Capitalism at its deathbed

Doubtlessly interesting is the manner in which life, nature and matter are always in a state of change. Everything is in a state of motion, and nothing is static or immobile. Society, being part of nature, follows this trend. Modes of production and ways of life have been constantly undergoing change ever since the human race came into being.

Society in today's world exists under capitalism; predominantly the mode of production. Nearly the whole world has been subjugated to the power of capital, with its ever increasing appetite looking to devour more and more. A legal and political superstructure has arisen out of this, and all state institutions are merely tools for the advancement of capitalism, even in the most democratic republics.

But the contradictions within capitalism are immense. In its quest to maximize profits by whatever means possible, capitalism has led to the concentration of the world's wealth in a few private hands, alienated from the very masses who participate in the process of production. According to Oxfam International, almost half of the world's wealth is owned by less than one percent of the world's population. That's 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population. The bottom half of the world's population owns the same as the 85 richest people in the world. Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

Due to the exhaustion of internal markets in capitalist countries as a consequence of large scale production, the ruthless era of imperialism ensued. Colonialism, and now neocolonialism, has ensured the exploitation of underdeveloped countries by a tiny elite of capitalists from the developed countries. In 'Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism', Lenin remarks;

Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development in which the domination of monopoly and finance capital has taken shape, in which the export of capital has gained pronounced importance, in which the division of the world by international trusts has begun, and in which the partition of all the territory of the earth by the greatest capitalist countries has been completed.

Hence, imperialism is the stage in which the capitalist class exploits not only the workers of its own boundaries, but also the labour and resources of the entire world.

As a consequence of this form of exploitation, the countries of the world have been divided into 'exploiter' and 'exploited' countries. The industrialized and developed countries, whose capitalist class has monopoly over the technology and generally the means of production, occupy the core, with the underdeveloped countries, whose population is not less than two thirds of the world's, and upon whose labour the wealth of the world is created, occupying the periphery. This forms one of the greatest contradictions within the capitalist system.

Fundamental weaknesses plague this mode of production, such as underutilization of productive capacity, persistence of a permanent sector of the unemployed and periodic economic crises related to the concept of 'market' - which is only concerned with people's ability to pay rather than their need for commodities. But perhaps the greatest irrationality would be the incredible poverty, hunger and poor living conditions among the toiling masses amidst the wealth created by them, even in the wealthiest nations such as the United States.

It is difficult, and indeed impossible, to perceive a world, a society and a human race that moves forward with capitalism as its mode of production. The exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie has reached the stage where it must be destroyed for the society to achieve a higher form of development. The ownership of the means of production must correspond to the the social relations of production, and this necessarily requires the establishment of socialism.

Kwame Nkrumah describes neocolonialism as exploitation without redress, and definitely the last stage of imperialism. Hence, if neocolonialism is the last stage of imperialism, and imperialism itself the highest stage of capitalism, it follows then that neocolonialism is in fact the final stage of capitalism, the point after which capitalism will be cast away as a mode of production.

Thus, the breakaway from neocolonialism must be synonymous with the breakaway from capitalism, and the coming in of socialism.

Further, if, according to Marx, mankind always sets upon itself only such tasks as it can solve, it follows that the task of achieving freedom for all Africans and all the labourers of the world from exploitation is surely possible and inevitable. The revolutionaries and enlightened masses must therefore participate in this historic task, which has been made possible by the appearance of the material conditions necessary for the building of socialism.

Capitalism will surely collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.