The horrific system in the former Soviet Union did tremendous damage to the idea of socialism. Most workers my age were totally put off by it. After all, I want to be free to say what I want. But this was not socialism, and it certainly wasn’t communism.Factory Occupation, Chicago
But to be free means different things to different people. Freedom for a capitalist means the right to exploit Labor. As an owner of capital, a capitalist finds a very unique commodity in the marketplace, this commodity is human Labor power, or a human being’s ability to work, our life activity. They purchase this and use it over a period of time. It is the use of our life activity over a period of time that is the goose that lays the golden egg as it is the source of the capitalist’s profit and of all wealth, including the reserve capital that they have accumulated from the use of Labor power in the past and out of which they pay wages. The great deal for them is that they return less to the worker in the form of wages than the value we produce; it is an unfair exchange that is maintained through coercion and violence.
In order for this relationship to exist, there had to emerge in society a group of people with significant money wealth on the one hand, and on the other a group of people who were “free” meaning they were free from being tied to the land as serfs were. Free from the possession of any means of sustaining themselves independently like instruments of Labor or little plots of land on which they could produce their food and much of their wares. This took place with much violence as a family that could produce its own food and clothes, its own means of subsistence, could not be enticed to work for wages for someone else. In Britain, peasants were violently driven off the land so that they were free to sell the only possession they had left, their Labor power, the same methods were applied throughout the world as the capitalist system roamed the globe in search of raw materials and more Labor power.
But we don’t own the products of this life activity. In fact, the object of our activity as a worker is not the product we make but the wages we receive that allow us to purchase the commodities we need to live; housing, food, education, transportation and the little pleasure we require. They called this wage slavery, as we are not owned in total like a chattel slave, or in part like a serf or peasant. We are free in that sense, but we cannot escape working for the class of capitalists who control society. We can leave one, we can go to another, but sell our Labor power we must; we must be dependent on them for the set up to work, for profit to be had. The only other alternative within this set up is to become one of them, something that is impossible for us all to do and that is actually something working class people do not find easy to do either. As workers we have a strong sense of collective identity, we may not all call it this but it is class solidarity. To be a successful capitalist you have to be individualistic, selfish and above all ruthless. I am not talking about the owner of the corner store here but the owners of industry.
What makes me think about this today, as opposed to every minute of every other day, is the situation in the auto industry. I read this morning that the moneylenders that own Chrysler are in negotiations with the government. Because there are too many car factories in the world that produce too many cars (they call this overcapacity and all industries are burdened with it) not enough profit can be made making them so capitalists want to shift the capital around. The moneylenders that own Chrysler also own or owned food services, like Albertsons, car rental companies like National and Alamo, apparel companies like Mervyn’s and arms makers like Remington. The founder of Cerberus, Steven Feinberg was said to have earned $50 million in 2004 and the company includes among its head honcho’s the imbecile Dan Quayle, paid millions no doubt for the connections he has.
So moneylenders are in negotiations with the government concerning how much money they will or will not lose and how much they’ll receive from the taxpayer to clean up the mess in auto. They are, in other words, negotiating the future of the company. For them they are in discussions about money. They are not in negotiations about their jobs. They are not in negotiations about their homes and whether they will keep them, Dan Quayle and Steven Feinberg will not lose their homes and be forced to leave their communities---their communities will not be destroyed by these negotiations, in fact, their communities will benefit from them.
The homes, jobs, and communities of the workers that actually build the cars at Chrysler are being discussed between the moneylenders and their political representatives. Those chosen by the Obama administration to deal with the crisis in auto, are themselves investment bankers or other capitalists; the very people responsible for the crisis that exists in industry and society as a whole.
Three generations of working class families are responsible for the auto industry, they built it; they created its wealth, but they don’t own it and they have no say in how it should be run, what it should produce and how. They are barred from the talks. Moneylenders are determining their futures and indeed the future of workers throughout the US and the world. The “negotiations are private” reports the Associated Press.
Is this freedom? It is for the owner of capital.
If we accept that the system of production in which we live, capitalism, is the only way society can be organized, then we cannot do much about this. If we accept that a few private individuals the Dan Quayle’s, Donald Trumps and Steven Feinberg’s to name a few, have an inalienable right to own the productive forces and all the main industry of society then we should congratulate them and head for the nearest Burger King and fill out a job application. If we accept this freedom of theirs then we can’t moan about them moving their capital, factory or workshop to Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso where they can buy human Labor power for $1.50 an hour.
The likes of UAW president Ron Gettelfinger and all the top Labor leaders accept that they have this right. They are realistic you see. Hal Stack, a director of Labor studies at Wayne State University agrees with me. Union leaders like Gettelfinger “know that it’s better to live and fight another day than to go down nobly with a sinking ship” he tells the media. (1) The Union officials are “realists who understand the problems facing the industry” says the Financial Times.
But the ship is sinking. The Labor leaders realism leads them to collaboration in a mass drowning. They do not fight at all. Neither do they understand the problems facing the industry or any industry. The problem is that it is privately owned. Production in society is based on profit and that profit comes from the unpaid Labor of the working class as we are paid less in wages than we create in value. This is the cause of overcapacity, the massive build up of debt and the present crisis.
Capitalism was a historical step forward. It socialized production. The next step will be to socialize ownership, but the present owners will resist this with all means at their disposal, applying divide and rule through racism and a dose of violence if they need to. But how society’s Labor and capital is utilized should be a collective decision. What we produce, how we produce it and when is our collective responsibility. We must overcome the stop in our minds that leads us to believe we cannot accomplish this and that workers cannot make such decisions, that workers cannot run or rule society. There are great lessons to be learned from the Russian revolution to the Seattle general strike that teach us how an economic system like this would function. This is a step toward genuine freedom.
If the past two years have taught us anything is that the market is not what they said it was. They have shown that they have forfeited their right to run not only Chrysler or GM but also society in general. Workers can not only do a better job, we can guarantee everyone has one, even Dan Quayle.
We can guarantee them a job, which is something they can’t guarantee us.
(1) High Wages Put Detroit Under Pressure Financial Times12-15-2008
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