Introduction Page 5
Capitalist competition leads to more than just persistent economic disruption.
Because all capitalists are driven to expand, they must use ever more resources to produce more and more stuff, putting an increasing strain on the global environment.
If they don’t, they’ll soon be swallowed up by the competition.
And this same logic inevitably leads to a struggle (via governments) to control resources (eg, oil, gas, data even) or to gain/restrict access to markets.
We know where this leads – proxy wars, shooting wars and potential nuclear war.
As if these threats to our very existence weren’t enough, our lives are spent at the beck and call of the capitalists.
To them, we’re not people, we’re ‘human resources’, like any other resource, to be used or discarded as required.
Some of us escape outright drudgery, many don’t, but either way we’re handed a life sentence that condemns us to a reliance on wages or, even worse, state handouts.
There are lots of other urgent causes for concern (gender violence, racism, inadequate healthcare… we’re sure you could add your own to the list.
Problems are the one thing we’re never short of under capitalism, and this is why we say that the current system is well past its ‘best by’ date