If the old refuse to die, let them work

Left: Labor power in use. What the boss calls a willing worker.

Never let an opportunity slip by. That's what capitalism is all about. Michael Skapinker coined the title of this blog in the Financial Times a year ago.* Aging is not a biological necessity, Skapinker points out and refers us to scientist's reports to back up his claims. Even better, the Sea Anemone is proof that mortality doesn't have to be a product of ageing. This opens up great opportunity for profit taking.

Skapinker points out that "Only 35% of those born in England and Wales in 1851 could expect to live until their mid 60s. Of those born in 1951, 80% are expected to make it." The profitability of pension funds and the cost of them are adversely affected by the increasing human lifespan and it is a bit of a problem. Life expectancies in the former colonial world, places like Rwanda and much of Africa, for example, that hover around 45 to 50 years for males don't count as pensions are not available in these places so the math doesn't matter. Where capitalism is incapable of providing food, water and shelter, it certainly doesn't need to provide a pension plan for old age; no one gets old and you have to have a job to retire from.

But in the industrial countries this extended lifespan means idle workers. Idle, like demand, work and other terms that mean different things to capitalists than they do to us, does not mean that retired people are doing nothing. They might be traveling, fishing, gardening, taking care of grandchildren. But the real danger is that they might be active politically in some way, like fighting to extend retirement rights to all workers; even worse, ridding us of the system itself and fighting for a democratic socialist society.

Idle to Skapinker as a theoretician of the capitalist class mean this living human being, this mental and physical power contained within the human body, is in the possession of the individual whose body it is and is being used by them. This Labor power, as Marx correctly called it, is not offered for sale in the marketplace for an owner of money, a capitalist, to buy, and like the owner of any commodity, use it to their benefit.

The productive process, in control of the capitalists that posses the means of production, is the process through which wealth is created. Labor power not in use is even more of a waste in their eyes than a factory not in use or a machine not in use as the use of a machine consumes value while the use of a human being during the process of production not only consumes value but adds it, creates it. Labor power in use is the source of profit.

The capitalist class never loses sight of this. Anyway, retired workers who have won through massive struggle, the right to retire and receive a pension means that they consume a portion of that reserve capital that has been accumulated by capitalists through the exploitation of past Labor power; it's a damn nuisance and just not right.

Social class also effects longevity, the Times states. In fact, blue collar workers, like myself, live shorter lives, and women tend to live longer than men.

How differently we see the world. I saw an old co-worker/friend who retired 20 years ago the other day and all of us who worked together are so happy he is enjoying his retirement and getting that check, including the government one as he is over 62. Normally, the insurance companies figure out pretty accurately how long we'll live ensuring that most of us die way before that, allowing them to keep the rest of what we could have had.

Living longer is "difficult to fund" writes Skapinker. And a waste of "willing workers" Willing has another meaning for them as well. A woman worker earning a couple bucks a day in Bangladesh is "more willing" than US workers, as are workers in factories under dictatorships.

We're as willing as pimps claim their victims are.

Ridding ourselves of the system we call capitalism, and those that rule it, will allow us to retire from collective Labor in our forties or earlier, freeing us to then participate in the collective running and administrating of all aspects of society ensuring that we all benefit from our collective wealth.

It will be the dawn of genuine freedom.

FT 6-17-08