I’ve come across a quote recently, suggesting that liberals have been able to make life better for the poor and working classes. Here is the quote :
“Progressive reforms are capable of improving our lives without the need for a bloody, violent and uncertain revolution. In fact, not only is it capable, The evidence is the fact that, globally, parliamentary democracy is now the norm as opposed to despotism or feudalism, and while corruption, repression and oligarchy are still problems worldwide, they are at least globally recognized as problems and progress is being made to end them. Progress is being made and will continue to be made, however haltingly, without violent revolution.”
To critique this statement, we turn to Rosa Luxemburg, and one of her great essays’ called : ‘Reform or Revolution‘ –“Poverty, the lack of means of production, obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism. And no law in the world can give to the proletariat the means of production while it remains in the framework of bourgeois society, for not laws but economic development have torn the means of production from the producers’ possession.”
Additionally, we must observe the mechanism this system will operate in… Capitalism. The system of operation within this “progressive” model of capitalist liberal parliament provides us with two scientific problems according to Das Kapital and recent history. Nothing can give more than what it has, this includes capital. For the “progressive” system to operate, there needs to be enough capital to distribute in social programs, as-well as enough capital to pay for all of the many other expenditures the government needs to pay for daily operations. This provides a problem during the many influxes within the Capitalist economy. Also, since the bourgeois state is still bourgeois, radical reforms, for which they as a plan to ease and contain the tensions of workers before they become too enormousness to handle, will, sooner or later, collapse, causing a fusion of energy and hostility. For social programs to be funded there needs to be some sort of tax revenue, when the economy isn’t performing well, you inevitably receive less revenue, which means tremendous debt to afford these programs. We must look at the change of the political landscape within Europe and America — The constant switching between the center-left and center-right, which provides two non-distinct.. hardly opposite theories, which are both laughable, to address such problems. Which the liberals believe in the Capitalist market, albeit, through regulation and higher taxes / spending for social programs. The conservative — lower taxes and less regulation; which they postulate will create competitive working conditions and create jobs. Neither work, in the case of the liberals, the economy tanks, switching voters from center-left, to center-right. When the center-right assumes office they make the rich richer, the poor poorer.
We’ve witnessed these issues occur all over Europe and the United States with the increasing amounts of austerity measures. With the lack of tax revenue and borrowing to afford these programs, aided with global recession, the faults in this system have presented themselves to be a fallacious notion.
On to the politician. These politicians are not to be trusted, based on the costs. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-for-president/. The average amount spent by winning candidates was an astounding $7.26 million in the Senate and $840,000 for House candidates. (http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/cost-running-political-office.) Logically, who provides these checks? They aren’t grass-root fundraisers, it’s corporations, and these “donations” come with strings attached. These “donations” are merely bribe money, in which, their paid puppet, will act in favor of their contributor, not the classes. It could be said these reforms are for the working class, but we must know, this isn’t the case. The bourgeoisie says to the politician : “Feed him enough to where he doesn’t starve, but not too much to where he will become powerful enough to overtake us.”
Since this system is due to failure, and when it has failed, the working classes are the ones who face the blunt end of it. This system can only work in perfect economy, and we’ve yet to realize a perfect economy under Capitalism. The Capitalists argue with compassion that under Reagan and Thatcher, (Which Right-Wing Libertarians see as the greatest economic periods for both the US and UK) we’ve seen an increase three-fold in national debt, which wasn’t due to social programs spending, but military spending. Also deregulation caused the financial institutions to collapse. When this happened, we’ve seen the huge separation between the two classes. The Bourgeoisie now controlled a considerable amount of wealth, while, on the contrary for the working class, they collectively weren’t even close to being tantamount to bourgeoisie in regards to amount of opulence their class possessed. Additionally, we too saw who the government favored when they approved the bail out. The people went homeless, jobless, and hungry, while the failure Capitalist bathed in the tax money paid by the workers.
To fully free ourselves from oppression and the dangers of poverty, we must look away from the state and beyond Capitalism. No laws will be decreed for the proletariat to seize the means of production, thus putting us at risk for poverty and oppression. Since too the system isn’t natural, but artificial, we also face the dangers of unemployment. To rid ourselves of these problems, we mustn’t look towards the government, rather to revolution.
– Revolutionary Anarchist
Revolutionary Anarchist 