Have you ever been on a cattle ranch and watched thousands of tons of beef on the hoof stampeding in a single corral? You must have at least seen such a sight in the movie theatres or on your TV. Those animals are being prepared for the market and pretty soon they will be herded into railway cars to be transported to the slaughter houses.
Now what about that other sight we see at least five days a week in the mornings and evenings? Thousands of tons of labor-power on the hoof being herded into surface cars, subway trains, buses, automobiles and trucks, being transported to the labor market and home again for the rest and recuperation needed for the next day's toll.
There are differences, of course. In order to realise the profit in the beef, the steer must first be slaughtered. Humans, on the other hand, have no exchange value when they are dead (excepting to the funeral directors, embalmers, cemetary Industry, etc.) It is that value-creating labor power they generate, while alive, that is of importance to the capitalist class. They don’t want to own our bodies — as was the case In times of chattel slavery — they just want to buy our labor power for stipulated time periods And they also want our votes, on election days, to give approval to their system by electing those who wish to continue it. We are not slaves, they tell us, but free men and women.
Is this a gross exaggeration? It certainly is not and the very language of capitalism underscores its truth Take the word market, for example. Merriam Webster defines it as "a meeting together of people for the purpose of trade by private purchase and sale usually not by auction." In light of this, a labor market would be a place where labor-power (mental and physical) is bought and sold. The only reason the workers must bring their bodies to work is that there is no way — as of now — to ship the abilities without the carcasses. In other words, those who must work for a living in the industries of the capitalists are regarded mainly as the owners of a needed commodity and little more. If their particular abilities are marketable, they work at them. If not, they find something else, go on welfare, "mooch on the stem.” or starve.
As an Illustration: recently there was a feature story in the New York Times of the plight of newly-graduating school teachers. There are few jobs at the profession available today. The market for general school teachers became glutted, the story tells us, and the future of these recently-trained purveyors of capitalist- oriented education is grim. Most of those who do find jobs will be working as waitresses or in other unskilled fields far removed from their intended careers. So what happens now in the school teacher manufacturing industry? The same thing that happens in any other industry under the same circumstances. There will be a shrinkage for a number of years in the production of new school teachers, a falling-off of interest in going to such schools. Eventually, say about 1980 or ’85, a new shortage of teachers will have been created and there will be another rush of applicants to that discipline necessitating a new expansion of the industries — referred to as colleges — that manufacture school teachers.
They might just as well be so many sausages or legs of lamb, those bright-faces and starry-eyed youngsters who clutch those sheepskins so proudly. — Is there any sanity to such a system of society? The vast majority seem to think so or at least take it for granted as the only possible way of doing things. Socialists disagree and offer a whole new way of life, a sane world — World Socialism. Won't you join us in trying to bring It about?
No comments:
Post a Comment