"A power greater than their hoarded gold"

[dcsmart]

i'm not trying to convert people to socialism when i posts articles from these sites, i just think socialist economic analysis, with its focus always from the workers point of view, provides the proper understanding of economic history and economics in general.

Adam Turl explains why the working class holds the key to transforming society.

January 26, 2009


IT ISN'T often that a member of the U.S. Congress acknowledges that the source of wealth in modern society is labor. But there was Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) at a rally outside the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago in December, as workers inside occupied the plant.

"It seems to me that it was labor that put together those windows," Gutierrez said. "It was their creativity, it was their work, their commitment to quality that made this company successful...Those windows belong to the workers until they are paid for."

Ordinarily, we're taught to see class as based purely on a person's income or lifestyle. But Gutierrez's comment goes to the heart of how Marxists understand social class. Working-class people--in factories, shops and offices--collectively produce all the wealth under capitalism. This is the basis of their power to completely transform society.

What's more, workers aren't just being robbed in situations like at Republic, where the factory owners refused to pay them what they were owed. Workers are robbed every day at work. Even when they are paid, workers aren't paid for the full value of what they produce, but only part of it.

Capitalism is based on exploitation--on extracting more from workers than they receive back in wages and other benefits. This difference is surplus value--the source of the capitalists' profits.
Legally, bosses and workers may appear to be equal. But this "equality" conceals the inequality of capitalism. As the 19th century writer Anatole France put it, "The law, in majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread."

Under capitalism, the ruling class owns and controls the "means of production"--the tools needed for modern production and trade, which includes factories, office buildings, ports, trucks, trains, railroads, airplanes and so on. The vast majority--the working class--owns none of these things, so they are forced to sell their ability to work (in return for wages) to the capitalists.

By this definition, the working class includes factory workers at Republic Windows. But it also includes service workers--like the Starbucks baristas that have organized unions from New York to Minnesota, other retail workers, medical workers, teachers, transit workers, and so on. Using government statistics as a starting point, at least 75 percent of the U.S. workforce fits the Marxist definition of working class.

Not only is the working class bigger than just the manufacturing workforce, it also doesn't fit the stereotypes about it.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/01/26/power-greater-than-their-hoarded-gold

[Kokonoe]

1. I think its the people on the top that gain the most.

but, its the evil doers that rise atop, that stop the economic circle.

Its time to put a lot of people in jail.
I know its hard, but maybe just house arrest in a penthouse.