People don't generally become poor. They are born poor, (in
relation to the amount of wealth available) Yes, even in work. They may have
better or worse conditions but essentially they are only a few week’s wages or
a couple of month’s salary cheques away from the food-bank. The wealthy have
generally inherited wealth and can increase their wealth by exploiting the
labour power of those who are born poor. With few exceptions if you are born
poor you will die poor and if born rich you will die even richer. Poverty is
actual and relative to the wealth produced collectively. The rate of
exploitation of the waged slave is greater and accelerating. The fact of
working people having access to smart-phones, cars, education is used as some
indication of social progress, when it is just an indicator of technological
progress and workers require access to these in order to present themselves to
perform the tasks of selling their mental and physical abilities for a wage or
salary, to keep producing surplus-vale for the local, regional and global
parasite class who employ them. We are still wage slaves though. Freedom is still
to be won.
Socialism is a post-capitalist society, where production is
for use (not for sale) to satisfy human needs, with free access to the wealth
produced which will have no need of banks, insurance, or money, itself. With
voluntary labour and real social equality, with no need for elites or
government 'over' people, we will be free at last. The last great emancipation
will be the emancipation of the wage slaves. The workers themselves
self-organise to this end and are the only agency for this change. The principle
for the new society is, "From each according to their ability, to each
according to their needs"
The Labour Party in the past, as now, was not so much
interested in promoting ideas that threatened the hegemony of the capitalist
class, but in securing the most votes. Corbyn-style Labour is merely a recipe
to run capitalism and an attempt to manage it in a way which is fair and
balanced, while still retaining all the features of capitalist exploitation -
private, corporate or state ownership of the means and instruments of producing
wealth, waged slavery for the wealth producers (workers), and production for
profit after sale on the market for the enrichment of the parasite class
(capitalists). What is the difference between a Labour (capitalist business
friendly government) and a Tory one? Very little. It is reformism doomed to
failure, no matter how laudable and sincere the intentions of the reformers, as
capitalism cannot be reformed in any lasting way, to ensure 'a fair and
balanced outcome' (however you define this) for the majority. It is just left
wing capitalism rather than anything to do with socialism. So the so-called
intellectual argument is proceeding from a dishonest and willfully blind
perspective of trying to damn 'ideas' of that which is not being implemented,
(socialism) in order to traduce the idea of socialism, which is a post-capitalist
society. Capitalism once revolutionary, is an outmoded social system and has
been so since the start of the last century where inequality is an entrenched
as is poverty and the elite ownership of resources. What is in the ultimate
class interest of all workers, is the abolition of the wages system and the
removal of capitalist ownership of the means and instruments for producing and
distributing wealth.
The ruling class don't have to physically own the business
they invest in. Capital is dead labour if it isn't used. That is why
governments hammer the poor in a downturn when capital is being held back
(capital strike) as the markets have slumped, in order to make them (then
worker wealth producer) more attractive as an exploitative opportunity for the
parasite class to invest in. Even the
public service sectors, for example are a function of the overall system.
First of all the rate of exploitation is greater in the
examples of shrinking work-forces and growing profits, (more widgets with fewer
workers means as you say unemployment for some) secondly, Capital cannot grow
just by laying around, it needs to be re-invested in exploitative opportunities
in order for it to expand. For our purposes it matters little whether this is
knowingly, in some venture, or managed (the richest don't even have manage
their loot, it is workers who do this for them) through investment trusts, or
even extracted by the state for investment in infrastructure say (some
capitalists will howl others rub their hands), as it results in the
exploitation of workers on wages or salaries to produce surplus value over and
above their wages (ration)to be sold on the markets with a view of realising a
profit. All wealth springs from labour. The conditions where by capital is
accumulated but human needs are not met, except for a minority parasite class,
are an impediment upon human progress now, as we could have production for use
to satisfy human needs, if all the means of producing and distributing wealth
were owned and controlled in common by the whole population, without an elite
class or its government overseers. Capital is plundered by extraction of
surplus value via waged slavery. The original capital was literally plundered
by all manner of dastardly derring-do.
Capitalism can't be regulated out of excess, as it is so
intensely competitive, there is always an advantage to be sought in
circumvention of 'restrictions on trade'. It can never be based on social
justice principles for the majority, (the majority are effectively waged slaves)
it will have such aspirations (fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work nonsense as
exploitation at the point of production is essentially the part of capitalism
where surplus value is created for the capitalist), all the more to gain your
support, but regulation is for capital and properties advantage alone, as its
raison d'être is profit and accumulation. It is workers who presently run and
manage capitalism, from top to bottom and it is workers who innovate and invent
new methods and techniques. Why, when it is in their interests to produce a
superabundance of necessities to satisfy human needs should their creative
spark be dimmed? The difference with this in capitalism, as one example ,when
technology which could save labour hours is introduced, it is often accompanied
by a pitch as to the merits of its introduction 'freeing labour', but in effect
it is used to 'increase' the rate of exploitation, but the competition with
other capitalists jumping onto the new technological bandwagon, leads
eventually to gluts of unsaleable commodities, (capitalism doesn't exist to
satisfy human needs, but for profit of a few) lay-offs and more production with
labour then languishing upon the dole.
Capitalism requires, actual and relatively, poverty stricken
workers to exploit their need for rations by the wages system, in order to
profit from their (Capitalists) ownership of the means and instruments for
producing and distributing wealth.
The post-capitalist society not only frees us from the last
great slavery (of wage slavery) and ends social classes with elite parasitical
relationship to the wealth producing majority, but allows us to begin produce
in ecological harmony with the needs of the living planet on which we reside,
instead of trashing it with wasteful by-products and war. It has been a
feasible proposition since the start of the last century and is even more so
now. All that is required is a majority of politically aware workers to utilise
the Achilles heel of capitalist democracy to abolish government 'over' us and
elect the people.
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