"The law locks up
the man or woman
Who steals the goose
from off the common;
But lets the greater
felon loose
Who steals the common
from the goose."
'Twas ever thus. The so-called Social Contract was a social
con-trick to buy off revolution and social unrest. The welfare bill is a burden
on the capitalist-parasite class as a whole. If you are on PAYE then your wage
is the bottom line. Your employer pays the tax. Don't think for one moment that
savings on welfare or tax, will transfer into wage rises for workers. They most
certainly won't. If the amount of the nominal tax in your wage packet or salary
check shows a reduction your employer will ensure your wages are reduced by a
relative sum as wages ,equal so much food, clothing ,shelter and a bit for the
next generation of wage slaves. There is not the slightest chance employers
will keep the bottom rate of wages for single workers the same as for married
with children workers. Workers’ wages will only rise if and when boom conditions
return to enable them to grab the employers by the throat by threatening
strikes. Instead of swallowing and making your masters’ arguments for them you
should make common cause with workers worldwide, in or out of work or benefits
to remove capitalist ownership and control, private, corporate or state, with
the wage slavery, from the face of the
planet and make fre- access society for all.
The wealth of the capitalist class comes from the collective
exploitation of workers at the point of production, regardless of how well or
badly the worker is paid. The notion that work is a route out of poverty is a
lie. Whether actual or relative, poverty is the necessary precondition of
parasitic capitalist wealth accumulation. Of course one may object that the capitalist
risks his/her capital but this capital is wealth already plundered from the
exploitation of waged slaves.
We live in a world capable of supporting every man woman and
child in conditions of unparalleled luxury compared to the present day never
mind the past and work would be a welcome pleasure, freely undertaken, without
the coercion of rationed access to the collective wealth produced, as at
present via the wages and prices system which rewards the parasite capitalist
10% at the expense of the wealth creators 90%. Inequality is an essential feature of
capitalism. The idea is to keep us begging for employment in order to exploit
us for surplus value. It has to be tackled by socialists, at the root, by
eliminating ownership of the means and instruments for creating and
distributing wealth. It is the class war which is the struggle of our days, the
winning of which by the world’s working class, will end all those other
problems mere symptoms and by products of class domination by the global
capitalist class. This overthrowing of capitalism, by the conscious act of the
immense majority of the world’s working class, will enable us to share the
planet and resources of it ,without a parasitic owning class creating new
divisions, nurturing old ones and going to war to expand and defend their
privileged ownership and control.
As Marx put it in the philosophical terms in which he then
expressed himself:
"Man must
recognise his own forces as social forces, organise them, and thus no longer
separate social forces from himself in the form of political forces. Only when
this has been achieved will human emancipation be complete…Does this mean that
after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination
culminating in a new political power? No ... The working class, in the course
of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association
which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more
political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the
official expression of antagonism in civil society" (Poverty of Philosophy, 1847).
Exactly the same point is made in the 1848 Communist
Manifesto:
"When, in the
course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production
has been concentrated in the hands of the associated individuals, the public
power will lose its political character."
Or here, for instance, is what Kropotkin wrote in an article
in an English magazine in 1887:
"Common
possession of the necessaries for production implies common enjoyment of the
fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable organisation
of society can only arise when every wage-system is abandoned, and when
everybody, contributing for the common well-being to the full extent of his
capacities, shall enjoy also from the common stock of society to the fullest
possible extent of his needs "(1887, Anarchism Communism: Its Basis
and Principles).
There is a monumental struggle still to happen, a
revolutionary one such as society has not seen since the arrival of the
capitalist parasite class. Their days are numbered. Socialism won't come, as
the lick-spittle Labourite apologist of capitalism Keir Hardie once
said,..." like a thief in the night", but will arrive proudly and confidently
asserting that the post-capitalist, free access, non-market production for use
with unhindered access distributed according to self-assessed needs society, as
the new humane norm and rendering obsolete markets, money, banks, ruling elites
and their politicians and nation states forever. Common ownership is a
post-capitalist society without markets or buying and selling or the production
of commodities for exchange including labour -power. Production is for use not
for sale. No price tags on produce or rationing via wages for labour. Access is
free and work is voluntary. The planet is shared. Only the people themselves, self-organised
in the majority can bring about this transformation such as the world has never
yet seen. The only alternative to capitalism is socialism. Only the world’s
workers can do this, organising locally, regionally, globally using re-callable
delegates, as administrators over 'things'. We do not need politicians when we
own everything in common. The State and its various manifestations, only comes
into existence when classes emerged, to protect the plunder of the powerful
(from each other) and to exert discipline over the slaves and serfs in days of
yore and presently wage-workers. Of course, the capitalists present an image of
the State as a 'neutral' agency standing above society, before which all are
equal, and to which all contribute; state revenue is the 'public purse', which
we all have to support through taxation. Our argument is that although some
taxes are paid by the working class, the burden of taxation rests on the
capitalists and has to be paid out of the profit accruing to them in the form
of rent, interest and profit, the basis of which is the unpaid labour of the
working class
In socialism, theft would derive a new meaning. It would be
refer to silly behaviour when we can go to the common store and take what we
need, to deprive someone of what they are using. There is no half way house in
getting from capitalism into its anti-thesis. The transition is already taking
place as workers run this system from top to bottom including its oppressive
features. All that is required is a majority to realise their revolutionary
potential. It is time to move beyond capitalism to post-capitalist society, a
world where everything is produced solely for use; where the purpose of
production is to satisfy human needs; a world without wages, prices or profits.
This means a complete revolution in the economic basis of society. It means the
whole world's resources are owned in common by the world's population. Such a
gigantic transformation can only come about by the conscious act of a majority
of the working class. The left wing are not advocating socialism if they
advocate state intervention. They support state capitalism. Socialism is not a
top-down command economy. It won't arise out of seizure of power by minority
vanguards, (Bolshevik-style) but as a conscious rational conclusion of a social
revolution made by the immense majority.
 |
| all things are held in common |
No comments:
Post a Comment