Wobbly times number 157

MORE PROLETARIAN PIPE-DREAMING

"If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, etc., there's a chance to contribute to the making of a better world. That's your choice."  - Noam Chomsky

Private property for whom?

Private personal property within a classless, Stateless, democratic society would be a given.  Common ownership would not apply to your socks, your dog, your partners or kids or to the home which you use.  Common ownership would only apply to the things we use collectively like: public transport, clothing outlets, universities, grocery distribution centres, aircraft factories and so on.

In class dominated societies, the producers of wealth remain in thrall, debt and servitude to rulers.  In a free association of producers, men and women enjoy equal political power amongst themselves.   Direct democracy has become a norm. 

Unity for what?

Harmony with what

with whom

For whose strength

do we depend 

One path leads to 

conserving human orders

of top-down power 

all hushed-up inside

so as not to disturb the 

harmonious hierarchy of the dour

for do so 

would be a sin

against human nature

according to some supernatural 

code 

might even lead to 

bad karma

or 

in some other way

be offensive 

to those

who would dominate 

through guilt tripping you

with claims of

moral superiority

with maybe a promise or two 

of pie in the sky 

when you die

or pair a dice 

through submission

to THEM

The other way

of unity is

toward a solidarity 

for more freedom

not the freedom to do 

with your property

what you will

to be family patriarch 

as if humans and 
property objects 
in the same legally defined 
State enforced 
cage

For freedom defined in such a way

is only freedom for one 

to have power over others' wills

and that's greed-dumb

my friend

no freedom at all

Made by humans 

freedom flows from instinct
in history's river of time

ever on 
toward an individual liberty

where the social condition for the freedom of each

is the common condition for the freedom of all

where equal political power

between all men and women

negates the negation of debt

Whereas collectively produced wealth 

as legalised 

private property

makes for

slavery

bondage & disciplines

servile bowing rituals

to the masters of the State

or workplace

or bedroom

of whatever owning class

or caste

or gender

or supposed superior 

'race'  

Authorities who are ever ready to bring the whip on down

or brow beat you to injury and frown

for the sake of some power monger's

adrenal filled sadistic self-esteem

or crown

All that is done for

with common democratic ownership 

of wealth produced socially

and one forever rebellious NO! 
to domination and

YES! to unity 

for liberty and freedom's continuation

Wobbly times number 144

The top graph is taken from "Left Business Observer" .  Real income is adjusted for inflation.  So, the working class, or 95% of the population, the part who actually produce the wealth of the USA have had their wages/income flattened since 1967 whereas the top 5%, the bourgeoisie or capitalist class have seen their real incomes increase quite a bit.  


The second graph shows the real productivity increases of the working class over the years since the 1940s.  Note how productive of wealth you and your fellow workers are and how you're becoming ever more productive as a class.  


Aside from our rulers' increasing income, a lot of the wealth we produce goes into expenditures for capital equipment and a major chunk is devoted to military killing efficiency too. ;p  Atom bombs and funny little armoured vehicles which get blown up by roadside bombs, night vision goggles and so on.....


As a friend of mine quipped, "With the rising ratio of constant capital [machines, supplies] over variable capital [wages], expressed as 'C/V,' more wealth must be transformed into constant capital to keep up with competition (i.e. make workers more productive of wealth in less socially necessary labour time thus, cheapening the commodities representing that wealth on the market.  Less labour time=cheaper prices when price equals value MB). This tendency would also show up as a drive to reduce the wage part of the ratio by sending jobs over seas and/or forcing down real wages in the Fatherland. More productve capital means less labour needed per unit output."


Year Weekly Earnings (1982-84 dollars) for U.S. workers selling their labour power to the employing class.
1972 $341.83 (peak)
1975 $314.75
1980 $290.86
1985 $285.34
1990 $271.12
1992 $266.46 (lowest point; 22% below peak)
1995 $267.07
2000 $284.79
2005 $284.99
2010 $297.67
2011 $294.78 (still 14% below peak)
via "Middle Class Political Economist" 

Wobbly times number 136

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." - Edward Abbey.

It’s About Time

We came out of Africa

ages ago

We roamed o’er this planet

in various tribes

But

our numbers have grown

We’re hitting six billion

We don’t need any more

We need a rest

some disposable time

We’ve got enough families

and too many swine

We need a shrink

We’re working too long

driving for hours

with ring-toned

bright mobiles

stuck fast to our ears

jammed ‘twixt car bumpers

to-ing and fro-ing

producing more gadgets

than we’ll ever use

And what’s most of it for

To profit the powers

THE POWERS THAT BE

increasing their greed

immersing our planet

in fads become junk

twelve percent plastic

and toxic to boot

Yes

truth is still beauty

but look what WE’VE got

beauty’s become

a ware to be bought

a thing to be sold

In this day and age

cheapness’s the measure

of market-share gain

It’s just so much fools’ gold

What happened to leisure

Why so much pain

Come on fellow workers

Let’s turn the page

Our faire Sister is groaning

under this weight

We’ve created more wealth

than ever before

measured in money

and we’re still insecure

Output per worker

has shot through sky

do-dads are humming

boss profits are high

while needy go hungry

and poor children die

Yes

by thousands each day

because water is dirty

and boy is it scarce

The deserts are coming

the planet is warming

and pundits are talking

they’re talking ‘bout more

All for the bosses

More power for them

to grow their damn

business

and lest we forget

we’ll get more landlords

and rent hikes galore

Oh my god

can’t you see

by the dawn’s early light

Come on

all you workers

wage slavery’s a bore

It’s taking up your life

and taking up mine

Let’s make something real

something useful for us

for us and our planet

before we go bust

Let’s grow us some FREE-TIME

Give it a think

We’ve piled enough crap up

We need a shrink






"An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted." Arthur Miller

Wobbly times number 115

That we need to organise for ourselves, for a classwide strike against wage-slavery is NOT mentioned in this documentary. As Jim Morrison so aptly put it, "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer."

Wobbly times number 112

What can replace the wage system?

"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.' from the Preamble to the IWW's Constitution.

I maintain that the left lost its way sometime after 1910, fishing in the vote getting markets of liberal reformism and shutting out the revolutionaries who spoke of common ownership of the collective product of labour and the abolition of the system of exploitation known as wage labour. The official Marxist-Leninist and Social Democratic left replaced the 'abolition of the wage system' with liberal reformism i.e. with accepting, 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work' all in the name of 'borng from within' the business unions and the established political States. 'Boring from within' was meant as a tactic; but soon became the strategic goal of the left i.e. to get elected to bourgeois or Marxist-Leninist institutions of politcal power over the wage slaves of the world. To the degree that this point of view triumphed, political amnesia struck the workers' movement. Forgetting that the abolition of wage-labour was the goal of the social revolution, along with common ownership of the collective product of labour, has gotten us to where we are today: with a left composed of radical liberal moralists waiting for a Castro (or fill in some other messiah) to save them, a left that has lost all sense of being part of a social revolution made by themselves and their fellow workers, for themselves as a class. As Marx and Engels put it in THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO:

"When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished [hebt auf (aufheben)] its own supremacy [Herrschaft, rule] as a class."



QUESTION NO. I.
"How will the Co-operative Commonwealth determine the income of each worker?"

ANSWER: --
In order that the answer to the question be understood, two things must first be grasped, and kept in mind. One is the factor which determines the worker's income today; and that involves the worker's status under Capitalism. The other thing is the worker's changed status in the Co-operative Commonwealth; from which status flows the factor which will then determine the worker's income.

How is the worker's income determined today, under Capitalism?

The income of the worker is his wages. That which determines the wages of the worker today is the supply and demand for Labor in the Labor market. If the supply is relatively large, the price of labor-power, that is, wages, which means income, will be relatively low. If the demand is relatively large, then the income, that is, wages, will rise. As the Law of Gravitation may be, and is, perturbed by a number of perturbing causes, so with the Law of Wages: -- combinations of workers, on the one hand, may counteract an excessive supply of Labor in the Labor market, and keep wages up; on the other hand, capitalist outrages, such as shanghaing, not to mention innumerable others, may counteract a small supply of Labor in the Labor market, and keep wages down. In the long, run the perturbing causes cease to be perceptible factors, and the Law of Supply and Demand re-asserts itself.

It follows that, under Capitalism, the status of' the worker is not that of a human. His income being his price, and his price being controlled by the identical law that controls the prices of all other articles of merchandise, under Capitalism the worker is a chattel. In so far as he is a "worker" he is no better than cattle on the hoof -- all affectation to the contrary notwithstanding.

What, on the contrary, is the worker's status in the Co-operative Commonwealth ?

"Co-operative Commonwealth" is a technical term; it is another name for the Socialist or Industrial Republic. He who says "Co-operative Commonwealth" means, must mean, a social system that its advocates maintain flows from a previous, the present, the Capitalist regimen ; a social system that its advocates maintain is made compulsory upon society by the impossible conditions which the Capitalist regimen brings to a head; finally, a social system which its advocates maintain that, seeing it is at once the offspring of Capitalism and the redress of Capitalist ills, saves and partakes of the gifts that Capitalism has contributed to the race's progress, and lops off the ills with which Capitalism itself cancels its own gifts. The issue of wages, or the worker's income, throws up one of the leading ills of Capitalism.

The Co-operative Commonwealth revolutionizes the status of the worker. From being the merchandise he now is, he is transformed into a human. The transformation is effected by his pulling himself out and away from the stalls in the market where today he stands beside cattle, bales of hay and crates of crockery, and taking his place as a citizen in full enjoyment of the highest civic status of the race.

The means for the transformation is the collective ownership of all the necessaries for production, and their operation for use, instead of their private ownership by the Capitalist, and their operation for sale and profits.

The worker's collective ownership of that which, being stripped of under Capitalism, turns him into a wage-slave and chattel, determines his new status. The revolutionized status, in turn, determines his income.

Whereas, under Capitalism, the very question whether the worker shall at all have an income depends upon the judgment, the will or the whim of the Capitalist, whether the wheels of production shall move, or shall lie idle, -- in the Co-operative Commonwealth, where the worker himself owns the necessaries for production, no such precariousness of income can hang over his head.

Whereas, under Capitalism, a stoppage of production comes about when the capitalist fears that continued production may congest the market, thereby forcing profits down, and never comes about because there is no need of his useful articles, -- in the Co-operative Commonwealth, use and not sale and profits being the sole purpose of production, no such stoppage of production, hence, of income, is conceivable.

Whereas, under Capitalism, improved methods of production have an eye solely to an increase of profits, and therefore are equivalent to throwing workers out of work, -- in the Co-operative Commonwealth, use and not sale and profits, popular wellbeing and not individual richness, being the sole object in view, improved methods of production, instead of throwing workers out of work, will throw out hours of work, and keep steady, if they do not increase, the flow of income.

Consequently, and finally --The Co-operative Commonwealth will not determine, the Co-operative Commonwealth will leave it to each worker himself to determine his income; and that income will total up to his share in the product of the collective labor of the Commonwealth, to the extent of his own efforts, multiplied with the free natural opportunities and with the social facilities (machinery, methods, etc.) that the genius of society may make possible.
In other words -- differently from the state of things under Capitalism, where the worker's fate is at the mercy of the capitalist -- in the Co-operative Commonwealth the worker will himself determine, will himself be the architect of his fate.

Excerpt from the pamphlet
"Fifteen Questions About Socialism"
by Daniel De Leon (1914)

(see also Engels' supplement to Marx's CAPITAL Volume III.  In it you will read an historical materialist analysis of how labour time developed as the socially recognised value which products of labour were exchanged.)
**********************************************************************************

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Karl Marx from Critique of the Gotha Programme

"The bourgeoisie has thus made irreversible historical time known and has imposed it on society, but it has prevented society from using it. “Once there was history, but not any more,” because the class of owners of the economy, which is inextricably tied to economic history, must repress every other irreversible use of time because it is directly threatened by them all. The ruling class, made up of specialists in the possession of things who are themselves therefore possessed by things, is forced to link its fate with the preservation of this reified history, that is, with the preservation of a new immobility within history. Meanwhile the worker at the base of society is for the first time not materially estranged from history, because the irreversible movement is now generated from that base. By demanding to live the historical time that it produces, the proletariat discovers the simple, unforgettable core of its revolutionary project; and each previously defeated attempt to carry out this project represents a possible point of departure for a new historical life."
Guy Debord 'The Society of the Spectacle'

My point is that the whole conceptual orientation of Marx, especially concerning the interchangeable use of the terminology of 'socialism' and 'communism' was changed in the left public mind by the weight of the Soviet propaganda machine, along with Marx's notion that socialism meant the abolition of wage-labour and its replacement with a system which would have the transparency of socially necessary labour time vouchers in the first phase of socialism.

"But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing farther, from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”." Lenin THE STATE AND REVOLUTION.

Equality of wages is something Marx ridiculed e.g.:

"What are the mistakes committed by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and in this way to improve the situation of the working class, or regard equality of wages (as Proudhon does) as the goal of social revolution?" WAGE LABOUR AND CAPITAL

"Indeed, even the equality of wages demanded by Proudhon only transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to his labour into the relationship of all men to labour. Society is then conceived as an abstract capitalist.

"Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labour, and estranged labour is the direct cause of private property. The downfall of the one aspect must therefore mean the downfall of the other." Marx ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS

"Lenin¹s dictum that 'socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people,' who must of course trust the benevolence of their leaders, expresses the perversion of ‘socialism’ to the needs of the State priests, and allows us to comprehend the rapid transition between positions that superficially seem diametric opposites, but in fact are quite close." I.W.W. member Noam Chomsky

As you may know, equality of wages was more or less the rule in the 1920s in the USSR and inequality of wages was introduced in the 1930s. Marx's critique of the wage system was more or less forgotten:

"One form of wage labour may correct the abuses of another, but no form of wage labour can correct the abuse of wage labour itself."
GRUNDRISSE by Karl Marx


So, nowadays after decades of boring from within, not only are we under attack from Capital, we’re not even worth being bought off. The fear that workers of the world would unite under the banner of M-Lism has well and truly gone with the wind. And what are we left with? I mean the left. We have a left which is 99% un-conscious of which class they’re in or why it would matter in the first place. We have a left hopelessly tied to liberalism, albeit a more radical form than the official liberals in the Democratic Party. We have a left in the unions and political organisations who never mention the wage system other than to demand a fairer version of exploitation. We have a left guilt ridden about the workers who they claim are suffering from ‘affluenza’. We have a left hopelessly mired in searching for identity and bowing to others’ self-proclaimed identity politics. We have an intellectual left in horror, grasping at a grand narrative which claims to be against all Grand Narratives. We have a left waiting for Godot to emerge from the less industrialised political States. We have a left which has so thoroughly become respectful of religion that it has become religiously authoritarian itself, complete with classless moral trappings and finger waving. In short, we have a left which has been tamed by the dominant ideology: TINA.

Lifting the Veil from S DN on Vimeo.

Wobbly Times number 67

IS THE MINIMUM WAGE TOO HIGH?

Wages adjusted for inflation aka 'real wages' are now below what they were in 1964.

see: http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/2009/09/wobbly-times-number-22.html

As for the minimum 'real wage', it's now below what it was in 1958. ... See More
see chart with blue and red diamonds at:
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

Meanwhile, real productivity, output per hour of labour has increased by an average 2% or more per year over the 20th Century up till now. We're always being told via our media pundits and pollies that when productivity rises, wages rise. This axiom is a commonplace which you'll hear constantly coming from talking heads employed by the capitalist class...all part of the infotainment game. Thus, the vast accumulation of wealth continues apace. The lion's share ends up in the bank accounts, bonds, stocks and real estate holdings of about 10% of the population aka the capitalist and landlord classes.

see:
http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/2009/08/wobbly-times-number-19.html

If you believe capitalist propagandists in the corporate and State media then, you're likely to think that the minimum wage is too high. You're likely to fall into the trap of a 'race to the bottom'. "If workers didn't ask so much, Ford wouldn't be shipping our jobs to Mexico and China."

We're really never educated to become class conscious in capitalist society. We're never told that labour creates all the wealth not already found in Nature. We are told that we're mere indvidudal consumers. Our knowledge of production (what goes on in our minds) is such that we attribute wealth creation to capitalist owners of industry instead of the people who must sell their time and skills to the employing class in order to make a lving e.g. Mercedes Benz makes great cars. This phenonmenon is known as 'reification' in philosophy.

see:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/

Wobbly Times number 65

What is a Wage-Slave?

A wage-slave a person who has to sell their skills and time for a price to an employer in order to make a living. One has to be educated in order to have skills. Are you a wage-slave?

Employers make their living by selling the goods and services which are made by the wage-slaves whom they employ. Members of the landlord class make their living from renting and selling real property which they own.

To sum up: the employing class makes its living from selling the property which its wage-slaves produce. The landlord class makes its living from renting and selling the real property which it owns. The working class makes its living from selling its skills and time to the employing class for a wage. Only the working class owns a property which can add wealth to what wealth already exists in class dominated society. The workers are forced to sell their skills and time to the employing class because they don't own any other exchangeable property other than maybe the house they live in, if the bank doesn't own it, or their socks and shoes. The employing class owns the places and machinery needed for the production of wealth. The employing class could be nested in the State apparatus or, more likely in privately owned corporations or small businesses. It is because the working class is obliged to sell their life-time to another class that they are wage-slaves. They are in bondage to their employers during the time they've sold themselves for.

Of course, the working class is also free. After all, the working class are not chattel slaves. The working class is free to go homeless and collect cans for the recycling industry in order to keep body and soul together. But this is just a sub-minumum form of wage-slavery. The working class is free to sleep under hedges as opposed to buying a home from the banks or renting from landlords--using their wages of course. The working class is free to travel to another country where the political State uses its hired, armed bodies of men to enforce capitalist property laws. The working class is free to use its time and skills to grow vegetables. The working class is also free to become members of the capitalist class, if they can get enough capital together by saving their wages or engaging in selling illegal commodities. Risk ideology is big amongst the promoters of capitalism. But, in essence, most of the working class are wage-slaves and will remain so, until they become class conscious enough to organise One Big Union.

Wobbly Times number 4

INDIFFERENT NATURE


They can all go to hell


it doesn't matter to me


The world and all its troubles


it doesn't matter to me


It doesn't matter to them


either


It doesn't matter me


We're all no matter


no matter mate


We're all a mess here


don't you see


We don't give a flying...


about anything more


more than our immediate needs


you see


We're all a bunch of nincompoops


lying by the sea


on briney beaches


more like leeches


than whales are we


whales out in the sea


We're all sucking each other's blood


you see


it doesn't matter to me


The Earth is going belly up


but I'm all right


My MBA will soon be hatched


It doesn't matter to me


With job in hand


I'm realistic


I'll have a couple kids


or maybe even three


You see


the world may be all messed up


but it doesn't matter to me


Climate change is just word


I've got my car and wife and kids


I'll just have a cuppa tea


The leaders who are in charge


have always been in charge


I want to be one of them


but until I do


I'll be myself


cause it doesn't matter to me