What’s the Alternative to Capitalism?

An article by Iain Dalton - from Leeds branch of the Socialist Party - discussing the "ever greater questioning of the current way society is organised".

As the Occupy movements signify, there is an ever greater questioning of the current way society is organised, with many questions the capitalist economic system itself. For socialists, it is incredibly encouraging to see wide layers of people criticising the current economic system, but one feature of the present questioning of capitalism, is confusion and a lack of any definitive alternative. Therefore all sorts of ideas are being thrown up and seized upon by people eager to find a way out of the current economic impasse. Yesterday the Yorkshire Evening Post (YEP) published an article ‘Is the golden age of capitalism over?’, which discuss this and raises some alternative views, in particular steady-state economics.

The main thrust of steady-state economics is that rather than aiming for growth within an economy in terms of production of resources, people should be content with maintaining what already exists, or as the article puts it “instead of continually accumulating more things, we would have to be content with what we have – we would be encouraged to fix things instead of buying new, to grow our own vegetables or buy locally produced ones”.

This questioning of the need for growth, is something that is common to many of the people taking part in the occupy movement. For many it is synonimous with environmental destruction, wastage and greed and as one of the interviewees in the article explains “the economy simply cannot grow forever on a planet which has finite resources and we can see that happening right now with the price of oil”.

For socialists, the question of growth has to be related to the needs of people, the very essence of socialism relies upon the democratic planning of the economy to ensure the production and distribution of the resources that are required by people to live a full life. But to take a glance at the consumption levels for most people even in the advanced capitalist countries such as the UK, reveals the high levels of poverty currently existing, let alone the neo-colonial world. For the majority of people “most of us changing to a more modest lifestyle” (ie a majority, not simply the super-rich 1%), would simply not be viable and is an attempt to turn back the clock of development.

Critics of socialism often accuse socialists of wanting to level down everyone’s income in such a manner, but as is pointed out “The idea with the steady state economy is to accept we have this low level of growth and that we are happy with it and to figure out how we live within that. It sounds like socialism but it’s not.” Or as another interviewee comments “A steady state economy is simply another version of capitalism".

But is such a steady-state even possible under capitalism?

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Please click here for the full article.