began to harness all the
talent and human potential that is wasted under capitalism, would become
unstoppable.
affordable
housinganti-austerityanti-capitalistanti-cutsausterityBlairiteBritainfeatureJeremy
CorbynLabour PartyMarxistNew LabourNHSPeoples Quantitative
Easingquantitative easingsocialismSocialist PartySocialist Party of
England and WalesTony BlairTories
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