"In virtue of this monstrous system, the children of the worker, on entering life, find no fields which they may till, no machine which they may tend, no mine in which they may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what they will produce to a master. They must sell their labour for a scant and uncertain wage." - Peter Kropotkin (The Conquest of Bread)
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease." - Helen Keller
We are living through unprecedented global change. Capitalism transformed lives by wiping out millennia-old livelihoods that were ways of life with no sharp division between work and leisure, and replacing them with dreary factory assembly line jobs where we wait desperately for weekends and holidays. For the poor, we face either no employment at all, or insecure, exploitative and unsafe jobs at construction sites, mines, and sweat-shops. Even the vast majority of those in modern sectors of work, such as the IT industry, are mere cogs in a vast assembly line stretching across the globe. During times of uncertainty and hardship, it is well known that people look for simple answers and strong leaders. The polarization of our communities divides us into “us versus them” against the very people who should be our allies.
There are a lot of people spreading false stories about what it means to be human. They tell us we are greedy and selfish, that our primary motivation is to “maximize self-interest”, and that the world is made up exclusively of individuals seeking profit for themselves. If humans are selfish and greedy, the best bet then is to let loose our greed, deregulate financial markets so the rich can “invest” in ways that bring them more wealth. Cut taxes and neglect schools, roads, hospitals (anything that benefits society) so that everyone feels like they have to go it alone. Then divide these suffering people against each other using all the tools of wartime propaganda. However, people are profoundly social. We feel inequality as a physical stress and seek fairness in our dealings with others. We are hard-wired for empathy. Nearly all of our problems are rooted in the massively unequal ownership of land, wealth, and power that exists among the 7 billion human beings on earth. These problems are rooted in the majority of the planet's population being stripped of its ability to satisfy the most basic of human needs. The crises we are going through was a direct consequence of the wealth hoarding, social inequality, and environmental harms inflicted upon the world so a tiny few could accumulate massive profits. If we are to ever establish a free and just society, mass expropriation of personal wealth and property will be a necessity. In other words, the few dozens of families who have amassed personal riches equal to half the world must be forced to surrender this wealth. Expropriation is not theft. It is not the confiscation of "hard-earned" money. It is not the stealing of private property. It is, rather, the recuperation of massive amounts of land and wealth that have been built on the back of stolen natural resources, human enslavement, and coerced labor, and amassed over a number of centuries by a small minority.
The pro-capitalist apologists argue their entitlement on the grounds:
(1) that capitalism equals freedom; or, at the very least, is the only alternative,
(2) that capitalism naturally produces "winners" and "losers,"
(3) that capitalism is as meritocratic as possible, and thus everyone has an equal opportunity to become a "winner" or "loser," and your individual outcome is based solely on your "hard work" or lack thereof, and
(4) that "winners" have earned their wealth through their own exceptionalism, and thus deserve it; while, in contrast, "losers" have earned their impoverishment through their own shortcomings, and thus deserve it.
It is an ahistorical theory that human beings, as we exist today, have just appeared in our current state, and that this state (which is rife with inequality, impoverishment, hunger, homelessness, joblessness, etc.) is justified merely by its being, because it was not shaped by history, as history does not exist. With this blank-slate approach, investigation is not necessary. Inquiry is not necessary. For the world is as it is, the systems we live in are the best we can do. However, we ultimately learn that "other people's money" is really not justifiably theirs to begin with. Instead, things like personal wealth, land, and power are accumulated in only one fundamental way: through the murdering, maiming, coercing, stealing, robbing, or exploiting of others. This is not only a historically-backed truism but it is also a fundamental truth rooted in human relations. There simply is no other way to amass the obscene amounts of personal wealth as have been amassed on earth. Whether speaking of caste systems, nobility, aristocracy, feudalism, indentured servitude, chattel slavery, or capitalism, all modern socioeconomic systems have carried one common trait: they all amount to a minority using the majority through exploitation as a source of wealth, and thus have enforced and maintained this causal relationship by the threat and use of physical force and coercion in order to protect their minority interests. From slavery and the industrial robber-baron era to the modern forms of corporate and finance capitalism, each epoch has continued seamlessly by constantly replacing and rebranding forms of human exploitation - peasant, servant, slave, tenant, laborer - as sources of concentrated wealth.
One of the basic mechanisms of capitalism is the relationship between capital and labor. No matter what argument one may make in support of capitalism, this fundamental relationship can never be denied. Everything from entrepreneurship to small, family-owned businesses to corporate conglomerates must rely on this foundational interaction inherent to this economic system. Whether branded as "crony-capitalism," "corporate-capitalism," "unfettered-capitalism" or any one of the many monikers used to distract from its inherent flaws and contradictions, proponents can't deny its lifeblood - its need to exploit labor. And they can't deny the fundamental way in which it exploits labor - by utilising property as a social relationship. It is in this relationship where masses of human beings are commodified, essentially transformed into machines, and forced to work so they may create wealth for those who employ them. This fundamental aspect of capitalism is not debatable.
The prevailing mindset within capitalist society has been to place property above all else. Consumerism equates self-worth with the accumulation of wealth, land, and other material goods, has conditioned us to view our lives and the lives as others as being secondary, or at best equal, to the value of property. Our property becomes our identity, and for this reason, it becomes as sacred and revered as human life itself. Property means dominion over things and the denial to others of the use of those things. It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities. The use of private property as a way to exploit others is unique to capitalism. For example, in contrast to feudalism, capitalists only allow workers access to their property during times when said workers are laboring to create wealth for said owners. In feudal times, peasants were allowed to live on this land, and even use it as a means to sustain themselves and their families, as long as this personal activity was done after the lord's work had been completed. Now, with capitalism, workers "punch in," proceed to labor for a specified amount of time in exchange for a fraction of the wealth they create, "punch out," and then are left to find their own means of housing, food, clothing, and basic sustenance with only the wage they receive. This latter task has proven to be difficult for a majority of the world's population for the past number of centuries, even in so-called industrialized nations, which is why welfare states have become prominent as a means to facilitate the mass exploitation of the working class. Capitalists and their governments learned long ago that workers must be able to survive, if only barely, so that they may continue to labor and consume. Private property is lauded by right-wing theories of "libertarianism" as the basis of liberty and freedom. In reality, private property accomplishes the opposite and makes any semblance of human liberty obsolete and impossible.
The wealthy few have stolen from the world; and have enslaved, impoverished, and indebted the rest of us (over 7 billion people) in the process. They have no right to their wealth. It belongs to us - it belongs to global society. Not so we can all live extravagant lifestyles, but rather so we can satisfy the most basic of human rights and needs - food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education - and thus carry on our lives as productive and creative human beings. Righting centuries of wrongs is not "theft," it's justice.
"In actual history, it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, and force, play the great part." - Karl Marx
"I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence." - Eugene V. Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment