All social wealth is ultimately the product of labour and labour alone. This includes the factories, technology and all other means of production, which are the product of past labour. Capitalist development has placed the modern facilities of production under the lock and key of private ownership. As a result, the working class majority suffers from growing deprivation and all the social ills emanating from that maldistribution. While profits have been soaring during this economic boom, wages have been falling. The only solution is for the working class to establish socialism. The fact that it today is privately owned by a few is the result of it being "legally" stolen from the working class. Society thus has the right to claim the property in the name of human survival, social well-being and progress.
The state "is but the executive committee of the ruling class," Marx wrote, and "the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." He held that under socialism the political state must die out. Production and distribution will be planned to meet the needs of society. This will be a society of cooperating interests rather than conflicting material interests. People's priorities, their attitudes about life and their fellow humans, will change in an atmosphere of cooperation. The needs of the environment and consideration for all forms of life will be paramount.
Under capitalism, almost everything that is produced is produced for profit. The needs of humanity, and the needs of all life are subordinated to the accountant's ledger. As capitalism gained ascendancy in the world, everything was turned into a commodity to be bought and sold. Marx showed how the introduction of new machinery and labour-saving methods by one capitalist requires industry-wide imitation by others and results in ever-increasing unemployment. He explained the process by which wealth concentrates into the hands of a few and how small capitalists and independent producers lose their property and fall into the ranks of the working class. This tendency is exactly what we continue to witness with the introduction of new technology, robotics, and automation.
Under capitalism, all workers are economically exploited, although this robbery is well-hidden in the phrase, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work." Capital is wealth that has been stolen at the point of production from previous generations of workers. The big corporations of the United States are habitual lawbreakers, convicted over and over of violating anti-trust, restraint-of-trade, price-fixing, bribery, workplace-health-and-safety, labour-relations and environmental-protection laws. As it is, corporation executives seldom spend any time in jail, and corporation stockholders don't even have to worry about being accused for their companies' illegal actions that may provide them millions in dividends. The corporations are also implicated in the crimes of the United States government, which carries on violence and terror the world over. It is their property and profits that are being protected when the U.S. military smashes attempts by other countries to control their own oil and other natural wealth, or when the CIA directs its puppet dictators to murder workers and peasants fighting the exploitation of the multinationals. The people on the top cheat, lie and kill or pay others to cheat, lie and kill to get what they want.
Workers are in the majority and our numbers has the power to bring the system to its knees. A great struggle lies ahead of us. Whether we welcome it or fear it or deny it or want to avoid it, it will come, because the economic laws of the capitalist system will force it on us. Let's hope it ends in the reconstruction and reconstitution of society rather than the “common ruin of the contending classes."
Politicians will continue to provide empty promises and band-aid solutions that can only continue this shameless wealth and needless poverty. Only an economy that is commonly owned and democratically controlled by the workers who produce all the wealth can deliver lasting prosperity and economic security for all.
If all the wasted labour were devoted to productive and socially-beneficial tasks, we could produce enough to provide everyone with a decent standard of living working only a fraction of the time we do today. By dividing the labour time needed in all industries equally among all who can, should and want to work, the workday for everyone could be drastically reduced. This is not a utopian dream. It is a simple recognition of the facts of industrial production, of the level of productivity technological development, has achieved. But it is a hopeless dream to imagine that an equal distribution of work can be achieved within the capitalist economic system. If workers want a secure and comfortable livelihood, if they want productive and rewarding jobs, if they want enough leisure time to develop their individual talents and satisfying relationships -- if this is what workers want, they need to organise a mass socialist movement to take democratic control of the State and the means of production.
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