Capitalist victory in civil war

The capitalists in England drew the most oppressed sections of the population behind them in their struggle. These were fighting for their own demands, such as an end to the enclosure of common land, for religious tolerance, and against being taxed to fund the church.

The capitalist-led forces overthrew the monarchy and established a parliament dominated by capitalist representatives as the supreme political authority, and a legal system that backed up the economic and political interests of the capitalist class.

Once they had helped the capitalists win power, radical groups such as the Diggers and the Levellers were crushed. Scared of the aspirations of the peasantry and wage labourers, the capitalists made some concessions to the aristocracy and restored the monarchy. Nearly 400 years on, Britain still has relics of feudalism, including a House of Lords.

This process of capitalist triumph over feudal relations took place at different times across the world, for instance in the late eighteenth century in France and the United States. As well as establishing political and legal systems and other state institutions to serve capitalist rule, another key task of the capitalist revolutions was to create or consolidate nation states with a common language, in which to base those institutions and capitalist industries; and to provide a domestic market.

Marxists sometimes refer to ‘uneven and combined development’, meaning that not every country goes through the stages of development in a linear, evenly time-spaced way, but that they develop through the stages of ‘historical materialism’ in different ways unique to their own characteristics. At the same time, they are affected by global influences.

Leon Trotsky, a leader of the 1917 Russian revolution, applied that concept to Russia over a decade before 1917, when he explained that the Russian working class was the only class able to remove the lingering Tsarist feudal relations. He argued that at the same time it would need to sweep aside the stunted form of capitalism that was co-existing with Tsarism, and move straight onto a socialist revolution.

Capitalism’s gravediggers

Capitalism is based on the mass production of goods and the private ownership of the means of that production: the machinery, raw materials and resources needed for industry and large-scale farming.

Most working-class people, and a large layer of the middle class, don’t have land, investments or inherited wealth that can provide an income, so are forced to sell their labour to survive. Capitalists buy that labour power, then get their money back and more, through the profits they make. Marx called workers ‘wage slaves’.

Before long-term economic decline set in, the achievements of capitalism in developing the productive forces were immense. Driven by the investment of profits to create more capital, came the mechanisation of the production process, railways, an extensive road network, electrification, motor vehicles, the invention of computers and the development of virtually instantaneous communication around the world. These advances and others took trade to a higher level and produced goods and wealth in previously unimaginable quantities.

But it came at the price of more intensive and destructive exploitation of the working-class and the planet. Capitalists, in competition with each other, attempt to force down the wages and working conditions of their workforce or to find cheaper labour, in order to increase their profits. They treat the environment as a free resource to profit from as they like, regardless of any damage to it or to local communities. The major capitalist powers have used their economic and military might to seize territories abroad and callously exploit the populations and natural resources in those areas.

However, as well as explaining that capitalism is only the most recent form of exploitative class society, Marx and Engels also made clear that it has sowed the seeds of its own destruction. The central role that the working class has played in the capitalist production process has developed a class that has the potential to challenge the rule of the capitalists and remove them from power. It is also the class in society that is capable of building a socialist society and ending the existence of class-based societies forever.

The labour of working-class people produces the vast majority of wealth in capitalist society. It also makes society function: building schools, homes, hospitals, railways and roads; producing and transporting food and other necessities of life; caring for the sick and elderly; and many other vital jobs.

The middle class – encompassing small business owners, small-scale farmers, and professions such as doctors and accountants, among others – also plays a role in capitalist society in many different ways. Struggles regularly break out from among the middle class; capitalism today is pushing workers within it closer to the conditions of the working class, so they have much to gain from joining trade unions and participating in the workers’ movement. But it is the working class that has the greatest potential to unite behind common interests, combined with the power to bring the capitalist economy to a halt by striking – and to re-organise it along socialist lines.

Capitalism has, in turn, reached its limits

In each type of class society, over time, the contradictions within its economic, political and legal structures increase, eventually holding back the development of the productive forces and the productivity of human labour. This is no less the case with capitalism, with the resulting economic, political and social crises very apparent worldwide today.

From a historical viewpoint, capitalism’s most important achievement has been to develop the productive forces to a level where a socialist society – one with sufficient resources to abolish hunger, poverty and illiteracy worldwide - is possible. And capitalism has achieved this material basis.

In 1997 a United Nations ‘human development report’ said: “It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly US $40 billion a year… This is less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people”.

Today the richest people are even richer, and inequality is greater still. However, as a system structured to meet the needs of a wealthy minority, capitalism globally will not even deliver the relatively minor redistribution of wealth that would be entailed in taking 4% from the richest, to spend on basic needs.

Moreover, private ownership of the major corporations is holding the productive forces back. The global economy is also continually in contradiction with the limits caused by competition between nation states. It plunges into regular crises due to the inability of workers to buy back the goods they produce, because they are not paid the full value of their labour.

The parasitic nature of modern capitalism is shown by the massive growth in financial speculation as opposed to investment in the productive forces. The incredible communications technology that has been developed would help a socialist society to democratically plan a modern economy to meet people’s needs in detail. But under capitalism it is monopolised by the large multinationals to ensure they squeeze every extra drop of profit out of both their workers and the buying public.

The socialist future

Socialism is the next, entirely logical, stage of human society. It will be able to utilise the technological advances and mass production methods developed under capitalism in order to solve all the present problems faced by humanity – including the environmental crisis. It will also be able to free the productive forces from the limits of capitalism and take them onto a much higher level, on a sustainable basis.

There will be an end to the waste of resources on weapons of mass destruction, huge military machines, the duplication and distortion of scientific research – including in big pharma – the waste of food to keep world prices high, and so on. To achieve all this, private ownership of the major industries and financial institutions must be removed and replaced by common ownership, workers’ democracy, and socialist economic planning.

Marx and Engels did not invent the idea of socialism. Movements such as the Diggers, who fought for an end to private ownership of land during the English civil wars, had put forward basic socialist ideas much earlier. However, at that stage those ideas were overwhelmingly ‘utopian’, putting forward the idea of a better society but without a real understanding of how it could be achieved.

The contribution of Marx and Engels was to accurately reflect and explain the material conditions that the working class experiences under capitalism and to show that socialist ideas have a scientific and objective foundation – and to put them in context by explaining how human society has developed.

Material conditions under capitalism mean that the working class and middle class will be forced to search for a socialist alternative. However, the popularity of socialist ideas will not be enough by itself to remove capitalism and replace it with a socialist society. Nor is capitalism a system that will eventually collapse under the force of its own contradictions. The capitalist ruling classes will desperately try to cling on to their privileges and power, inflicting horror upon horror, including more terrible wars, until revolutions are carried out to overthrow their rule and set up a new way of organising society.

The October 1917 revolution in Russia was able to overthrow capitalism and proceed to construct a workers’ state in the early years afterwards. However, other revolutions against capitalist conditions have not yet been so successful. There have been many setbacks as well as advances, and periods of stalemate between the opposing class forces.

A Marxist understanding of history, and of the lessons of the Russian revolution, is crucial for achieving future success. Those lessons include that the grotesque caricature of socialism called Stalinism arose from a particular set of historical conditions and had nothing to do with real socialism. [See the separate course on ‘The Rise of Stalinism’]

A socialist revolution against capitalism has to be led by the working class, drawing behind it other oppressed layers of the population, whether those be the middle layers of the economically developed countries or the rural poor and urban small business people of the less developed countries. It must spread internationally – a genuine socialist society cannot be built in one country, in what is an economically interlinked world.

Revolutions against previous forms of class society were led by a minority class who exploited the anger of the masses in a struggle to gain political power for themselves, as happened in capitalist revolutions against the feudal ruling classes. The task in the socialist revolution is for the majority to act in its own interests – for the working class to act independently as a class to move to free itself and the overwhelming majority in society from all oppression and exploitation.

The socialist revolution is the first revolution in human history that has the power to do this. Consciousness among workers will inevitably grow for this pivotal, historic task, as their experience of capitalism draws them towards socialist conclusions, although not all at the same pace, or in the same way. Encouraging the development of class consciousness and socialist ideas is one of the tasks of a revolutionary party, together with the rebuilding of mass workers’ parties, which can help to draw different sections of the working class and other oppressed people together, uniting them in a common fight, led by the working class.

Class-based rule is only needed when a minority of people rule over the majority. Under socialism, the overwhelming majority in society will be democratically debating and agreeing how society will be run. This will allow the collective and truly democratic running of society to reappear for the first time since hunter-gatherer society. But it would be on a far higher material basis: instead of living at subsistence level, society would be based on productive forces that are capable of providing more than enough for every person’s needs, and much more besides – giving everyone access to leisure facilities, education at any age, and every other possible means of developing their talents and interests.

Capitalist states would need to be replaced by workers’ states based on workers’ democracy, and the apparatus of those new states would eventually wither away, as Engels – and later Lenin – explained in their writings. Socialism, and then genuine communism, will be built, so transforming life for human beings across the planet; and also saving the environment in which we all live.