Source: Zero Hedge |
Richard
Mellor
Afscme
Local 444, retired
2-17-20
The
Virginia Company was an English investment company given a charter by the
state. The investors of the Virginia Company financed the expeditions to the “New World” and the first permanent
English settlement in Jamestown in 1607. The capitalists and members of the
English ruling classes that led these expeditions had a hard time of it, but
not as hard as the English, Irish, German, Scots, Africans and poor of the
world that were pressed, dragged, coerced and violently brought along to do the
work.
Tobacco
played such an important role in the economy of the colony. Fines could be paid
in it and it was the major export. The colonial project was a mono-culture, life
and death depended on this crop. For the few it made them very rich. When the
investors did not receive the returns agreed to for financing the project, they
were given land as compensation. We are talking about the early 16th
century here so the theft of the land on this continent by a colonial power
started real early. It was not stolen from other individual owners of course,
as the land, was owned collectively it was part of the natural world like the
people on it.
The
capitalist system of production cannot exist without free labor. In other
words, those that own no capital but lived off the land and owned their own
instruments of labor had to be set free from these encumbrances, or more
accurately liberated from them. A human being that could produce their own
food, their own clothes, their daily needs, would have no need to work for a
capitalist. The British peasants were driven from their common land for the
same reason. It was the inability of the new system to absorb all this labor
power in its early stages that led to the horrors of the work houses and the
introduction of capital punishment for vagrancy, begging or poaching for food.
Marx talked of the Dutch introducing capitalist relations in to Java and the
terrible decline in the population that resulted, “Sweet Commerce” wrote Marx sarcastically.
The
English capitalists control of the slave trade in the coming decades brought
more riches until slavery was abolished forcing English capitalism to enter the
African continent and plunder more directly. The Treaty of Berlin between the
European colonial powers was an attempt to temper the war among thieves for
Africa’s riches.
If
the capitalist class that arose from the womb of feudal society thought
investing in tobacco 3,000 miles from home was a great deal it was because back
then they couldn’t imagine the riches that time and plunder would bring.
As
the image shows, last year there were five hedge fund managers that made more
than one billion dollars each in 2019. Hedge
funds are pools of money that are managed by firms and are open only to what
they call sophisticated or accredited
investors and cannot be offered or sold to the general public. These
are a very exclusive and private gang, finance houses banks and so forth. You
won’t hear Trump attack this gang like he does the MS-13 or desperate economic
refugees who he calls gangsters, criminals and murderers. What difference are these
financial parasites, coupon clippers, to the Mexican drug cartels other than
they are legal.
And
we should not lose sight of the fact that the hedge fund manager is merely the
guy that manages the investments of this pool of capital. We will never be
told, willingly anyway, who the owners of this capital are and how much they
collectively rake in over time.
Perhaps
they are investors in mining in Bolivia or East Timor. Apparel companies in
Cambodia, Bangladesh or Vietnam. They are the leading parasites of the world. Trump will not ask these people to pay for his wall because they would soon put a stop to such nonsense. The US taxpayer shouldn't either.
Maybe
some of them invest in moneylending outfits that suck the lifeblood out of
working people after they have already been ripped off through the labor
process.
They
never pass an opportunity to make money without working for it. Productive
labor is alien to them. The moneylender is having a good time so far so
investing in their vehicles. The credit card industry is a particularly good
deal. Outstanding credit card debt hit a record high of $880 billion last
September as interest rates on balances also hit a two decade high which was
good for the credit card companies earning $179 billion in revenue from
interest and fees. Bloomberg claims card companies will earn the highest
returns in banking this year as credit card debt is rising faster than any
other consumer debt (Housing, auto, etc.) Isn’t money lending frowned upon in
the Bible?
Marx
pointed out one of the main contradictions of the capitalist system, in that it
produces too much, its productive power so great so that it reaches a point
where it threatens the system itself. Workers as consumers are unable to buy
back the goods that capitalist society produces and the system hits its limits
as a functioning economic system. The problem is that the source of the
capitalist’s wealth is contained in the commodity that must be sold, it
contains within it, labor power that the capitalist paid for and labor power he
didn’t. That’s the goose that laid the golden egg. One way it overcomes this is debt, debt
allows capitalism to go beyond its limits but like any sort of debt, at some point
it has to be paid and the system goes in to crisis. It has been described as
like an elastic band that stretches in order to function but at some point
snaps back to it original length. That’s what happens with the capitalist
system, workers are throw on the dole pile, value in the form of bricks and
mortar and machinery are destroyed or idled.
Perhaps
the best quote of the first quarter is from the credit card company, Capital One
that states that “Acting in the best
interest of our customers is our paramount consideration” when it comes to
credit lines.
Yes,
Capital One is a corporation that be quoted because a corporation is classified
as a person with the rights thereof.
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