OPINION

Someday recession will end and capitalism will return to profit for another period. Once again those with capital will make shed loads of money and we will return to long hours, rising prices and false promises, all before the next collapse. This has been the pattern for over a hundred years, the pattern our parents and our grandparents went through, the pattern that bred fascism and the slaughters of world war two.
It is this pattern of boom followed by bust that is fundamental to capitalism even if in each new boom some will choose to believe this logic has been escaped but it has not.

Unless the system is changed it will be a pattern that our children and grandchildren will also endure. But now in some-ways things have become worse. Capitalism in its boom periods has started to exhaust the planets resources and poison the air and water supplies that we all depend upon. It’s irrationality in the drive for profit no longer simply threatens us with recession and war when things go wrong, it now threatens the ability of the earth to support the existing and future populations.

In the middle of the boom it may have looked like capitalism was working, if you were lucky enough to be in a developed country like Ireland, UK or Europe. But even during the boom years two billion people were living on less than two dollars a day and tens of millions of children were dying every year from poverty and preventable diseases. And now the boom is over, one of the first cuts the governments have imposed was to slash millions off the foreign aid budgets. While bailing out fat cat banks and financial institutions.

We need to stop the bust - boom – bust cycle by ending the system based on greed and profits rather than need that drives this cycle.
It is true that previous attempts to implement alternative economic systems have ended in disaster; the Russian revolution promised everything just over 90 years ago but delivered only horror. In 1916 many good people sacrificed their life for the ideal dream of an independent republic in Ireland. The principle of the proclamation was never achieved and capitalism supported by a religious elite flourished. Another horror.
Unlike the generation of the early twentieth century, we cannot fall into the illusion that an individuals freedom can be weighed on some scales and exchanged for economic security.
In reality this is no more than the reverse of the illusion that free market capitalism has created happiness and success in the last few decades.

What we need to organize for today, is a system that is based not only on satisfying the needs of the many but which also does away with the division of labour and class.
We must organize for a society without leaders and the led, without boss and worker whether that boss wears the top hat of the capitalist or the red star of the political commissar. Cooperation and peaceful co - existence is the only key to humanity’s survival in a new global economic climate.