Editorial: Against capitalism?

Let’s assume you’re not just here for the crack, and you’re worried about the state of the planet and what capitalism is doing to it. So what do you want to do about it?

– Burn down a bank, maybe?
You could do, but there’re a lot of banks, and even if you burned them all, they’d just build them again.

– Kick a copper, perhaps?
Maybe, but they can kick harder than you can, every time.

– Start a revolution then?
Well, now you’re talking. But what kind of revolution? That is the question . . .

For a revolution to be any good, you have to be for something, besides being against big capitalism (WTO, IMF, World Bank, GATT etc) as if somehow “small” national capitalism is a completely different thing, and perfectly nice. It’s not. They’re the same. Let’s have a definition.

Capitalism is: commodity production for sale on a market.

Instead of that you could have: co-operative production for use and free distribution on the basis of need. this would involve: no markets, no money, no commodities, no private property, no rich class and poor class. No Third World and First World, no profit-led profligacy of any description, and amazingly, no ecological destruction, no famine, virtually no crime, and no war.

Think that’s unlikely? It isn’t. Capitalism has taken us as far as it can go, but there’s a lot further we can go without it. It doesn’t matter whether you call it. It is feasible and desirable. And given that ten Nobel scientists have recently cited 2012 as the point of no-return for environmental destruction, the word “urgent” springs to mind too.

Interested? Then contact us at spgb@worldsocialism.org