We all want a future that works—for ourselves, our children and for future generations. We want jobs, freedom from poverty, decent education, healthcare and housing. But with capitalism in crisis, John Molyneux asks whether this system can really provide these things?

The economy has crashed but is this really a ‘crisis of capitalism’?

For more than four years the whole world has been trapped in an economic crisis. It is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s and there is no real sign of recovery.

This article appeared in the International Discussion Bulletin of the British SWP 30 years ago. At that time some of the biggest far left organisations in Italy to emerge from the great wave of struggle from 1968 to 1975 changed their strategy to one of focussing on the formation of a ‘left’ government within the existing parliamentary set up. Such a government never materialised—instead the then-powerful Italian Communist Party accepted a subordinate role to a Christian Democrat government through the ‘historic compromise’, and the revolutionary left entered a terminal crisis.

SOME ACADEMICS and historians may be happy to foster the idea that Karl Marx confined himself to analyzing the world, but the truth is that he and Frederick Engels sought to change it--and took part in building organizations dedicated to the goal of socialism.
In 1885, looking back on their discoveries about class society and the founding of the Communist League, Engels wrote:

Chanie Rosenberg, who is celebrating her 90th birthday and has been a revolutionary for 73 years, spoke to John Rose and Jaz Blackwell-Pal

Chanie Rosenberg, along with her husband Tony Cliff, were founder members of what is now the Socialist Workers Party.

‘Becoming a revolutionary lit a beacon which has shone on me all the time. My life has been spent working towards that beacon. I still have a lot to look forward to. I don’t mean my 100th birthday—but that there should be socialism somewhere in the world before I die.

Throughout his life, Karl Marx argued that for socialism to be realized, the state would have to be done away with. But since his death, many so-called socialists championed building up the state.Lee Sustar shows that this is opposite to Marx's views--and to any notion of socialism. This article was first published in the February 1985 issue of Socialist Worker.

Capitalism, as we have seen, is a class divided society based on exploitation. Under capitalism a tiny highly privileged minority rules over the large majority and lives off their labour. How do they get away with it ?

The answer, as the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci pointed out, is by a combination of force and consent. In reality force and consent are very closely intertwined and mutually reinforce each other, but for the moment I shall discuss them separately.