The capitalist system

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

This in our opinion is the statement of the concrete manifestation of the true dialectic. As it was with slavery, feudalism, and other evil customs and systems in history, so it will be with any extant and prevailing evil system.

In other words, we can only temporarily delay the full fructification of any good idea, we cannot permanently prevent it. Conversely, we can only temporarily accelerate the fruition of any evil idea, we can never succeed in perpetuating it. Good shall surely, though sometimes slowly, grow and manifest itself; but evil shall also surely, though often times slowly and imperceptibly, wane in strength and finally perish.

The touchstone of what is good, be it in thought, or .word or action, is LOVE. We are to love our neighbours as ourselves. ‘That is the law and the prophets’ . Anything therefore – any thought or word or action – which falls short of LOVE is evil, and holds within itselfthe germ of its own eventual and inevitable destruction. The inference now becomes irresistible that as long as greed or naked self-interest remains the prime and main motivation of any social system, that system must always of a necessity generate countervailing greed and naked self-interest in everyone whom its operations affect, and in the process of time it will degenerate and perish.

It only remains for us now to emphasise and pin-point the obvious. Since greed, selfishness, or naked self-interest is the essence and predominant motivation of capitalism, the system is bound to generate secular social disequilibrium in the society in which it is operative, and to diminish and degenerate through time until it suffers extinction, yielding place to another and better system which either approaches or approximates to the ideal of LOVE.

1. Engels: Socialism, Utopia” and Scientific. (page 73)

1 Hegel: The Philosophy of History.

3 Marx: Das Kapital, 1867.

 

The SOCIALIST APPROACH

THE CONCLUSION which we have reached is that no social system designed to benefit any people or mankind as a whole has a chance of permanent success, growth, and ultimate survival unless it is in strict harmony with the dialectic.

In other words, such a system must recognize, as one of its first principles, that the State is an enlarged family – a macro cosmic representation of the individual family units which compose it; it must ensure to all whom its operations may affect: (i) security from internal disorder and protection against external aggression; (ii) adequate provision of the necessaries oflife, together with some comforts, and ifpossible a little bit ofluxury as well; and (iii) the enjoyment of freedom,justice, equality, and other fundamental human rights.

In short, such a system must indefeasibly and permanently guarantee social justice to all whom its operations may affect. In this sense, it must completely remove all the defects and all the causes of social injustice and inequality which we have previously noted in this part, or, at the very least, minimise the injurious effects of such defects, injustice, and inequality.

As we have seen, capitalism has failed in its strenuous bid (which has lasted almost two centuries) to achieve these objectives; and because of its inherent antagonism to the dialectic, it has no chance at all of success in the future. On all counts, it can be confidently predicted that capitalism is doomed to perish. The only system which, because of its intrinsic harmony with the dialectic, has every chance of success now and in the future is socialism.

What is socialism? Socialism is a normative social science. It is in the same category as ethics. But whilst the latter seeks to set the standards for human conduct, socialism seeks to establish the standards for economic behaviour and social objectives.

It is, in a very important respect, unlike the science of economics which studies the forces at work in any society and in the world at large in man’s efforts to satisfy infinite ends with limited and scarce means which have alternative uses.

Socialism, as a normative science, also studies these forces, but goes much further. It sets the standards of human ends which economic forces must serve, and prescribes the methods by which these forces may be controlled, directed, and channelled for the attainment of the ends in view.

Socialism is also to be distinguished from and contrasted with communism, and the Marxist concept of socialism. Communism is a state of social perfection in which the principle ‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his need’ shall apply. On its advent, the dictatorship of the proletariat would come to an end, the ‘State’ everywhere would be replaced by ‘Community’, and the talents of each citizen would be so highly developed, that in his skills he would far transcend the capitalist technology of micro-division of labour and acquire the all- embracing communist technology which would make it possible for him ‘to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic’.

In the views of Marx and Engels, the State and freedom are antithetic. Under the bourgeoisie, a State is an instrument of arbitrary coercion and oppression, and its executive’ is but a committee for managing the affairs or the whole bourgeoisie’ in their ruthless exploitation of the working class Under the proletariat, the State becomes the instrument for holding down its adversaries, the bourgeoisie. Says Engels in Letter to Bebel, ‘it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people’s State’.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK

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