by proldic » Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:37 pm
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Do you really believe the Anglo American aristocracy want to kill their own wage slaves and annihalate their houses and yachts ?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I don't know about <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>all</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> the slaves, but many of them, yes. If anyone will feel the connection like I do, here's from a previous thread about economic downsizing in the US:<br> <br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>?: If the idea is to take all the money away from the working class, how will the working class pay for the products that the elites produce? What is the objective?</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Answer:Short answer: work longer and harder<br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br> It happens periodically throughout capitalist history – a cycle of expand and contract, expand and contract. The most recent “Great Depression” of the ‘30’s is a good example.<br><br>The “back story” is how the hidden hand of capitalism acts on the level of manipulating that cycle, primarily to control the power (and expectations) of working people, specifically in the form of a check on the growth of organized labor and concurrent social benefits. It also has the additional benefit (to them) of removing thousands of small and medium-sized businesses - “getting rid of the competition” for the giant monopolies and trusts. <br><br>The concept of “surplus labor” is also important. To survive, capitalism must maintain a large pool of un-and under-employed workers. On a basic level, the existence of this speaks to the obvious failure of “our” system to provide full employment. On another level, it is necessary for them to maintain this large population of Americans so as to contribute to the check on the growth of an organized class of workers. Beyond simply keeping these people off the shop floor and out of the unions, another way this helps the p.t.b. is by providing a ready supply of cheap temporary replacement workers (note the huge growth in non-professional temp agencies), forms of essentially free or “slave” labor (think work-for-welfare programs), and of course strikebreakers. Many of those folks end up becoming what Marx called “lumpen”, living in a state of hopelessness and depression that feeds crime and psychological problems, which also happen to benefit the system in their own ways<br><br>(I believe) that the popular idea that the power of the capitalists is built upon the sale of consumer goods (“gidgets, gadgets, and widgets” as Starhawk calls them) is a “big lie” meme being pushed right alongside “blame middle America”, “red sate/blue state”, “buy nothing day”, “the end of suburbia”, “peak oil”, and “decentralization”. This lie places the blame for our corrupt system straight at the feet of the working class. Essentially, we’re fat, eat at McDonalds, drive SUV’s, and it’s our wastefulness that drives the system. To many people, this analysis seems to be true - I mean, many of us are wasteful and polluting, and we are caught up in a consumerist TV-driven lifestyles. Except those pure and enlightened folks who are all off-the-grid, buying from small-scale organic farms, driving grease cars, and home schooling their kids. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those things - per se.)<br><br>On the level that counts the most, this idea about how capitalism functions is dead wrong. On the level of numbers, it’s a lie. By a clear margin, the majority of the profits made by the capitalists are from selling us vital necessities - necessities that would ordinarily be socialized in a just economy. Food and water, housing, health care, energy, means of communication. The other (huge) part of that goes to what could be called essentially military uses. The smallest part of their profits comes from the sale of “non-necessary” consumer goods. <br><br>Come downsizing, we will still have to pay for those necessities. Also, if you look in poor neighborhoods here in the US or even in the “3rd world”, you see a ton of money being made off of people in poverty, from things like check cashing, lack of free transportation, predatory lending, etc. etc. And there are still tons of cheap and cheaply-made consumer goods being sold to the poor, even in the slums of Rio. <br><br>This is all about an “austerity” program being pushed by the elites at a time of "percolating people power". They will tell us that "more people will have to learn to do without”. More children will become malnourished. Many, many more formerly decently-paid workers will join the ranks of the poor. The question is how hard and how long this contraction will be, and how bad it will have to get before working-class people see their commonality, wake up, and start mass-organizing effectively. <br><br>The scary bottom line is that we are segueing into a “3rd world” economy here in the US and Canada. <p></p><i></i>
