Around the world the right-wing and religious reactionaries
are on the rise. If you're visiting this blog, chances are you are a member of
the working class - not because the post specifically pertains to your
interests but because, by definition, the vast majority of us are compelled to
work for a wage or salary to survive. The Occupy slogan the 99% and the 1% - is
actually not far off. The 99% essentially refers to the working class - those
of us who are underemployed, unemployed, making minimum wage, making an hourly
wage, working multiple jobs, earning a salary, working as "salaried
professionals," working "under-the-table," etc.. In other words,
if you weren't born with enough privilege and wealth to carry you through life,
you are likely working for a wage in some form or another, or would be
compelled to do so if left to your own means. Consider how far removed we are
from the age-old concept of workers "enjoying the fruits of their labour."
The working class has found itself in a breakneck "race to the bottom."
“A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” sounds like a good thing. However,
what is a fair day’s wages, and what is a fair day’s work?
From the perspective of a boss the answer is pretty simple.
The labour market defines the capitalist’s role as a buyer of workers’ ability
to work, and the employee’s role as the seller. The employee sells her time to
the employer who in turn pays the employee in wages. The capitalist pays his
version of a “fair wage”—the amount required for a worker with average needs to
survive and keep coming back to work each day. Some bosses might pay a little
more, some a little less, but on average this is the base rate of “fair” pay. A
fair day’s work to the boss is the maximum amount of work an average worker can
do without exhausting herself so much that she can’t do that same amount of
work the next day. You, the worker, gives as much, and the capitalist gives as
little, as the nature of the bargain will allow. People praise the “free
market” that wages and working conditions are fixed by competition between the
buyers, the capitalists. Supposedly, capitalists are all competing for workers,
so that competition inevitably leads to fair wages and working conditions.
After all, the seller—the worker—theoretically has several options of employers
to choose from. If a buyer doesn’t offer a price that a worker thinks is fair
for her labor, then she can look for another job that pays better. By agreeing
to the prevailing wage, so goes this line of argument, workers have essentially
made the statement: “We think this is fair.
This is a very strange sort of “fairness.” One problem is
that workers and bosses do not start on equal terms when they are buying and
selling. It’s not like you’re selling something E-Bay, in which you can wait
until someone pays the price you want. For most of us, if we don’t have a job,
we can’t pay our bills, feed ourselves and our families, or heat our homes.
Having employment is a life or death issue. It may not be life or death in the
short term, but eventually if you can’t find a job or someone with a job who
will help you out financially, you will not be able to buy the things you need
to live, let alone the things you need in order to be happy and fulfilled. It’s
a very different for employers. They have money in the bank, and if they don’t
get employees tomorrow or even this month, they might be inconvenienced or take
a hit in profits, but they don’t risk anything like the consequences workers
do.
Let’s express it more simply. Jones is an individual who has
zero access to capital, which excludes him from being self-employed. He must
find somebody who will share access to capital if he is to continue to eat.
Fortunately, Smith has plenty of capital, and is willing to share it -- under
certain conditions of course. Smith says to Jones that he can use Smith's
capital to produce, *provided* that Jones engages in 90% of the productivity
while Smith engages in 10%. Also, Jones will only receive 10% of the revenues
despite all of his hard work, while Smith gets to keep 90% for his self. Jones
agrees to these conditions because he has no other option. Is Jones morally
bound by his agreement to allow Smith to keep 8 in 9 parts of what Jones
produces? The capitalist, of course, answers, "Yes” Such an arrangement
would be grossly unfair. This relationship between Smith and Jones is
inherently exploitive, and Jones is entitled to much better. A society in which
“forces” people to "agree" to subject their will to that of a boss is
by no means "free". Capitalism simply put is a system of, by and for
the owners of capital; and so long as it retains that primary characteristic,
any society is capitalist even if the State has assumed ownership of the
capital.
In sharp contrast, under regimes like feudalism labour was
not a commodity but the property of the landlord. Indeed, labour had no price
(i.e. no wage was paid) and its activities were commanded, or commandeered, by
the person who had inherited the right to do so.
Contrary to the rosy version of the Industrial Revolution where
it is believed that the capital investments on which the factory system was
built came largely from hard-working and thrifty entrepreneurs who saved their
own earnings as investment capital. In fact, they were junior partners of the
landed elites, with much of their investment capital coming either from the
Whig landed oligarchy or from the overseas fruits of mercantilism, slavery, and
colonialism.
In addition, factory employers depended on harsh
authoritarian measures by the government to keep labor under control and reduce
its bargaining power. In England the Laws of Settlement acted as a sort of
internal passport system, preventing workers from traveling outside the parish
of their birth without government permission. Thus workers were prevented from
“voting with their feet” in search of better-paying jobs. You might think this
would have worked to the disadvantage of employers in underpopulated areas,
like Manchester and other areas of the industrial north. But never fear: the
state came to the employers’ rescue. Because workers were forbidden to migrate
on their own in search of better pay, employers were freed from the necessity
of offering high enough wages to attract free agents; instead, they were able
to “hire” workers auctioned off by the parish Poor Law authorities on terms set
by collusion between the authorities and employers. The Combination Laws, which
prevented workers from freely associating to bargain with employers, were
enforced entirely by administrative law without any protections of common-law
due process. And they were only enforced against combination by workers, not
against combination by employers (such as blacklisting “troublemakers” and
collusive setting of wages). The Riot Act (1714) and other police-state
legislation during the Napoleonic Wars were used to stem the threat of domestic
revolution, essentially turning the English working class into an occupied
enemy population. Such legislation criminalized most forms of association.
The initial acts of coercion and robbery on which capitalism
was founded didn’t stop there. Once the system was up and running, it depended
on the state’s ongoing efforts to maintain a legal structure of privilege,
based on artificial property rights and artificial scarcity. Capitalism
depended on even more massive state intervention. There never was anything
remotely approaching laissez faire. Capitalismhas had very little to do with
free markets and everything to do with legalized theft and violence. So the
free market idea of an “even playing field” is, in reality, a sick joke.
Every society must allocate its scarce resources between
different productive activities. Market-societies emerged only very recently
(around three centuries ago). The difference between a society-with-markets
from a market-society is that in market-societies the factors of production are
commodities (e.g. land, labour and tools) and, therefore, their employment is regulated
through some market mechanism (e.g. the labour market). In this sense, market
societies (which emerged during the past three centuries) have the distinctive
feature that the allocation of resources, as well as the distribution of the
produce, is based on a decentralised mechanism functioning by means of price
signals: the activities, goods and services, and processes whose associated
price rises attract more ‘attention’, and are invested with more resources
(e.g. land and labour), while those whose prices decline repel producers. Market-societies,
or capitalism, emerged when, sometime in the 18th century, the expulsion of
peasants from their ancestral lands (the so-called Enclosures in Britain), and
their replacement with sheep (whose wool had become an internationally traded
commodity), gave rise to the gradual commodification of land (with each acre
acquiring a value reflecting the value of wool that could ‘grow’ on it) and,
then, of labour (as the, now, landless peasants were eager to sell their labour
time for a loaf of bread, money, anything of exchange value). Once land and
labour became commodities that were traded in open markets, markets began to
spread their influence in every direction. Thus, societies-with-markets begat
market-societies. We must beware of those promoters of the market. They
amount in practice to allowing the robbers—arms still full of loot—to say: “All
right, no more stealing, starting . . . now!”
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