[lbo-talk] Re: working class?

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at dodo.com.au
Wed Oct 19 17:36:45 PDT 2005


At 11:53 AM -0700 19/10/05, Dwayne Monroe wrote:


>And here is the great irony and maybe the killing joke
>of advanced industrial society: for perhaps the first
>time, it's possible to provide for the material needs
>of an astounding number of people. Despite this, our
>organizational limitations and self destructive
>tendencies (given a powerful framework via capitalism)
>prevent our latent potential from being more than
>partially realized.

Its worse than that. The very logic of capitalism makes it impossible for the potential of providing for the material of all to be met. The capitalist system relies on scarcity to drive the working class to accept subjection and exploitation. Economic insecurity and freedom from material want would poison it, would make it hopelessly inefficient and unable to provide for the material needs of people.

Economic security is logically incompatible with a market economy, where labour is systematically alienated and driven by insecurity and want. Take away the economic insecurity and want and who would freely choose to continue suffering under the economic dictatorship of the capitalist workplace? Discipline would break down immediately and chaos would ensue.

So there is no potential for providing for the material needs of all within the capitalist economic system, it won't be allowed to happen. Capitalism has developed the means of production to the point where they are up to the task, but the economic system wouldn't survive it.

Capitalism is actually a very efficient economic system for conditions of scarcity, for determining who will thrive and who will starve, when it is inevitable that some must starve. But it wasn't designed for abundance and won't work in that environment. Given that the capitalist class is the ruling class, they will obviously do everything in their power to see that an environment suitable for capitalism to thrive will be maintained indefinitely. That mean they must see to it that the poor are always with us, this is essential life-support for the capitalist system. Starvation and misery is a matter of life and death for the capitalist system.

So it isn't, as some think, that the capitalist system is simply too anarchic or inefficient to address hunger and want. It is rather that the ruling class must ensure that solutions to want are never successful. Its not an accident, death resulting from poverty is, today, cold-blooded murder.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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