Investors benefit from the continued actual or relative impoverishment
of labour in order that workers will present themselves for further
exploitation in return for wages. Capital is dead labour, it has already been
stolen via the wages trick, or acquired by local or global banditry, or else
borrowed by the individual capitalist, but this capital risk is not taken for
philanthropic reasons. It is not to create jobs or wealth for the worker that capital
is risked, it is to exploit the wealth producing capacity of labour over and
above their rationed access (wages) and accumulate ever more wealth from their
parasitism that drives capitalist investments.
There is no natural reason for this division between rich
and poor. Both classes include every biological and psychological facet of
humanity. The only difference between them is one of ownership. The vast
majority of people own practically nothing but their ability to work and the
little that they do own — some clothes, some furniture, perhaps a house and a
car — is dependent on their continuing to possess and exercise that ability to
work. Unable to do so through sickness, old age or unemployment, they will
quickly be reduced to the level of pauperism. They are the working class
because they have to sell their working power to live and to such an extent
that they are virtually living to work.
This lack of ownership among the many is paralleled by the
immense wealth of the few. They are the capitalist class because they live on
the income from their capital which, as well as the means of production and
distribution, includes the labour-power, the mental and physical energies, of
those workers hired to operate them. The capitalist class do not give workers
jobs out of charity. If they did not make a profit out of the deal, they would
soon be left in the same position as the workers. They only employ you if your
abilities can be exploited to provide some of the wealth which secures their
life of ease and luxury. If not, your much vaunted "right to provide for
home and family" becomes your right to whistle for it. This is what is
happening in many industries just now. All over the world, there are large
stockpiles of unsold goods with many either wholly or partly unemployed.
In terms of playing a social role in production, the
capitalist class are redundant. At the dawn of their epoch, they were
instrumental in razing to the ground the anachronistic restrictions of
feudalism and developing the means of production and distribution on an
enormous scale in their drive for bigger and better profits. Today, they only
take part on a small, individual basis and have been replaced by paid managers
and various other hired hands. The only role left to them is that of consuming
the finest fruits of a society run by the working class.
The major problem that most people face today can be summed
up in one word — poverty. They are denied access to the wealth of society which
would enable them to develop and enjoy themselves to the full. They have to
make ends meet and make the best of it. The result is a life-style of
frustration and boredom — getting up in the morning, the buses, the trains, the
traffic, the shop, the office, the factory, the boss, the canteen and so on, ad
nauseam.
These situations give the lie to the false notion that 'hard
work' will solve all the worker's problems. If the people in these industries
worked any harder they would just be out of a job so much the sooner. The
market that they produce for is on the downturn, their masters cannot
profitably sell all they are capable of producing, and so there is no work for
the wage-slaves.
It is not a 'free' agreement. The worker is 'compelled' to
seek employment in order to live. The capitalist class have no such compulsion
and only offer employment in order to extract surplus value from the worker.
Nor has it to do with human nature. Damn all natural about
capitalism. It is a consequence of a class struggle between the then emerging
manufacturing and trading classes overthrowing feudal institutions and
establishing a new class settlement where the capitalist class held the
dominant levers of power reflecting their ascendency. It is a social
construction and not a natural one. Capitalism must ensure that the poor are
always with us in order to keep them in luxury by exploiting our need to
surrender ourselves to waged slavery that they may exploit our mental and
physical abilities to produce a surplus value over and above the price of our
labour-power.
The self-preservation of the human species and well-being of
the planet, would be considerably enhanced, if the earth and everything in it
and on it were in the common custodianship of us all, as social equals with
free access to the common produce. Capitalism produces its own gravediggers and
gives them the means to free themselves, and humanity, from economic necessity.
We run capitalism from top to bottom and can free ourselves form its
domination, by use of its Achilles heel. Democracy. You do not need capitalist
political party such as Labour is, and always has been, to give power to the
common people. It will never happen.
Where did the capital come from in the first place? "Capital came into the world oozing
blood form every pore" as Marx put it. The Atlantic slave trade, some piracy
operations, smashing the Indian cotton weaving village industry, forcing the
Chinese to allow the opium trade through gunship diplomacy. Today’s capitalist are
descendants of colonial war criminals, and now live high on the hog in
conspicuous consumption mode.
If you appraise yourself of the fact that capitalism unable
be reformed and must be replaced by a wage-less society and persuade the
immense majority, then fellow workers of the world can unite for socialism,
abolish the wages system and 'take' power for ourselves. Extend the hand of
friendship to our fellow workers worldwide and work with them to end the wages
system, where all the productive resources of the Earth become the common
heritage of the people of the world. "Make
the Earth a common treasury for all", as Gerrard Winstanley put it
right at the beginning of capitalism—so that they can be used, not to produce
for sale on a market, not to make a profit, but purely and simply to satisfy
human wants and needs in accordance with the principle of "from each
region according to ability, to each according to needs".
Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains
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