Let us make no mistake about it. The capitalist class is engaged in an ongoing class war with the working class. Those of us who must work for a living possess economic interests diametrically opposed to those who live off our surplus value.
The recent Bankruptcy bill signed by President Bush makes this very clear. It attempts to limit the legal ability of working people to declare bankruptcy, which has apparently been costing credit card companies, mortgage companies, and car salesmen, among others, vast sums of money that “rightly” (according to the capitalist logic of property rights) belong to the owners and not to us. However, corporate bankruptcy law is unaffected in its ability to allow corporations to declare bankruptcy and gain protection from creditors for any reason at all (even mismanagement).
Most workers apply for bankruptcy for three key reasons: illnesses that led to multiple hospitalizations or expensive treatments (which can cost some patients hundreds of thousands of dollars whether they are insured or not, most private insurance plans leaving 15% to 25% of hospitalization costs to the patient), unemployment, and familial crises such as divorce.
The existence of vast allotments of credit to workers has produced such a cushion around the value of working people’s salaries and wages that the so-called credit economy is frequently referred to as “moneyless.” Wish that this were true, but not at all! This is a cause of great alarm among the capitalist class, who clearly has no intention of letting working people, who derive their existence by selling their labor-power to the owning class, obtain more money than the value of their labor-power in the form of excused debt. The recent Bankruptcy bill provides a salient illustration of Marx’s labor theory of value. For according to socialist economic theory, our wages or salaries are determined roughly by the values inherent in our reproduction as a class – in short, varying from the value of unskilled labor-power which is the minimum wage – aimed at providing the very minimum of existence – to increasingly skilled labor-power with a price hovering somewhere below or above the mean salary in the United States of $43,000 per family, according to an article read in the newspaper many months ago whose source I am unfortunately not able to credit. Ever wondered why we are paid the amounts that we are (and not, say, $100,000 or even half a million dollars for that matter)? These values are roughly determined by how much it is going to cost to send us to school, pay our rent or mortgage, feed the family, transport us to work and back, and provide a minimal degree of comfort and security.
The existence of credit obtained from credit cards, or the value of excused debt, muddies this relationship to a large degree, even despite the limits of credit available to the average worker. The capitalist class has no intention of truly offering us a “moneyless” economy, but rather one in which even the costs of medical services when ill should be borne entirely on our shoulders, or to a greater degree. However, there is clearly a double standard here, since the Bankruptcy bill does not apply to corporations, who are still legally able to declare bankruptcy and even to retire their key players with several hundred million dollar retirement packages.
It is very clear with this recent bill that the capitalist class is consciously trying to keep the working class from receiving more wealth than it ought to have in its wages or salaries, and that it is determined to maintain our labor-power’s value to include the costs of our class’ reproduction, including even any astronomical health costs we may incur.
This bill proves that the capitalist class is very aware of its war with us, by which I mean its attempt to see to it that we get as little as it can get away with, and the most that it can walk away with. We are expendable, we are merely the class of wealth producers, with the lowly status accorded to such as a class. While many in the press are criticizing the double standard inherent in the Bankruptcy bill (bankruptcy rights for the rich, but not for the rest of us), insufficient attention is paid to how this basic double standard reflects the inevitable logic of the class system, one class that produces and does not own and another that owns and does not produce. When fellow workers come to understand this, they will have achieved class consciousness, and will be ready to organize democratically for what the wealthy fear the most, that we will decide to take over their factories, their land, their workplaces, and place these in the common ownership and democratic control of the entire human race.
In other words, the Bankruptcy bill makes it very clear how antagonistic the capitalists see our and their interests as standing in relation to each other. They do not hesitate to fight the class war against us, not only in their laws but also in the very process of hiring us and exploiting us by virtue of their ownership of the means of producing life. It is in our interest to fight that same battle on the political front, but not through modifying the capitalists’ laws that act in their interest as they exist ultimately to protect property relations, but rather through the political act of democratically dispossessing our employers altogether, and thus through abolishing the miserable institutions of wage labor and buying and selling themselves.
We will then be able to achieve a real moneyless economy, in which the things and services we require will be ours as a logical extension of our needs. The so-called logic of economic costs inherent in the Bankruptcy bill shows itself to be itself illogical and bankrupt. The market system now stands as a fetter to human progress and the realization of our desires and our needs. It is urgent that we organize NOW to liberate ourselves from it. This is the most urgent task facing humanity at this time.
Educate yourselves about what real socialism is – a classless, moneyless society of production for use rather than for sale – and then please join us now to realize this most necessary and possible next stage in social evolution.
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