Wobbly times number 171

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  WHICH CLASS ARE YOU IN?

  
  

  
  

  

  
  There are four, possibly five basic classes in modernised industrial societies:  

  
  

  The biggest, most numerous class in modernity is the working class. The working class and their dependents make up about 90% of the population in industrialised States. These people are defined by their need to sell their labour power to an employer, including the political State, in order to make a living. They cannot make a living from merely using their savings or what they own in terms of land or capital. Most of the time the working class possesses only one commodity they can use to make a living: They MUST market their skills to employers for a price in order to buy the necessities of life, in exchange for which, their employers become entitled to the product of labour.
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• Second, you have those people who have a skill but who sell directly to a customer unmediated by an employer e.g. a doctor could do this or a tailor or a prostitute. This is the class of independent professionals. They make up about 2% of the classes engaged in wealth production/appropriation. Co-operatives based on the sale of goods or services where the sale of the product of co-operative labour is divided more or less equally amongst its producers, fall into this class. Of course doctors, tailors and prostitutes and so on e.g. 'sole traders', could also be caught up in wage labour like workers. Sometimes, they move back and forth between classes. The class they're in depends on whether they sell the product of their labour, their goods or services, directly to a customer or whether they're employed by a pimp or a capitalist for a sum of money and this employer keeps the lion's share of the sale of the good or service they to the consumer/customer. For instance, in many countries, some doctors are paid a salary by the State to service clinics and hospitals. Many other examples could be given, including most obviously, other employees of the State.
  

  Third, there are the landlords. The landlord class is made up of people who own land or buildings and rent them and/or sell the properties they own in order to make their living--about 2% of the population.

  Lastly, we have the capitalists. The capitalist class owns the product of labour (the goods and/or services) which they receive ownership of in exchange for buying their employees' labour power for its market price--wages. This is as true for capitalists engaged in officially recognised criminal business practices as it is for capitalists engaged in legal forms of exploitation. The capitalists market the product of labour and realise profits. That's how they obtain the wealth they need to live. They keep and sell the product of labour. The capitalist class makes up about 3% of the population of industrialised States.

  Much talk is made about the 'middle class'. Most often the people being identified and who self-identify as this 'middle class' fall into: the more highly paid members of the working class, the people who market their goods or services directly to a customer, petty landlords and small business people. Others include the class of independent professionals.

  There are many members of modern industrialised society who belong to none of the above classes because they are not directly engaged in wealth production and are only partly engaged in appropriation. Amongst them are: students, stay at home partners, children, retirees, drop outs, prisoners and the physically/mentally challenged. Still, many in this class go to and fro between and in and out of the above classes e.g. the hobo who gets a lawn mowing gig or the student who must find employment to get financially through school. Other examples abound. People in this class are many times dependent for a living on members of the other classes or the wealth which capitalist political State has at its disposal. Most people in this class, especially those financially dependent on wage-workers, are absolutely essential to the reproduction of society as a whole. As previously mentioned: "The working class and their dependents make up about 90% of the population in industrialised States."
  

  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

Wobbly times number 134

1:00pm, October 15th  Location: Forrest Place Murray Street Perth, Western Australia

 "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities'." Karl Marx CAPITAL volume I, page one.

We demonstrate our anger amidst the wealth we create. We are the 99%. We produce the wealth of nations. The 1% own what we produce and by virtue of the wealth they own, they run the political show. The 1% select the polytricksters the 99% are asked to vote for. This social relation of wealth and political power is based wage labour. The 99% are obliged to sell their skills and time in order to make a living. The 1% own the product of labour. The product of our labour is called capital. Its owners are the capitalists. The 1% are powerful because they own what the 99% produce.

The fact that 10% of Australian households own 45% of Australia's wealth while 50% of Australian households own only 7% of Australia's wealth is information which is unknown to most Australian workers.

Catch the Perthian Wobblies at the anti-Rulers' Fest demo in Perth on October 28th here

Wobbly times number 92

What is 'class'? Who is in the working class? Who is in the capitalist employing class?

Class is defined by how one makes a living. The working class are those people who must sell their skills on the labour market to an employer for a wage or salary in order to make a living. The workers have nothing else to sell in order to make a living. Once in awhile, workers will market things they already own in garage sales; but, for the most part, workers are totally dependent on capitalists to hire them in order to make ends meet. They must go out in the market, hat in hand and say, "Please Mr. Boss. Please buy my services."

The capitalist class make their living from buying workers' skills, as they buy other commodities e.g. petrol, trucks, buildings. The difference with labour power is that it can be employed to create more wealth. Capitalists only buy workers who can be useful to them. This is the law of the marketplace for commodities. Commodities can't be sold unless they are useful. Workers thus purchased are employed by capitalists for periods of time, at places of employment which the capitalist owns. This is, in fact, how capitalists become wealthy. Once the sale by worker and purchase by employer are completed, goods and/or services are created by the workers. This newly created wealth (the goods and/or services) is what the capitalist claims ownership over. Just to be crystal clear: workers are not paid based on the quality or quantity of product of their labour; they are purchased on the labour market according the going rate for their skills. The capitalist then hires other workers to sell these goods and/or services, which have been made by their hirelings, in the marketplace for commodities. This selling requires a market of consumers who find the goods and/or services the workers were hired to produce, useful. From the sale of the wealth in goods and/or services the workers produce, comes the capitalists' profit. Some of this profit is called 'capital' and reinvested in buying more workers and means of production. Some of the profit goes to taxes to support the capitalist State and some to help keep the polytricksters beholden to the ruling capitalist class. Some of the profit is saved for a rainy day and finally more is spent by the capitalists on themselves. Fancy cars, fast models and big mansions can be expensive.

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The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

FROM THE PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

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Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. ^[4]

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. ^[5]

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of “saving” and “abstinence.” Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working-day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour-power, which you pay me from day to day is 1/(365×30) or 1/10950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10950 instead of 1/3650 of its total value, i.e., only 1/3 of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of 2/3 of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day’s labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working-day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working-day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity. ^[6]

We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working-day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class.

From CAPITAL, Volume I, section on the 'working day'.

Wobbly Times number 48

Preamble to the IWW Constitution


The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

Wobbly Times number 13

We're stressed in Australia! Hard to believe isn't it? How could we be stressed? We live in 'the lucky country'. Could it be wage-slavery getting us down? As it turns out, the answer is, "Yes".

Nine out of ten Australian workers attribute their high levels of stress to work. On top of the insecurities which abound about whether an Australian is going to be able to continue slaving away for the employing class (after all, how else to make a living than by having your boss buy your skills and time?), Aussies are also stressing themselves out by working overtime--FOR FREE!:

“A survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that almost three million of the country's eight million employees regularly work extra hours and
most do not get paid for it.”

Don't organise with your fellow workers in the One Big Union. No, no, no, no, no. Shake hands with your boss and look wise. Class collaboration is the way. Listen to your pollies and responsible leaders on TV. They know what's best for you.

Wobbly Times number 11

Oh...in answer to the question, "What did you do in the war, daddy?" , I have the following answer, to be found here.

"War? What is it good for?" Well that depends, mostly on which class you're in. All wars are fought by workers and peasants for their masters in the ruling class. It's in the class interests of those who control the State to maintain the power of that State and yes, to project it into other States; to defeat other States and, if possible, to take control of all or part of the wealth through war. That's what war between States is about....mostly. There are also working class concerns in winning a war which their rulers send them out to fight in. For example, it was in workers' class interests to have the fascists lose the battle for world hegemony aka WWII. Of course, we got the Cold War and the continuance of class rule and threat of nuclear annihilation (all of which continues today, although the names have been changed to promote an innocence); but we avoided the worst of the excesses of capitalist dictatorship gone mad with social Darwinist ideas and actions. I mean, learning Japanese would be an honourable, difficult, admirable thing for an Australian to do these days; but think about what a Japanese victory in WWII would have meant in terms of having to learn the Japanese language. Thanks to the workers of the world who were on the side of the anti-fascists in WWII!

War within States, civil wars are usually competitions between rival ruling classes in conflict. Again though, we need to be careful in totally condemning them all e.g. the U.S. Civil War. This war resulted in ending chattel slavery in the USA and therefore was in the interest of the workers to see the Union defeat the Confederacy. In the Spanish Civil War, it was in the class interests of the workers of the world to see Franco's undemocratic Nationalists defeated.

But, for the most part, wars, including civil wars tend to be good for, "Absolutely Nothing!" from a class conscious worker's point of view.