THE MONETARY BASIS OF CAPITALISM FAILS.
THE CAPITALIST WORLD ECONOMY IS A BUBBLE. BIG MONETARY FIGURES ARE FORMED, BUT VERY LITTLE REAL SURPLUS VALUE. POVERTY AND INEQUALITY INCREASE.
CAPITALISM PRODUCES JUNK BUT NOT WATER MAINTENANCE OR WATERING SYSTEMS NECESSARY FOR THE IMPOVERISHING AREAS.
ESTABLISHING OF FREE TRADE AREAS IN CAPITALISM MEANS LOCAL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION.
THERE IS IN FACT NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEGAL AND UNLEGAL MONEY.
CAPITALISM AND MARKET ECONOMY ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
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General features.
In the underdveloped areas of the world need of water maintenance and watering systems form the first and most important problem. Instead of producing such systems world capitalism plans to sell to the third world mobil phone networks and internet connections. Profits are more important than the people´s needs.
Trade restrictions imposed by rich countries are costing the world's poorest "a staggering 2.5 billion US dollars a year in lost foreign exchange earnings", Oxfam says in a report released on May 13th, 2001. Up the the early 2004 the situation has still worsened.
The 27-page report, 'Rigged Trade and Not Much Aid: How Rich Countries Help to Keep the Least Developed Countries Poor', to be presented at the NGO Forum, in advance of the UN Conference onLeast Developed Countries, warns that northerngovernments are guilty of offering "empty promises" to the poor when it comes to trade, aid and debt relief.
United States and Canada are identified as the "worst offenders", with Bangladesh losing seven dollars from trade restrictions for every one dollar it receives in U.S. aid and five times that for every dollar it receives from Canada.
People in capitalism´s ivory towers are not aware of the real state of the world or they are not interested in the reality at all. Only profits count.
Profitmakers´ world is not real. Yet political power is in capitalism necessarily tied with money. Hence political power is in hands of people whose picture of the world is more or less illusory.
The monetary basis of capitalism fails. Money is only a surface phenomena which mostly does not reflect the state of production, productional powers and productional relations and concrete added values in the world. Money is today a fetish. People use to bow before money like it were God.
In capitalism monetary evaluations give a false picture of reality because essential part of the money in the world and especially stock exchange rates and corresponding assessments do mostly not include real values but speculatory evaluations, imaginations, beliefs and profits. Profit and surplus value are absolutely different things. As an ideology capitalism is based on money without real basis.
According to economic studies only about 10% of the giant amount of money in world economy is based on real values. 90% is formed of speculations. The capitalist world economy is a bubble.
At individual level bottomless greed for money can be seen even as a symptom of psychiatric illness. At general level utopistic idea of eternal economic growth may be considered a pathological phenomena. Creating buying hystery by means of advertising has got a form of brainwash. Healthy economy is directed to saving, not to additioning of consumption.
The world is threatened by ecological catastroph. The use of oil and coal is rapidly destroying our climate. However, capitalism is interested only in increasing consumption and use of fossile fuels and in the corresponding monetary evaluations. Life is not important. So called climate conferences are plain theatre. Because of the contradictory situation they cannot and they will not make any kind of significant operational decisions.
At this very moment the headquarters of capitalism trie desperately to stabilise all economic values in the world. Solving this equation seems impossible because of many unknown factors and because the real potential power of capitalism is decreasing. Additionally, there are factors in the equation which cannot be handled with monetary values or measures.
Socialism in the economic sense of the word is by no means any kind of utopy like a belief in eternal economic growth. In socialism there is also money. However, socialist money does not include speculative elements. Value of a developed socialist community currency is steady. This makes long-term economic planning possible. The value of socialist money is based on real work and production. In socialism unemployment is an absurd thing. The world is full of work to be done.
The nuclear question concerns labour, organization and justness. The bourgeois discussion avoids these topics when concentrating all attention in money. Of course, work and working units must product, but money is a far too simple means to measure the results of production.
There are countries with excellent state of public economy. Their currencies may be strong. The GNP reflecting profits may show monetary growth. At the same time poverty and all forms of illfare increase in the community. What can we actually measure with money in this kind of situation?
The importance of money in monetary communities decreases also because of technical developement. Banknotes are easy to be forged. According to general opinion accounting systems are nowadays realiable. Quite the contrary. The advanced computer technics makes doctoring the books especially easy at all levels. Sums can be removed or changed by pressing a button. Even old saved files can be easily manipulated afterwards.
Capitalism is based on money. Money is especially now not a valid basis for any kind of ideology. Collapse of currencies have caused dispelling of capitalist illusion for instance both Russia and in Argentina. In the merging world crashing of one currency affects worldwide monetary assessments.
Local and worldwide trade is necessary. However, these activities can be arranged on basis of long-term plans and by democratic controlled bi- or multilateral mechanisms without speculative values. Succesful barter trade systems exist already now at local levels here and there around the world. They are out of the control of world capitalism.
It is quite natural to handle the production without capitalist terms "investment", "profit", "interest", "stock exchange rate" etc. For instance, in the People´s Democratic Republic of Korea the recently completed modern Pyongyang subway, large agricultural projects and the new hichtech power plants as well as the Libyan water maintenance systems have been constructed or will be completed by people´s collective work and know-how and mostly by own raw materials. The surplus value in a planned socialist economy is real value. What has been said here does not mean that a socialist society were not allowed to use capitalist investments in special cases. Yet purposes and terms of the investments must be settled by the recipient.
In capitalism temporary monetary upgoings of uncontrolled economy concentrate in big cities and industrial centers. At the same time povery increases in the countryside and in the underdeveloped areas.
The absurdity of capitalist economy is especially visible in the impoverishment of the underdeveloped areas of the world. In the staffs of world capitalism they use to speak of the necessity of monetary investments when handling of the starvation problem. Yet capitalism never invests to non-profitable projects. Thus the most necessary water supply and watering systems do not appear. The poor people cannot pay for water. Different international aid systems deliver to hunger areas mostly products coming from capitalist overproduction. This is a good business for buyers and sellers. The so called investment means in practice usually for instance establishing an eletronic component factory in a country of low wages. Some people get jobs. The unemployment in the industrialized countries increases correspondingly. The social result is nothing but a zero. Hunger in the starvation area remains.
Establishing of free trade areas by agreements among capitalist governments means lower wages, less social security and increasing unemployment. Also political power will be transferred from nations to headquarters of multinational corporations.
Contents of inter-governmental free trade agreements is secret are until they have been carried out. Often first then people realize that the main purpose of free trade is systematical privatization. Through privatizations political end economic power and right to control social activities are taken out of democratically elected bodies.
The final goal of world capitalism is one huge free trade area controlled by global capitalism´s headquarters. That kind of world dictatorship would really have nothing to do with the word "freedom". This Orwellian horror vision will be prevented by people´s movements and by communist worker movement.
Drug business benefits world capitalism. It weakens moral and power of working class. At the same time it is a super class business for world capitalism. Capitalism pretends to fight against drugs. At local levels authorities in fact do that work. They do not know that on the highest level drug business is under system´s special protection.
In capitalism money is the only cause. There is in fact no difference between legal and unlegal money. Governments and their global co-operation organizations will by legislative acts remove all restrictions of worlwide money traffic. Hence criminals´ activities become so easy that even laundring of money is not necessary any more.
USA´s target is unipolar capitalist world dictatorship. US speaks of freedom of trade at the same time when it manipulates commercial blockades against countries which do not intend to obey its orders. USA speaks further of freedom of trade and protects its own economy by customs duties which violate interests of other countries.
Capitalism and market economy are two different things. The healthy production and trade among people belong to normal activities of human societies, but capitalism destroys these elements. Future of small enterprises is nowadays always desperate. There are only two alternatives. Either they will be destroyed or they are forced to shift to the side of speculative, stock exchange economy.
KOMINFORM
Jan Pole, April 4th, 2002
The Fetishism of Money
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word "fetish" came to be used by anthropologists to mean an inanimate object worshipped by savages on account of its supposed magical powers. Often such objects took the form of amulets and in some cultures this practice stil continues.
In our more developed society this is dismissed as superstition. But whilst the wearing of amulets may not be that common, despite our technical culture "fetishism" is a deeply entrenched part of political thought.
In Marxian theory the "fetishism of commodities" is the illusion that in buying and selling the values being exchanged are part of the physical make-up of the commodities themselves. If this were true it would mean that buying and selling, and the tyrannies of the profit system, could never be removed.
But in fact, the values of commodities result from wage labour as part of the economic relationships of the capitalist system. In socialism, with people co-operating to produce directly for needs, the commodity form of goods will disappear leaving the community with free access to simple articles of use.
In religion, gods are products of the human imagination given powers to dominate the lives of those who create them. The destructive effects of religion are evident in the many conflicts that divide people throughout the world but this does not end with subservience to imagined gods.
There is also the fetishism of money. This also attributes powers to an alien force that dominates our social affairs. Part of the fetishism of money is the illusion that money has its own productive powers. Particularly in politics, money is fetishised as having the power to solve problems because without it nothing can be done.
How often do we hear it said, "we do not have the resources"? What is meant by resources is always money. Every day politicians give lack of money as a reason why we cannot provide better health care or safe reliable trains or the many other public services that are in urgent need of improvement.
Not just in Whitehall/White House and Westminster/Capitol but in Borough, District and Parish Councils throughout the country the same mantra is chanted week in and week out, year after year, "if only we had more money, something could be done".
This ignores the fact that productive resources are materials, means of production, transport, energy, communications and networks of infrastructure through which goods and services are produced. And all these depend on one single resource which is labour. These are the real resources on which the lives of communities depend and there is an abundance of labour to provide for needs.
At times there may be millions of unemployed people, facto "We do not have the resources". They are unable to see the availability of real resources because their minds are pre-occupied by the illusion that only money resources count.
They imagine that real resources can only be brought into use by money, whereas the opposite is the truth. The powers of the community to solve problems can on be fully released with socialism and the abolition of money.
Reliance on the imagined powers of money runs through every social problem. For example, in the last two elections Labour made a commitment to reduce child poverty. For this, they hope to use money. "The chosen means is also clear: a new form of child support which starts in 2003. But it will be costly, as the budget will reveal for the first time". (Economist, 23 March 2002)
"Poor children are defined as those living in households whose income, after housing costs, is below 60 percent of the median the income in the exact middle of the income distribution". Poverty is of course relative and this degree of poverty in Britain is not as severe as the poverty of children in undeveloped countries where 40,000 children under five die in poverty every day. In Britain, child poverty generally means substandard housing, poor conditions in the home, exclusion from benefits enjoyed by better off contemporaries, and poor diets (fats, sugar and carbohydrates).
Any kind of child poverty is a total disgrace and would be easily removed in socialism within a very short time. Under the Labour governments there has been a marginal improvement. According to the Economist:
"Progress has so far been slow. In 1996/7, the year before Labour took office, the number of children living in poverty was 4.4 million. By 1999/2000, this had declined only to 4.1 million. A more substantial decline to 3.5 million is expected for 2001/02 as reforms such as the working families' tax credit (WFTC), introduced in October 1999, take full effect. But this will still mean that the government has failed to meet its earlier pledge to remove more than a million children out of poverty in Labour's first term. To cut the number of poor children by around a million would cost as much as £6.1 billion. The pledge to reduce child poverty is proving to be an expensive one."
Socialists would say not just expensive. Because it relies on theuncertainties of the market system and the use of money, the hope of any Labour government ending child poverty is impossible. Labour and Tory governments having been making the same promise for many years and they have all failed.
Appeals for money
But the magical powers of money to solve problems dominates not just the world of reformist politics, it also dominates the many charities that constantly ask for money. A recent example is an appeal run by
Oxfam on TV:
"What do we dream for our children? Health, happiness, success? A safe place to sleep at night? A drink of water that won't kill them? Never to be hungry again? We all want the best for our children. For some people that starts with such simple things. All they want is a better world for them to grow up in. It's not much to ask and all we are asking of you is £2 a month. In over 70 countries Oxfam is helping people work themselves out of poverty. They never give up and neither do we. Will you stand alongside us too? With your £2 a month we can help them with seeds, tools – help them build wells with clean, safe water give children an education so that they can have a chance of a real future free from hunger and pain. All people want is a better life for their children. Please do something remarkable today and help make a dream a reality. Telephone Oxfam today and give £2 a month."
It is not the purpose here to criticise those who want to do something to help others in desperate need. In a way, their willingness to help provides a hope for the future. But the brutal facts have to be faced, that during the past 25 years during which time OXFAM and similar organisations have been appealing for money to solve problems, the number of seriously undernourished people has, according to the FAO, almost doubled from 435 million in 1974/5 to over 800 million in 2000.
In view of this we are bound to point out that when OXFAM claim to be in over 70 countries "helping people to work themselves out of poverty", so far as the general problem is concerned this statement is misleading. If OXFAM and its supporters were to also join the work of organising for socialism, that would be a significant step forward. What could be their objections to a world organised solely for the needs of people? Surely this is what they claim to want. By working for socialism they could see an end to the need to make appeals for money.
Following the volcanic eruption of Mt. Nyiragongo in Congo the Disasters Emergency Committee broadcast its Goma Crisis Appeal (25 January 2002). This included what given amounts of money could do. For example, "£30 will treat 18 people for severe malaria, £100 will provide clean water to 4,000 people for a week".
We may not go as far as Oscar Wilde when he wrote, "It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property". But it does remain true that appeals for money to alleviate suffering tend to perpetuate the system that causes the suffering.
Moreover, the idea that such suffering results from natural causes is not always the case. Most natural dangers known and socialism would not need to leave communities exposed to them. This would avoid many disasters. Also, contingency plans would exist throughout the regions and at a world level for the relief of any catastrophe.
Emergency supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies would be maintained at strategic points whilst machinery, equipment and helpers would be moved quickly to the area of crisis. The present appeals for money are a pathetic substitute for the availability of real resources and the freedom that communities in socialism would have to immediately use them.
The fetishism of money is part of the ideology of the profit system that claims uncountable victims across the world. In the Pre-Colombian societies of South America, in homage to their gods, human sacrifice was widely practised. For example, this was a gruesome ritual amongst the Aztec people in what is now Mexico.
"In the heart of Tenochtitlan the pyramid rose as an architectural fetish, charged with the powers of all the offerings, and the blood from thousands of sacrificed human beings. The structure was the terrifying centre of the Aztec world" (The Aztecs, Richard F. Townsend).
Many of the sacrificial victims were children and we think of this as barbaric. Perhaps for this reason we now prefer to keep out of our minds the fact that every day we sacrifice many more children's lives than the Aztecs could ever manage.
We sacrifice them in homage to the god of money, on the altar of the capitalist system.