Reforming capitalism

Earlier I referred to capitalism as being basically a two class society - workers and bosses. Rather than being any particular attribute of the bosses or what they do, it is actually the combination of workers’ labour (or labour power as Marx called it) and the world’s natural resources that creates society’s wealth. And more specifically it’s workers’ labour power that is the source of profit that the system so relies on.

It doesn’t take much then to see that if workers are the source of the system’s wealth, then as Marx famously puts it, they can also be the system’s “gravediggers”. In other words, when workers stop, nothing moves and this points to the power the working class has to challenge capital - a power held by no other group in society.

So precisely because the global threat to the environment comes from the operation of capitalism itself, we’re going to have to take on the might of the corporations and the state that is hand in glove with them. Obviously this isn’t just something that can happen overnight. Right now this means our first step must be a collective fight for reforms, harnessing the strength of the organised working class, to shut down the polluting companies and force governments to act, rather than looking to concerned citizens individually rationing their water and electricity use, paying more for “green” alternatives or buying organic.

In other words - how we struggle and what we demand matters. If we look at how the battle against uranium mining was waged, it’s clear it was through collective action, the combined mobilisations of the anti-uranium movement, Indigenous groups and the unions, that we won what we did. Mobilising around working class demands such as “Black Ban Uranium” or “land rights, not uranium”, kept the movement focused on the need to tackle the bosses and the government, not just do deals with them or even see some of them as our allies. Again I want to refer you to our pamphlet which has more examples of the different struggles in Australia’s history.

However, this is just the beginning. Mass mobilisations and union pressure can start to shift the corporations, but to challenge capital at its very core and lay the basis for a different world we need to go further. Out of the struggle must come both the revolutionary organisations of workers to overthrow capitalism, and a class ready to build the world anew - to build a socialist society.

And to get to there we need to start in the here and now as a book by Mick Armstrong about building a socialist alternative, From Little Things Big Things Grow outlines. We need to be having the political arguments convincing people that capitalism is the cause of the world’s environment problems, why it’s the organised working class that has the power to stop capitalism in its tracks and as a consequence, why it is so crucial to build the mass mobilisations global warming rallies and the union struggles that can strengthen workers’ ability to fight.

But also, why we need to build political groups such as Socialist Alternative, to bring together the, admittedly, small numbers of active socialists around today, to start to make the arguments about the need to take the struggle past reforming capitalism on to the path of a revolutionary transformation of society. To begin to build a socialist society that can lay the basis for a sustainable world for the whole planet.