Monday, December 03, 2012

The chains of bondage


Corporate profit margins have hit an all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. One reason companies are so profitable is that they're paying employees less than they ever have before. U.S. companies have become obsessed with generating near-term profits at the expense of paying their employees more and investing in future growth by making capital investments. Our current system is creating a country of a few million over-lords and three hundred-plus million serfs.


Many have lost sight of the major cause of the recession. The  problem affecting the economy was a  housing boom, an explosion of household credit and the associated sleazy practices by the mortgage banking industry. When the boom collapsed the credit crunch crisis of 2008 resulted. The recession caused the deficit. In 2007, the deficit was a  1.7% of GDP.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasted deficits of between 0.7% and 1.5% of GDP for the years 2008 through 2011 and surpluses for the seven following years through 2018. What threw this forecast off track was the deep recession, resulting in collapsing tax revenues, increased unemployment insurance and various stimulative spending programs that wouldn't have happened if not for the preceding housing and credit boom.



The fiscal cliff is an artificial problem manufactured in Washington during the debt limit negotiations in the summer of 2011 that caused the loss of the U.S. triple-A credit rating. Since the deficit did not cause either the recession or the staggering slow recovery, a reduction in the deficit is not the cure. It does not solve the real problems facing the economy. This is a kind of a confidence game the professional politicians have been playing with the workers of all nations all these years. To keep them in subjection by playing upon their ignorance is the rule that governs their campaigns for votes among the workers. The “issues” upon which they keep the workers divided into hostile camps are of their own making. The "issues" which divide the capitalist political camps are merely quarrels between rival groups of capitalists over the division of the spoils which they have expropriated from the workers. The professional politicians stock in trade is the credulity of the masses. Control of corporations and the enforcement of the punitive clauses of capitalist legislation, by capitalist politicians, are twin frauds in the program of capitalism’s efforts to fool the people. The vital "issue" is not touched, nor even mentioned in the Republican or Democratic platforms. Wage-slavery under capitalism, the legalized robbery of the workers of what is produced by their labor, is the fundamental crime against modern humanity, but there is no room for the mention of this vital fact. With smoke and mirrors we are distracted by the "fiscal cliff" and the deficit.

The Big Lie goes like this: We need to somehow “fix” Social Security because people are living longer – “fix” in this context being the code-word for “cut.” Two groups stand to benefit from those austerity measures.The rich who are ever reluctant to pay taxes and can reduce their taxation burden, and those companies who want privatizing retirement schemes so they can create their pension plans and collect fees and commissions. For working people the only “fix” is the fix they will be in if the already modest benefits are further reduced.

Political parties are responsive to the interests of those who finance them. This is the infallible test of their character and applied to the Republican or Democratic parties, these parties stand forth as  political expressions of the divisions in the capitalist class. The funds of all these parties are furnished by the capitalist class for the reason, and only for the reason, that they represent the interests of that class. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the nation’s industries, the toiling masses will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. To tell them that juggling with the budget and the debt will change this disgraceful condition is to insult their intelligence. The most promising fact in the world today is the fact that labor is organizing its power; its economic power and its political power. These are the battles of the workers in the war of the classes and the battles of the workers, wherever and however fought, are always and everywhere the battles of the Socialist Party

 Wage-labourers are kept in a state of humble dependence by the monopoly ownership and control of productive property. Despite the fact that the source of the wage-labourer’s subjugation is different from that of the chattel slave, it is no less servitude. Wage-labourer’s are forced to sell their labour power to owners because they had no reasonable alternative to doing so. They cannot steal, cheat or rely on charity. Though they agree to a labour contract, they make this contract under conditions of necessity, voluntary but unfree. The Knights of Labor once put it, “when a man is placed in a position where he is compelled to give the benefit of his labour to another, he is in a condition of slavery, whether the slave is held in chattel bondage or in wages bondage, he is equally a slave.”
Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism  prerequisite is production for use. Whenever the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution fail for any reason to realize profit, it is in their power to cease production or distribution and the world’s workers may starve. Again, if the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution permit to be operated, they dictate the terms upon which the world’s workers may use that machinery. In other words, the only function of the modern capitalist is to own that which his brother man must use. The worker has naught but his labor power, of hand or brain, to sell, and if he must sell his labor power upon terms dictated by another, he is a slave. "He who controls my bread controls my head", and so the contest between modern capitalism and socialism resolves itself into the age-old question of human slavery.

Concern for human freedom requires us to think about how to organise power in and at work. It is the task of workers to use our collective power to transform society, regain control over our own labour, and thereby achieve real freedom. The way to gain our independence is not by recreating a society of small owner-producers, or creating producer and consumer cooperatives, or through nationalising control of the means of production but by common ownership. Instead of workers facing unemployment while owners increase their profits, everyone can equally enjoy a shorter working day. Ten hours a day will become eight, then six, then even four. Not only will the burdens of hard work be reduced and shared, but the enjoyments of leisure increased, for everyone.

The promise of the cooperative commonwealth is not a utopia but it will only be won through the political efforts of the workers themselves. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for. Socialism was born of the class antagonisms of capitalist society, without which it would never have been heard of. It is a struggle of the working class to free themselves from their capitalist exploiters by wresting from them the tools with which modern work is done. This conflict for mastery of the tools is necessarily a class conflict. It can be nothing else. In the struggle of the working class to free itself from wage slavery it cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the working class itself. The unions and the workers' party must be managed and directed by themselves, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

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