THE PERFECT WORKER

Newspaper editors have a difficult task every day - what should be their front page headline? Millions starving in a famine in East Africa? Demonstrators gunned down in Lybia? A difficult choice perhaps but the editor of The Times led with a really important headline. "Welfare in chaos as thousands live to 100" (Times, 4 August) In any sane society the news that human beings are managing to live a little longer would be the cause for celebration, but this is capitalism and there will be no dancing in the street at the news. The news that the working class who produce all the wealth of the world are tending to live longer is bad news for the capitalist class who live on the surplus value that the workers produce. To the owning class the perfect worker is one who goes to work after they leave school, works two nights overtime and a Sunday and on the day he retires goes to the Post Office to collect his state pension and drops dead at the counter. No pension, no drain on the owning class's surplus value - Perfect! RD