If you believe in work then you should be opposed to capitalism because capitalism means the rich don't have to work. They live off the labor of the workers. Most capitalists, those wealthy enough that they don't have to work, inherited their wealth. Paris Hitlon is a good example. Capitalists don't have a problem with some people not working and living off the labor of others. They support a system in which a small group of people produce nothing but enslave the majority and live off our labor. Under capitalism the extremely wealthy do not have to work, making capitalist crap about "work" self-refuting. Some capitalists try to avoid this by babbling on and on about the small minority of people who go from being wage slaves to business owners, but that does not change the fact that under the capitalism some people are given incredible wealth without having to do any work at all. In addition, through the stock market, interest and the like one can make money without having to do any work at all. And capitalists have no problem with this, making their concern about "incentives for work" rather hypocritical. Putting money in a bank account and letting it accumulate interest is not hard work. A thief who schemes a lot is still a thief. Manipulating portfolios doesn’t produce anything useful.
In colonial Brazil it was possible to go from being a slave, to being free to being a slave owner. That doesn't justify slavery. When wage-slaves do the same under capitalism it doesn't justify capitalism. The existence of social mobility does not justify a social system. Not all slave owners were millionaires or billionaires, either.
Those who attempt to go from wage-slave to business owner usually fail, few make it. Those who do become members of the petty bourgeoisie (small business owners) and are generally dependant on the bank. The small business owner exploits his workers but the bank gets all or most of the profits from it. Most of the economy is controlled and run by members of the capitalist class, the super-wealthy. Small business owners are a tiny influence. A small-time boss is still a boss, just as a small-time slave master is still a slave master.
While production does require coordination and administration, this does not justify capitalist forms of production or the grossly disproportionate amount of wealth capitalists are given. In a slave society slave drivers and owners would sometimes do coordination necessary for production while making their slaves produce for them. Just as it is possible to coordinate production without slave drivers it is also possible to coordinate production without capitalists. There have been many examples of worker-run cooperatives, run on a non-hierarchical basis without capitalists, producing things just as effectively as a capitalist corporation.
Like slave owners, capitalists may spend a large portion of their time manipulating their underlings to maximize the amount of money they make, but that time neither produces anything nor justified the privileged position of the capitalist. Most of the “work” done by capitalists running a business is in reality manipulating workers so as to maximize exploitation (thereby maximizing profit). Most capitalists hire people to do whatever coordination and administration is necessary for production and do little of it themselves. In contemporary capitalism this has lead to the growth of a separate techno-bureaucratic class that controls the workers for the capitalists. In general the higher up the hierarchy and the farther from the point of production the less genuine coordination and administration is done. A thief that does a lot of scheming is still a thief.
In the United States the richest 1% of the population (the capitalist class) owns more wealth then the bottom 95% of the population combined . It is physically impossible for that one percent to work harder then the other ninety-five percent. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. The average American worker works around 50 hours a week; for the capitalists to work ninety-five times more then the average worker he would have to work 4,250 hours a week! There are only 168 hours in a week; it’s not possible for this wealth disparity to be the result of capitalists working harder.
America is rich because it has a history of imperialism & neocolonialism in other countries. As a result the sweatshops that corporate capitalism would produce anyway are distributed unevenly. The weaker countries get more of them, the imperialist countries less. The only way for capitalism to not have sweatshops, etc. is to implement a welfare state and the structure of capitalism is such that welfare states are temporary phenomena.
Capitalists often defend profit by claim it is justified by the risk of investing but just because your'e taking a risk doesn't mean your'e producing anything. If I stand on the edge of a cliff I'm taking a risk, should I get paid a fortune for doing so? Most thieves take risks; a mugger could get arrested, hurt, etc. In addition, the workers take just as much of a risk as the capitalist. If the business goes belly up not only does the capitalist lose his investment, but the workers will be out of a job. The worst that will happen to the capitalist is that he'll become a worker. The worst that will happen to the worker is that s/he will end up on the street and go hungry. They also defend profit by saying that the rich "work hard" but putting money in a bank account and letting it accumulate interest is not hard work.
Assuming the Right to Intervene
If Mark Twain were living now instead of a century ago -- when he declared himself “an anti-imperialist” and proclaimed that “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land” -- the famous writer’s views would exist well outside the frame of today’s mainstream news media.
A good piece by Norman Solomon discussing the media & US intervention in other countries.
In the anarcho-mutualism a minority of anarchists advocate (I prefer anarcho-communism) people would still have to work (usually making things to sell on the market) but workers would have control over their own workplaces. In addition, there would no longer be any capitalist exploiting the workers and as a result we would not have these massive wealth inequalities and workers would be richer (they can keep the surplus value which is normally extracted from them). This would be a substantial improvement over the status quo.
In Anarcho-Communism, factories and other things would be produced either because people need them or because they enjoy producing them (or both). To produce a new building or factory or whatever, those interested in doing so can come together, organize (non-hierarchically) and build it. The Spanish Revolution shows that capitalism is not necessary to build new factories. To take one example:
"If by industry is meant a group of manufacturing establishments making the same type of merchandise in a county, province, or region, then there was no optical industry in Spain before the 19th of July....
.... The greatest innovation was the construction of a new factory for optical apparatuses and instruments. The whole operation was financed by the voluntary contributions of the workers. In a short time the factory turned out opera glasses, telemeters, binoculars, surveying instruments, industrial glassware in different colors, and certain scientific instruments. (The workers presented Buenaventura Durruti with a special set of field glasses.) Another achievement was the opening of a new, up-to-date optical school.... The workers had every reason to be proud of these achievements. What private capitalists failed to do was accomplished by the creative capacity of the members of the Optical Workers' Union of the CNT." - Augustin Souchy and P. Folgare (eds.), "The Collectivization of the Optical Industry," in Sam Dolgoff (ed.), The Anarchist Collectives, ch. 7
See
here for more on this subject.
The reward for producing things would be both the enjoyment of doing it and also the results of that production - be they glasses, food, or whatever.
Work should be abolished. The "reward" the capitalist gets for starting up new businesses, investments, etc has nothing to do with "incentive" or "risk" but is exploited from the workers. The capitalists have a monopoly on the means of production; the only reason an "incentive" is required is because they will use their power over the means of production to prevent anyone from producing unless they get the lion's share of the wealth. Break that monopoly, establish self-management, and paying a bribe to the capitalists is no longer needed for production.
Where possible society should be organized so as to reduce those unpleasant tasks (cleaning sewers, etc.) as much as possible. This includes the use of automation, reducing reliance upon those tasks, reorganizing the economy to be more efficient, etc. Any unpleasant tasks that cannot be completely eliminated should be shared equally. Making a few do it all the time while the rest of us do more fun things is unfair. The present system compounds that unfairness by paying those who do these unpleasant jobs much less than those who do more pleasant things (like acting or playing baseball). If the capitalist nonsense about "incentive" had any bearing on reality (other than that of contradiction) then famous actors would be paid very little while sewer workers would be paid a fortune, which is not how real-life capitalism actually works.
Bush or Kerry? Look Closely and the Danger is the Same
A myth equal to the fable of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is gaining strength on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that John Kerry offers a world-view different from that of George W Bush. Watch this big lie grow as Kerry is crowned the Democratic candidate and the "anyone but Bush" movement becomes a liberal cause celebre.
An excellent critique of Kerry, the man who says he'll
be more of a warmonger than Bush, from John Pilger.
In October 2002 John Kerry voted in favor of Bush's invasion of Iraq. "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." — Sen. John F. Kerry, Oct. 9, 2002
The United States has just overthrown the elected government of Haiti and sent in troops to reinforce the position of US backed rebels. Some articles on this:
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The Overthrow of Haiti's Aristide: A Coup Made in the USA The World Socialist Website lays out the Coup
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President Aristide Says 'I Was Kidnapped', 'Tell the World it is a Coup' The Rebels & US claim that Aristide resigned, but he says he was kidnapped and forced out of the country.
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Bringing Hell to Haiti
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Dont' Fall for Washington's Spin, Haiti is another example of the US bullying a poor country
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US-Sponsored Regime Change in Haiti
-The
Second Coup in Haiti against Aristide
-Aristide Backers
Blaim US for Ouster
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Haiti as Target Practice
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Historic Roots of the Haitian Civil War A background piece on Haiti I wrote shortly before the coup
This is not the first time the US has done something like this. There's been US coups and attempted coups in Chille, Iran, Guatemala, Venezuala and many other places over the past fifty years.
