Recently US Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill in the US Senate that would require giant US corporations to “create a general public benefit” and balance their profit with “the best interests of persons that are materially affected” by the company. This is part of Warren’s 2020 presidential bid.
This bill will never become law. Even if it did, what it demands is impossible. Capitalism is a system based on exploitation, on the capitalists taking the new wealth that workers create and turning it into their profits. This capitalist-worker relationship is part of material reality.
Relations of Production are Material
“Material” means that capitalism is something real. It has a permanent nature and its own “laws of motion.” These economic laws must operate whether people like them or hate them, just like laws of nature.
Under capitalism, the rich get richer and social inequality grows. Profits are only possible if wages are kept down. Capitalist competition means that any company that doesn’t maximize profits will get eaten alive by its competitors. The rate of profit gradually falls and creates giant crises as in 2008.
Karl Marx discovered these laws of motion a long time ago. The facts show that they still apply today. The condition of the masses is getting worse in many places.
In the US, most new jobs have low wages. Affordable housing is just a dream. Retirement is a thing of the past for most people.
In most other countries the situation of the masses is far worse.
Reforms are Small and Temporary
Warren’s bill is just a part of an election scam. But in many places the masses are fighting for reforms inside capitalism. Teachers’ strikes in the US and the “yellow vest” movement in France have forced some concessions from the bosses. But these gains will last only until capitalists figure out how to take them back.
It is impossible for capitalism to serve the masses. Its laws of motion can’t change, but it can be destroyed and replaced with communism.
Capitalists Rule All Governments
Getting rid of capitalism means overthrowing capitalism, which now rules everywhere on the planet, whether in its “private ownership” or socialist forms.
Capitalists control the parties in elections in every country. They sponsor or bribe all the candidates. Candidates who promise that capitalist corporations will serve the masses are the biggest liars of all. Elections can’t change capitalism or eliminate it. Capitalist governments must be overthrown.
Revolutionary Violence
Humanity has had a lot of experience with overthrowing ruling classes. This experience shows that exploiters never give up peacefully.
Slavery, feudal aristocracy, the rule of the Bourbons in France and the Czars in Russia all had to be overthrown by violent revolutions.
Today’s capitalists have powerful militaries to defend their rule, but they have a critical weakness: the military ranks are filled with working class people! That is why ICWP organizes soldiers and sailors to turn the guns around against the capitalist bosses.
Capitalist Violence
While their rule continues, capitalists kill hundreds of thousands every year in their imperialist wars. In Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq and Kashmir, capitalists fight and massacre. Other capitalist powers arm themselves for future slaughter.
Even without wars, capitalism murders our class siblings every day in industrial accidents, sub-standard or nonexistent medical care, environmental pollution and racist terror.
No Violence?
Some people hope that violence can be avoided and capitalist exploitation could end by some peaceful process. This refusal to deal with the material reality of capitalism leads to all kinds of errors. One is idealism—the view that material reality can be changed by just changing people’s thinking, or that somehow god will intervene in human affairs and change the nature of capitalism.
The answer to this is to understand the material reality of capitalism. Nobody, faced with a flat tire, thinks that the solution is to change the way we think about it, or to pray that god will fix it. Workers understand enough about the material reality of tires to get them fixed.
The exploitative nature of capitalism is a material reality. We must understand that this reality can only be ended by destroying capitalism. Ideals and ideas can motivate us to make this happen, but material systems can only be destroyed by material force.
Deciding not to use workers’ mass violence against capitalism means deciding to let capitalist exploitation and violence continue indefinitely. Join ICWP and help mobilize the masses to throw out capitalism and begin the communist organization of society to meet the needs of all.
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