As many seek a better way of running our lives, Marxist writer Alex Callinicos spoke to Socialist Worker about what life after capitalism could look like
We live in a world where the market decides what we produce, how we produce it, and how products are allocated. How else could we resolve these issues, if not through the market?
It’s important to stress that the market allocates resources and values things very badly.
Control over the productive resources of society is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people. This infamous “1 percent” dominates the big corporations, banks and states.
Different units of the capitalist system compete with each other for profits and power. So ultimately priorities emerge as the outcome of a blind process of competition.
Vast amounts of resources are wasted along the way. Think, for example, of the value that has been destroyed in the present global economic crisis.
This process of competition is guided by fluctuations in prices. But from the point of view of any genuine system of valuation, the results it produces are absurd.
Worthless individuals like hedge fund bosses are paid many times more than useful ones like nurses and teachers. And the price system fails to register many important costs, such as those of the destruction of the planet by industrial capitalism.
Read more at: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=26821
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