Marxists and other progressive continually fight for legislation to meet the many needs that we consider human rights: free education; universal health care; free or low-cost child care; affordable housing; unemployment insurance; adequate pensions for retirement; the outlawing of all forms of discrimination based on race, nationality, ethnic background, religion, gender, and sexual orientation; affordable access to culture and recreation. We even raise the demand for full employment, arguing that the government should become the employer of last resort. We raise these demands in the United States, within its capitalist system, not setting a transition to socialism as a prerequisite for such legislation.

Can a capitalist country really provide its people the realization of such rights, and such guarantees of social welfare? And if so, do we still need to work for the socialist transformation of our country?

My answer to the both questions is 'Yes.'

Where, under capitalism, will the money come from to implement a sweeping program of cradle-to-grave social security? Obviously it will take a far-reaching overhaul of the tax system. Before World War II, corporate taxes were the principal source of federal revenue in the United States. This is no longer the case. The principal tax burden has been shifted to the working people of the country. The corporate sector and very wealthy individuals provide only a small portion of federal revenue. Moreover, as Bush runs up his war-budget deficit, additional funds go from the U.S. Treasury to corporate and wealthy bondholders in the form of interest on the public debt. A just overhaul of the tax system would require that corporations and wealthy individuals pay what we – not they – consider to be their fair share.

Would such changes cut into the profit of corporations? It certainly would! We can see this result in the case of Sweden, a capitalist country. More than 90 percent of those gainfully occupied are workers in the private sector. Its social welfare, although not as all encompassing as we might envision, is still quite extensive, financed by a more equitable tax system than other capitalist countries. Sweden nonetheless remains capitalist.

Can the US capitalist system bear the burden of a comprehensive social welfare system? The answer is again positive. Studies of the value added in production show that workers generate the value of their wages and fringe benefits in less than 20 percent of their labor time. Unproductive activities such as advertising, exorbitant executive salaries and perks, expenses connected with searches for new ways to gather profit, interest on borrowed capital, and other parasitic activities absorb the lion’s share of value created by workers, the remainder going to balance-sheet profit for the shareholders. The money is there. The comprehensive social welfare system would be paid for by a corporate tax level that would force a scaling down of these parasitic expenditures

Capitalists, of course, will fiercely resist any attempt to cut their profits in any way or to any degree whatever. We see this from the extremes to which private-sector firms go to keep their workers from forming trade unions, using every conceivable means legal or not. This determination of private corporations to oppose unionization explains why 35 percent of the US public-sector workers have union representation, while only 9 percent of the private-sector workers are able to gain trade-union recognition.

We can expect any legislation that will bring about full employment to stir up the most intense opposition. Unemployment is capitalism’s main weapon of terror against the working class. Capitalism uses the fear of losing their jobs to intimidate workers when enforcing labor discipline, and to force workers to accept violations of labor safety. Capitalist employers use the threat of unemployment against both unionized and unorganized workers when imposing wage cuts. Accept a cut in pay, they threaten, or our factory will become noncompetitive on the world market – it will then shut down and you will all be out of work and have no pay at all.

Through persistent mass struggle, individual elements of a social welfare program can be won under capitalism; this has been demonstrated by the achievements of workers in many countries, including the United States. These victories are always temporary and provisional, however – even fragile, vulnerable to recurring attacks by employers at every opportunity. Workers have recently been experiencing the continuing efforts to whittle away at whatever gains have been won.

As long as capitalist relations of production dominate the economy, the capitalist class or its representatives remain the dominant component of the executive, legislative, and judicial organs of the state. The working class, always lacking this power, is always on the defensive to protect whatever rights it has secured. In a socialist state, it is the working class that would occupy this dominant position. Its victories would be established state policy, not short-term beachheads on a capitalist continent. Only the transfer of state power to the working class can clear the way to the resolution of this conflict of interest between labor and capital. This transfer would begin the transformation to socialism – that is, to public ownership of the means of production, to the eventual replacement of production for profit by production for need.

What cannot be eliminated under capitalism are the cyclical crises of overproduction and underconsumption. Only a socialist planned economy can eliminate the occurrence of such crises. Whether or not an industrialized capitalist country must pass through the stage of a socialist market economy on its way to full planning will require further investigation. Even if a socialist market economy may be subject to some cyclical downturns, a securely established social welfare system can alleviate their worst consequences.

Capitalist globalization and the international trade agreements effected under the domination of the developed capitalist countries are not only leading to the increase in the gap between the rich and poor countries but are also undermining the living standards of the workers in the industrialized countries. In the industrialized countries, the reduction and removal of import duties, elimination of obstacles to foreign investment, and the outsourcing of production and services to other countries, are used as an excuse to eliminate jobs, lower wages, and cut social-welfare benefits.

The availability of cheaper labor in the less developed countries is creating structural problems for the economies of the industrialized countries, where the cry for the need for competitiveness is used to justify the reduction of wages and benefits. The New York Times on October 19, 2003 reported that legislation just passed by the lower house of the German parliament 'would strip away some cherished aspects of the generous social welfare system, give employers greater flexibility to hire and fire workers.' Such reductions are even now taking place in Sweden. We are witnessing in the United States today a nationwide drive by corporate and governmental agencies to increase the payments workers must make for health-care coverage.

The transnational corporations that are now having some success in turning back hard-won gains by workers are in fact based in the industrialized nations, especially the United States. These powerful TNCs use their economic power to dictate the conditions of economic globalization through the WTO, World Bank, and other international trade and finance agencies. They use this domination to set the agenda in labor-management confrontations, using the low wages of the poorer nations to batter down the higher wages in their home countries.

The competition cited by these as the reason for cuts in jobs and wages often comes from their own production in low-wage countries, operations set up abroad by the very same or similarly based corporations. Capitalism has no flag – there is no patriotism to the dollar, euro or yen. Every opportunity to extract superprofits from workers wherever they may be is seized as capital flows across borders to maximize profit for corporate owners.

US transnational corporations have shown their readiness to use US military power wherever it is feasible to implement their agenda of economic domination. They are ready to bring us to the brink of nuclear war in their quest for maximum profits. They oppose world nuclear disarmament because the US stockpile of nuclear weaponry are a way of maintaining political hegemony and economic domination by military threat. They are unwilling to curtail ongoing environmental destruction of the biophysical basis of human life on earth when it involves reining in their insatiable appetite for maximum profits. Human survival requires the preservation of the planet; socialism would be needed for this reason alone, even if there were no other reasons. Only a socialist system of production for need can replace the now life-threatening capitalist system of production for profit.

A socialist transformation in the United States is necessary to give an entirely new meaning to the term globalization. It would lay the basis for a new economic order in the world in which relations of cooperation and mutual assistance would replace international relations of domination and subordination. It would mean the salvation of humanity.