Do You Know Someone Who’s Unemployed? Underpaid? Homeless? Hungry?
October 9 – Auto workers in the US have been on strike for three weeks. They were pushed to the wall by world capitalism’s deepening industrial crisis of overproduction.
This crisis is spreading to every sector. It affects the whole working class worldwide, especially auto workers who are central to the capitalist economy.
Rival capitalists (domestic and overseas) compete for the same markets. This leads to “overproduction.” Factories produce more cars and other commodities than can be sold profitably.
More industrial and service workers are hit with layoffs. Houses are shuttered while more are homeless. Foods rots while more go hungry. Hospitals close.
This capitalist crisis shows the urgency for workers to join ICWP to mobilize for communist revolution. We need to build communist consciousness in relation to every attack against our class. To end these attacks, we have to eliminate the capitalist wage system and build a communist world.
We are confident that the mighty working class will fight for and win this communist world.
Instead of working for wages, we will work lovingly to meet our class’ needs. Communist relations of sharing and collectivity will replace the money system. ICWP will mobilize masses to destroy the racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia that remain from the wage system.
Capitalism Makes Crisis Inevitable
During the crisis of overproduction in the 1970’s, markets were saturated. The capitalists’ rate of profit was falling. Auto ran at 73% of capacity worldwide.
But, with the defeat of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Chinese “Communist” party opted for open market capitalism and intensified exploitation. This gave world capitalism breathing room.
Now that’s over. Auto sales are down worldwide, especially in China. Unable to expand, capitalism is contracting. The rate of profit is falling and so is the amount of profit.
The rate of profit falls because capitalists compete for limited markets. They need automation to produce more cheaply and compete more effectively.
But capitalism’s only source of profit is workers’ labor power. The more they spend on machines and the fewer workers they exploit, the lower the rate of profit on their investments.
So, they drive us harder. They move factories to lower-wage areas. And so do their competitors. Capitalism’s economic crises are inevitable because of its basic internal contradictions.
Why can’t industrial capitalists be satisfied with lower profits? Because they have to compete for the capital they need to function. Finance capital has dominated industrial capital for over a century. It invests where the rate of profit is highest.
But when industrial crises deepen, banks and other financial capitalists compete for shrinking opportunities for profitable investment. They increasingly turn to speculation. The world economy becomes a giant casino.
This is where we are now: not just in a cyclical crisis, but in a general crisis of capitalism.
The fight between competing groups of capitalists-imperialists sharpens. Economic wars lead to shooting wars – up to and including world war.
Today, Trump and Xi are imposing tariffs. They will eventually need war to destroy the productive capacity—factories and workers—of their rivals. The winning capitalist can then capture the biggest market share without caring how many millions are slaughtered.
Until we destroy this wasteful, destructive, inhuman capitalist system.
Abolish the Wage System
From the worker’s point of view, capitalism is the wage system. We have to come to work every day just to survive.
When competition sharpens, capitalists try to drive us to ever lower levels of subsistence. They pay black and latino workers less than white workers, women less than men, children less than that. They push racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia to justify these attacks: the cutting edge of their attacks on all workers.
Union leaders would have us fight a lifelong, losing battle for wages barely above subsistence. But we need to fight as one class to get rid of the wage system, and all the poisonous ideologies it breeds. Let’s fight the class war for communism instead of fighting and dying for the rulers’ empires and profits.
Masses of angry workers are looking a solution. That solution is communism. The masses will produce for use, not profit. There won’t be unemployment. Everyone will help plan, produce and distribute what is needed.
With no money or markets or wages, no bosses or borders, there will be no crises of “overproduction” and no wars.
Urgency, patience and audacity in mobilizing the masses for communism and nothing else will bring forth the red dawn of communism.
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