Many are not in trade unions and many in their desperation have turned on the union as the cause of their misery. Why should they side with their employers? Why enrich the boss who has the power to dismiss you at will?
Because you get a wage, and that wage suffices to keep you working for the capitalist and you can pay the rent and get fed. You have been turned into a wage-slave. He belongs to another class, the ruling class, and you belong to the lower class, the subservient class. You are in an overwhelming majority and they only a few yet, they own practically everything and rule the land. And they will keep on owning and ruling the land as long as you allow them to; and you will allow them to as long as you persist in voting for their politicians, instead of uniting and acting solidly with and for each other and against the capitalists. It is because of your ignorance that you don’t understand your own interest and believe you need rulers to control you. But you don’t need them. The working class do all the producing and manufacturing. The bosses could not exist second without you. A capitalist without workers cannot exist. While the capitalist could not exist without you, however, you could do just fine and would actually begin to live without them.
Capitalism is based upon the exploitation of the working class; and when the working class ceases to be exploited, there will no longer be any capitalists. What has the investor of a factory got to do with its operation? Absolutely nothing. They simp1y live off the profits and dividends of what is produced there, because you will allow it to be so. He does nothing and gets everything, and you do everything and get nothing. Some deal! Without you society would cease. Society does not need the idle capitalists. They are parasites. They are worse than useless. They simply take what you make, leaving you in poverty. You make things in great abundance, but you cannot possess them. You can only consume that part of your product which your wage, the price of your labor power, will buy.
If you think that you ought to have a master to rob you of what you produced—if you think that you are so helpless that you would die unless you had a master to give you a job and take from you all except just enough to keep you working for him; if you think that workers ought to fight each other; if you think that unity, the unity of the union would be a bad thing for the working class; if you think that your interest is identical with the interest of the capitalist who robs you; if you think that you ought to be in slavish submission to the capitalist who does nothing and gets what you produce; if you think that, then certainly you are a happy wage-slave. As an individual worker you cannot escape from wage-slavery. It is true that one in a million may become a capitalist but he is the exception that proves the rule. The wage worker in the capitalist system remains the wage worker. There is no escape for you from wage-slavery by yourself.
Having said you cannot alone break out of chains, if you will unite with all other workers who are in the same position that you are;if you will join the organization that represents your whole class, you can develop the power that will achieve your freedom and the equal freedom of all. No matter who or what a worker may be, if he or she works for wages they are in precisely the same economic position that you are, your class; your comrade.
The Socialist Party has declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. We say: Arise! It is in your power to put an end to this exploitation. Make yourselves the masters instead of being the slaves to the machine. Abolish the wage system, so that you can be free. Build the houses and live therein; plant the orchards and vines and eat the fruit thereof. The workers who sustain and maintain the world, will take possession of the world and turn all into the common property of all. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for. Our demand is modest: We demand the Earth for all the people.
Adapted from here
Wage slavery is dangerous and must be fought, but despotism thrives on egoism.
ReplyDeleteThe current system is saved by the aspiration of many exploited people to exploit others.
Dangerous politicians use this trick to make people hate certain categories of citizens.
For example, a French MP stigmatizes Gypsies in order to focus the attention of electors elsewhere than on the excesses of local governance (http://cooperationencopropriete.blogspot.fr/2013/07/the-bourdouleix-phenomenon-nasty-fruits.html).
White supremacists, Black supremacists, religious supremacists or Japanese supremacists are the same. They use nihilism and pessimism to convince workers that their life will be wasted if they co-operate with different people. When workers think that their sacrifices will be robbed if they don’t help the capitalistic elite to dominate other groups, inhumanity arises.
We must prove that united workers can obtain guarantees. Mobilization must be rewarded in order to fight right-wing populism.
We are a little late, because populists use the fact that many European workers remember fondly of the colonial period. When people think that their past national glory can give them a superior position, they are ready to become criminals once again (http://cooperationencopropriete.blogspot.fr/2013/08/making-free-frogs-origins-of.html).
Can criminals accept a socialist revolution?