Capitalists like freedom, the sort of freedom they like is the freedom to allow capital to travel where it wants and when it wants. To allow capital to exploit Labor free of interference from workers organizations, regulations or borders. After the collapse of Stalinism, when US capitalism thought for a moment that the 21st century would be the American Century and it could travel the world with no restraint, it referred to it as "Full Spectrum Dominance".
The "American Century" lasted less than a decade and what was referred to as the American Dream which was always a nightmare for some, faded in to the history. "If you want the American Dream" noted one commentator, "Go to Finland".
Capital wants no borders. As Marx put it so prophetically over 150 years ago, "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. "It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere" GM does not invest in China to raise the wages of the Chinese workers or develop the Chinese economy. GM cares not about history. Globalization has them all over the world in search of the cheapest source of human Labor power.
We have numerous pieces on this blog about the struggles that take place daily in China, in the rural areas over land appropriation but also in the factories. There were major strikes at Honda plants over the past period that were successful. Chinese workers, under the most oppresive conditions, have won considerable wage increases.
In response, corporations are shifting production to places where human Labor power is cheaper. Vietnam is one such locale. But Foxconn, the huge Taiwanese technology manufacturer with hundreds of thousands of workers in plants in China is considering expanding production to Brazil as Chinese workers increase wages; it is planning to spend $12 billion there over the next few years. Production shifts, from Mexico, to China, to Vietnam to Brazil; Marx described how capitalism was different from earlier systems of production: "Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones." How true that is.
Workers' ownership and management of not just the productive forces, meaning machinery and such, but of money capital itself, is the only way this can be stopped and this cannot be accomplished without an international working class movement and solidarity. They will always flee to the cheapest haven. It denies the capitalist rights, of course. But rights are not a gift from god; they are not etched in stone. it was once the right of one human being to own in total the person of another. Might makes right as they say. We reject that a capitalist has the right to destroy communities and people's lives (not to mention the environment) in search of profit. Capital is a collective product, it should be collectively owned and how it is allocates decided collectively by its rightful owners.
If you have opinions about the subject matter of posts on this blog please share them. Do you have a story about how the system affects you at work school or home, or just in general? This is a place to share it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment