Capitalism Has Failed: We Need the Socialist Alternative

This article by Eoin Ó Murchú first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.

WHILE opinion polls, North and South, show an increasing discontent with the failures of the current system, especially in housing, health services and the cost of living crisis, there is at the same time a frustrating sense of helplessness.

But the working class is only helpless when it stands back and leaves the development of social and economic policy in the hands of others.

What we crucially need is straightforward clarity.  Lets face it: capitalism is failing.  Despite all the blather, the homeless and housing crises remain unresolved.  This is not accidental.  It is the result of insisting that issues such as this can only be tackled within the private enterprise system.

So, the Dublin government knows that it’s changes to rental policy – allowing landlords to increase rents on various excuses – will make renting more expensive and increase the pressures that keep people insecure and struggling to make ends meet.

The government knows this, but refuses to entertain the idea that issues such as housing should be tackled directly by the state; that, instead of trying to create an environment that will entice investors in, on the expectation of higher profits, the state should spend the money to provide the housing we need, and tax the rich to find the resources to pay for it. The solution is simple and staring us in the face.  But instead of debating this truth, we are diverted into arguments about various government schemes – all of which fail to deal with the problem and all of which we know will fail.

The situation is the same in the health service.  Despite the pretense of universal health care, all the pressure, through critical under-funding, is to drive people into the private healthcare sector.

In the North, people are proud of the NHS, but only proud of the principle of universal care free for all, not at the shambles that has been made of the system.

And the Executive is powerless to deal with this, or any other, crisis.  Britain holds the purse strings, but the parties allow sectarian differences and sectarian point scoring to occupy their attention instead of finding common issues they can unite on.

There is only one way to deal with this, and that is for the working class to find and assert its individual voice – through trade unions and community organisations – to identify the issues (whether it be housing, health, environment or whatever) and pressure the parties to unite for immediate action whatever differences exist about the long term context for the development of working class democracy throughout Ireland.

In this, there is one shadow that we must face up to.  Neither British imperialism with its emphasis on war and entrenched inequality, nor the European Union with its insistence on the primacy of the market and private enterprise are the contexts in which workers can ensure that our needs are dealt with first and foremost.

It isn’t that we have failed because we didn’t implement capitalism properly, we have failed because capitalism itself is a failure. There is no use in tinkering about the system. We need a different system

So, again, it is the state that should invest in houses and health, in rural development and in depressing the costs facing working people.

The parties – all of them in the Dáil and in the Assembly – are unable or afraid to challenge the fundamentals of the status quo.  But that challenge is essential if we are to have any future of a decent life.

We, the working class should use our own strength to corral the parties – especially those that call themselves Left – to adopt policies that suit us, to fight both British Imperialism and the European Imperialism of the European Union.