Instead of the lash of the whip as in ancient times, capitalism uses a more efficient method to make the workers work. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms. Marx has described the worker in capitalist society as a “free” worker. In its scientific, social sense, this means that the worker is “free” from the ownership of property in the “means of production”: factories, machinery, land; that he or she owns only one’s labour power, the ability to work, which is sold to the boss in return for wages. In other words, the worker is only nominally free. He or she is, in reality, a wage slave because the social organisation of capitalism makes it necessary for the worker to sell him or herself to the boss or else to starve. Nevertheless, as compared to previous society, slavery and feudal— workers are “free.” Their bodies are not owned as a chattel; they can return home and a family after work, move to another city, or quit a job for another.
The slave was owned outright. He was the property of the master. All the ancient civilisations were based on slavery. Babylon, Egypt, Carthage, Greece, Rome were some of the civilisations that rested, so to speak, on the backs of the multitude of slaves. The slave was given food and clothing, also a place to relax and rest for further toil. There were variations from this rule. A few were given privileges for special services which they had rendered or for their great skill in some particular direction, but they were still slaves. They understood that their life’s energy was at the disposal and for the benefit of the masters. They were under no illusion as to their social status. They did not think they were free.
When the ancient empires perished, feudalism arose with a new form of exploitation – a new slavery – serfdom.
The serf was a land slave, part of the estate as it were. He went with the land, the buildings and live stock, whenever the estate changed hands. He was different from the chattel slave of old; he was not given food and clothing. He could not be bought and sold. He was not paid for his services with money as the modern wage-slave is paid. He was given the use of a piece of land upon which he and his family, by laborious efforts, maintained their existence.
This land – a part of the estate which he was allowed to work upon three or four days each week – has been called the serf-soil. The other days of the week the serf was compelled to serve on the other part of the estate along with his fellow serfs. They all toiled free. They served the feudal lord, cultivating his soil and herding his cattle, sheep, goats, swine and other livestock.
This mode of exploitation made it quite clear to the serf that he was not a free man. He realised that his working time was given for nothing. But the modern slave, the “free” wage-worker, who is exploited to a greater extent than his predecessors, the chattel slave and the serf, is usually under the illusion that he is a free man.
In modern countries, where machine production holds the field, the wage-worker creates values equal to the value of his week’s wage during a period of time equal to the first day or two of the week. During the rest of the time he is producing for the employer for nothing and usually does not know it. Under the cloak of the pay envelope, the “free” worker is robbed to a greater extent than the slave or serf of old.
As we work, we create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances the bosses cannot spend them. So there proves to be no more market for that commodity we are hired to produce; no more profits can be gotten so the free boss lays off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled. Capitalism, greedily demanding more and more profits, puts faster machines into the factories which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will wage-slavery be done away with. The society of socialism alone can eliminate the world of waste. Capitalism’s poverty will be replaced by plenty for all.
The workers are foolishly supporting the capitalist class in wielding political power against them. For the workers still follow the boss parties.
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