By Steve Halpern
Marvin Gaye’s 1971 song What’s Going On? raised a question that has never been more relevant. In 1971 the times were clearly changing. The civil rights movement forced the government to do away with Jim Crow segregation. However, the rebellions of the 1960s demonstrated that police brutality, as well as racist discrimination continued to be facts of life. Attitudes towards women were changing, but sexual discrimination also was a fact of life. A mass movement protesting the war against Vietnam was erupting, but military spending continued to increase.
So, while the attitudes of people were changing, the power brokers in this country were determined to maintain the basic status quo. Perhaps this was the reality that prompted Marvin Gaye to ask his question, “What’s going on?”
Just as in the past, today we see profound changes erupting. There have been a series of mass murders by deranged individuals using the infamous automatic weapon the AR-15. There is a war against the people of Ukraine where the use of atomic weapons is a possibility. Millions of people were not paying rent during the pandemic, and now need to come up with all that money. This is at a time when gas prices are skyrocketing.
Then, there are the stories the so-called news media is determined not to report. While about 34 million people in this country have at least $1.2 million in assets, 42 million do not have enough food to eat. Seventy percent of the world’s population lives on ten dollars per day or less. The United Nations reports that 30,000 children die every day due to preventable diseases. So, Marvin Gaye’s question has never been more relevant. What’s going on?
The times when capitalism came into the world
Karl Marx wrote his book Capital one-hundred-fifty-five years ago. Marx argued that the essence of the capitalist system is the conflict between capital and labor. Literally every commodity that has ever been sold was produced by human labor. For each of those commodities, the owners of capital profited. So, while workers produce literally all the wealth of the world, capitalists who produce no wealth, control the political economy of the capitalist system.
Marx understood that in its early years, capitalism was a progressive force. In the feudal world, royal families and religious clerics had power. Those royal families and clerics had absolute power. As feudalism deteriorated, more and more people faced starvation.
In the thirteen colonies that became the United States, the British required the colonists to pay exorbitant taxes to cover the costs of their war against France. The colonists found it difficult to survive with the British army forcing them to pay taxes they could not afford.
In his Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson gave the reasons why the colonists took up arms to defeat the most powerful army in the world at that time.
“Prudence indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Seventy-six years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Frederick Douglass gave a speech where he spoke about what this declaration meant to the millions of enslaved people who happened to be Black.
“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reins without rival.”
Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was also a slave owner. Jefferson was well aware that the system of chattel slavery could be labelled, in his words, “absolute Despotism.” Jefferson also protested the fact that the British weren’t giving the colonists what he felt was sufficient aid to conduct genocidal war against Native Americans. In fact, Jefferson labelled Native Americans as “savages.”
After the war many veterans of the revolution did not have sufficient access to food, and they took up arms in Shay’s Rebellion. In one of the first acts of this new revolutionary government, the armed forces organized to militarily defeat Shay’s Rebellion.
So, while Marx understood that capitalism was a significant advance over feudalism, he also felt that capitalism came into the world dripping with blood and dirt oozing from every pore. So, how is this history relevant to the reality we are experiencing today?
Capitalism in the world today
Frederick Engels wrote a book about the horrendous conditions workers faced in Manchester, Britain in the 1800s. Today many critics of Marx and Engels argue that the conditions that workers face today in Manchester, as well as the United States, are better than they were in the past.
What these people do not see is that capitalism is no longer confined to Britain. Today capitalism dominates the economies of the world. When we see that seventy percent of the world’s population lives on ten dollars per day or less, we see clearly that the overall conditions of the international working class is fundamentally the same as it was in the 1800s. The only significant change has been with technology. However, today there are about one billion people who do not have adequate access to food, water, or electricity.
Karl Marx pointed to another problem with capitalism. This is the fact that the system needs to continually grow. Annually, corporations invest about $200 billion in useless advertising because of their obsession to sell more and more commodities. When the system stops growing, there is an international crisis. This happened in 1929, 2008, and 2020. Today the signs are all there that by 2023 we will see another international capitalist crisis.
Many people argue that we need to find a way of increasing taxes to the wealthy so there would be more equality in this country. While I’m not opposed to this idea, taxing the wealthy, in and of itself, will not resolve the profound problems of the world. For that, we need to recognize that the interests of the working class and the interests of capitalists aren’t just different, they are antagonistic.
Another proposal is to eliminate the debts workers are drowning in. These include debts for education, health care, housing, and automobiles. This would mean that major banks would go bankrupt, and the government would manage the financing of those funds. The problem is that today the government has already bailed out corporations and has continued to allow those corporations to gouge out profits for the super-rich. If the banks closed and the current government remained in power, I don’t see how there would be any fundamental changes.
Capitalists understand that when workers go on strike demanding better wages and working conditions, those demands eat into their profits. One of the things capitalists are learning today is that when prices skyrocket, this can also have devastating effects on their bottom line.
Today, workers at the Amazon Corporation need to clock out and in during their bathroom breaks. Amazon calls this “Time Off Task” or “TNT time.” If a worker takes too much time for TNT on three occasions, this is grounds for termination.
Clearly workers do not like being timed for our bathroom breaks and this is one of many issues that explain why Amazon workers are organizing for union representation. On the other hand, Amazon has invested tens of millions of dollars to fight these union organizing drives. This is only one example of how workers and employers have interests that are antagonistic.
In fact, the government, the educational system, and the news media are all dedicated to supporting the corporate drive to maximize profits all over the world. Today, we listen to capitalists like Elon Musk talk about how he sees a downturn in the economy. Musk is concerned about this because a downturn would mean that he would lose some of his money. The idea that there are 42 million people in this country who do not have enough food, while he has about $200 billion in assets is of little concern for Musk. The so-called news media is, for the most part, indifferent to this persistent problem.
How can we change this?
Karl Marx argued that the way for the working class to escape from this system of wage slavery is to put in place a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” So, if politicians and the news media routinely argue that we live in a “democracy,” why did Marx argue for a dictatorship?
When we go to work, employers demand that we do what we are told for every minute we are on the job. This system doesn’t sound like a “democracy” to me. In fact, Marx called this system a dictatorship of capital.
Yes, we all have the right to vote. However, the news media will only give publicity to those candidates who make the drive to maximize profits their top priority. Again, this doesn’t sound like a democracy.
Then, there is that thing called “money.” Money is only a means of exchange and has no intrinsic value. Money only has value because it can be used to purchase commodities that have real value.
Employers pay workers an amount of money that only reflects a small percentage of what our labor is worth. Some of the wealth derived from our labor goes to necessary expenditures. These are for the salaries of workers, health care, and education.
However, a large part of the wealth created by workers goes to enterprises that produce no useful wealth. These include corporate profits, interest to banks, insurance, advertising, corporate law, rents, and let us not forget the thousands of atomic bombs that can eliminate all human life.
Today workers are demanding no cutbacks in health care or education, better working conditions, no evictions, lower prices, an end to discrimination as well as the destruction of the environment. For the most part, capitalists are indifferent to these demands. However, they are concerned with the fact that stock market prices might be going down.
For a moment, let us imagine that we had a genuine workers government. Instead of making corporate profits their priority, that government would make the needs of everyone its priority. That government would be able to do this by taking control over the means of production.
Clearly the potential exists to feed everyone on the planet. Yet there might be one billion people who do not have enough food. This is because in the capitalist system, there are profits derived from the sale of all food.
A worker’s government would establish the absolute right of everyone to have enough quality food to eat. The cost of that food would be the expense of providing for the needs of all the workers who produce food. Profits, interest, insurance, advertising, rent, and corporate law would in no way be included in the cost of producing food.
Marx understood that a dictatorship of the proletariat would represent the first time in history where the working class would experience genuine democracy. In that system, capitalists would need to justify why they feel their exorbitant wealth would be more important than feeding the population of the world.
Supporters of the capitalist system argue that a socialist system would impoverish everyone. While Russia and China adopted to the capitalist system, Cuba continues to support socialist values. However, while the Cuban people have the right to health care and education, they lack many of the conveniences most people have in this country.
The point here is that Cuba does not have access to the infrastructure of the developed capitalist world. As with the case of food, a worker’s government would organize production in a way that the standard of living would be sustainable for everyone.
Today we pay outrageous prices for automobiles, gas, insurance, maintenance etc. This is just so we can travel from place to place. Aside from those costs, the government supported the auto industry by paying for roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels. This system allows millions of commuters to sit alone in their cars in traffic jams every day.
First, a worker’s government would organize society so our work, education, health care, and access to goods would be convenient to everyone. Then, a mass transit system would be organized so everyone could have access to an efficient means of travel. Instead of sitting in traffic jams, today the technology exists in rail to transport people at the same speed as jet aircraft.
Currently few people argue that what we need is a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat. However, we are living at a time when the capitalist system is in a period of extreme crisis. Capitalists only invest in enterprises when they believe that can gouge out a profit. Given the state of the economy of the world, there is a lot less confidence in that belief.
In the capitalist system, when capitalists don’t invest, people don’t have jobs, as well as the means to live. If this happens for a prolonged period of time, people will begin to look for answers that capitalist politicians do not have.
Political revolutions erupted in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba. In those nations, working people faced unimaginably horrendous realities. Sooner or later, I believe that capitalism will expose workers to a similar horrendous reality. When we look at the history of the working class in this country and the world, we see that we have the real potential to transform the conditions of our class. Then humanity will discover for the first time the definition of the word “freedom.”
