College of Political Knowledge
As my loyal readers know that I try to make complex issues and theories more easily absorbed by the average person….for it is my belief that if it cannot be understood there is NO way that it will ever be changed…..I started off with a post about alienation of workers from the dream that is truly American (will be posted soon)….then I realized that without a grasp of the workings of capitalism there would be a difficult time understanding what is meant by alienation…..
There are conditions for capitalism and it is explained well by Alan Woods and Rob Sewell……
Today, modern production is concentrated in the hands of giant companies. Unilever, ICI, Fords, British Petroleum, are some examples of the firms which dominate our lives. Although it is true that small businesses do exist, they really represent the production of the past and not the present. Modern production is essentially a mass, large-scale business.
At present, 200 top companies together with 35 banks and finance houses control the British economy, and account for 85 per cent of output. This development has come about over the past few hundred years through ruthless competition, crisis and war. At the time when the classical economists predicted free trade in the future, Marx explained the development of monopoly from competition as the weaker firms went to the wall. Monopoly capitalism grew out of and abolished free competition.
At first sight, it looks as if goods and things are produced mainly for people’s needs. Obviously every society has to do this. But under capitalism, goods are not merely produced to satisfy someone’s want or need, but primarily for sale. That is the paramount function of capitalist industry.
The capitalist process of production requires the existence of certain conditions. Firstly, the existence of a large class of property-less workers who are obliged to sell themselves piece-meal in order to live. Thus the Tory conception of a “property owning democracy” is an absurdity under capitalism, because if the mass of the population owned sufficient property to be self-sufficient, the capitalists would not find the workers to produce their profits. Secondly, the means of production must be concentrated in the hands of the capitalists. Over the centuries, the peasants and those who owned their own means of subsistence were ruthlessly crushed and their means of life appropriated by the capitalists and landlords. They in turn hire the workers to work these means of production and produce surplus value.
Capitalism! No man, including Adam Smith, thought it was a permanent state for the economy….but it has been resilient and very adaptable ……not so surprising when you understand the concept of….GREED! And that greed breeds alienation…….and that is the next post……