Life under capitalism offers no hope for a better tomorrow. Around 4.5 million children live in poverty, and one million of these children live in conditions of extreme hardship where they don’t have access to heating or enough food.
But Britain is the fifth richest country on earth. So what exactly do communists propose to do about it? We can show the potential for a future society under a socialist planned economy with the abolition of private property.
Under the planned economy the productive forces could be developed enormously, with the eventual aim of developing an economy of super abundance. That would begin to lay the material foundations for life to prosper to its fullest.
Capitalism cannot achieve this – it requires scarcity because it is driven by profit. In fact UK productive capacity sits at around 70 percent and investment is chronically low, because there are no further profits to be made. They allow industry to sit idle. We instead would utilise this unutilised capacity for social need.
Starting from the conditions left by capitalism, under democratic workers’ control of the economy we could quickly start to remedy these ills.
Issues like homelessness, for example, could be done away with immediately. 300,000 live in temporary accommodation while one million homes sit unoccupied – it is not a question of resources but purely of what is profitable.
We do not claim to hold the blueprints for what the future society looks like, of course.
In the words of Karl Marx, the working class “have no ready made utopias…They have no ideals to realise, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.”
Removing the underlying driving force of capitalism – production only for profit – under a planned economy would allow people finally to take the reins of the vast wealth in society and put it to use to liberate ourselves.
We would start with menial tasks that could be easily done through the use of machines and AI. Automated curbside pickup trucks already exist for bin collections, for example. For fast food, automated burger flipping machines already exist. For taxis, automated cars already exist.
Under socialism, rather than enslaving the working class, these machines can liberate workers by lowering the working week and raising living standards.
By utilising this technology for social need, we would free ourselves to do more meaningful things like care for our communities, or follow pursuits in education, science and art.
None of this will be done for the purpose of survival or greed, which taints all our relationships today. The material basis for racism, sexism and all the other prejudices of class society would be stripped away too – superabundance and unity of the workers go hand-in-hand.
Competition would still exist, but it would appear in our intellectual pursuits, in solidarity with one another – unlike today where the competition is to buy this knowledge and contain it
All of the human potential wasted under capitalism could be truly unleashed and allowed to flourish under a social system that rids people of want.
Tom Crozier
Critics online ask: “Isn’t the term ‘Epstein class’ unscientific? Shouldn’t we be using the term ‘bourgeoisie’ instead?”
This is a criticism that has been levelled against the RCP, particularly by sectarian groups and individuals, since we took up the slogan “wipe out the Epstein class!” as part of our summer growth campaign.
The Epstein files constitute the biggest scandal of the 21st century. The scandal surrounding the disgraced billionaire sex-trafficker and his network of high-profile abusers is perhaps the most politicising event of our time, behind only the 2008 crisis and the genocide in Palestine.
The fact that barely any of the left-wing organisations have taken up the concept of the Epstein class – a notion that has taken root in the minds of millions, spontaneously and organically, allowing them to connect the dots between exploitation, corruption, and oppression – is a real missed opportunity.
And the fact that some groups criticise us for using this term is truly mind-boggling.
For Marxists, a concept is scientific to the extent that it enables us to explain the real, objective relations in the world, and thereby raise the consciousness of the working class.
The term ‘Epstein class’ has a rich content and meaning to ordinary, radicalised people – in many cases, a lot more than a term like ‘bourgeoisie’.
Let’s remember that the term ‘bourgeoisie’ is a medieval French word for a middle-class town dweller. This is hardly an exact description for our modern-day imperialist financiers.
Similarly, the term ‘proletariat’ refers to the underclass of poor citizens in ancient Roman society, who fed from the crumbs of slave exploitation, and were far from a progressive, revolutionary class.
But neither of these terms are thrown into question – and nor should they be. They serve a key purpose.
Is there a danger of misinterpretation and ambiguity in using this term ‘Epstein class’, i.e. that it might suggest that only one section of the capitalist class is to blame for abuse and corruption, rather than the whole system? Yes, there is.
But the same risk of one-sidedness is present in any term, slogan, or demand. The task of connecting the finished programme of Marxism to the living process of radicalisation is never without difficulty.
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Consciousness is always distorted and contradictory – by definition. What else is consciousness but the generalised process of billions of people – with their own unique ideas, aims, and experiences – slowly and arduously making sense of a complex, confusing, and turbulent world, with the weight of ruling-class propaganda and the conservatism of daily life stacked against them?
When a new idea can take root in that maelstrom, that is a profound thing. When that idea helps people understand their place in the world, and the real inner workings of society, that is a progressive step forward.
Marx once remarked that every step of the real movement is more important than a dozen programmes. The same can be said of the real development of mass consciousness, which is worth a thousand sectarian polemics.
We should all be proud of the fact that the RCI has been the only far-left organisation to understand the deep significance of the Epstein scandal and its impacts on consciousness.
This is a powerful weapon in our hands – not just to recruit new people to our ranks, but to raise our own political understanding, and enrich Marxist theory with new facts, examples, and phenomena.
Jack Tye Wilson
A reader from Bristol asks: “What can we do in Britain to fight imperialism?
There is a burning desire in Britain to fight British imperialism. Millions have come out onto the streets for Palestine, whilst poll after poll has shown the disgust towards the war on Iran, too the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The question of how to achieve this, at first, appears almost insurmountable, especially when the imperialist powers have the lion’s share of the world’s wealth and resources at their disposal. But a Marxist understands a force even greater – the immense power of the international working class, which can topple capitalism and imperialism.
The first question communists must clarify is where we need to strike.
Although Britain is a declining power, it retains a vast network made up of the remnants of its once globe-spanning empire. Militarily, it has almost 150 bases in over 40 countries (Cyprus, Diego Garcia, etc.), which double up as bases for other Western imperialists such as the US and NATO. Its recent military assistance to Israeli-US imperialism in Palestine and Iran has provided enough proof of this.
Financially, Britain’s banks and overseas tax havens act as money launderers for the global financial system. The Epstein scandal has helped to expose the corruption, cronyism, and abhorrent crimes that British finance capital bankrolls.
The only way to defeat this bloody war machine is through class struggle, striking at British capitalism’s nerve centres.
For example, Britain’s largest defence contractor is BAE Systems. Its weapons are sold to Israel to be used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. The Ministry of Defence is one of its largest funders of BAE, and last year, it made £2 billion in profits from arming the genocide.
It’s companies like BAE we must have in our crosshairs.
The powerful general strike in Italy last year shows the way forward for taking on these companies. Mass demonstrations and pickets can halt the movement and production of weapons and strengthen the workers’ movement, showing their power.
In contrast to direct action activism, a movement of millions can’t be so easily dispersed and defeated by governments. And if these defence contractors were then seized by workers, they could be repurposed to produce socially useful things.
The working class and youth in Britain are seeing the barbaric nature of British imperialism every day via social media and constant scandals in the press enveloping the ruling class.
Our role as communists is to connect with this anger, direct it along class lines to target the key central pillars of British imperialism, which cannot operate without the kind permission of the working class.
Our ultimate aim as communists in Britain is to wage a ruthless struggle against our own ruling class to overthrow them and establish a socialist workers’ state. A socialist revolution in Britain would shut down and rob the imperialists of key tools to conduct their reactionary policies by expropriating the commanding heights of the economy, including the banks.
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We would provide political and material assistance to the workers and peasants of oppressed nations in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
In the last analysis, the fate of any fledgling socialist workers’ state hinges on the development of the international socialist revolution.
Stan Laight
