The Nature of Capitalism

It's going to stop feeding us. But it never had feeding us as a goal or even a priority.

We have to understand the nature of capitalism if you believe that tweaking or reforming this system will make everything all right again.

Capitalism has provided us with a very comfortable life style and we owe a lot to it. But it also has some very malevolent aspects. The upshot is, it has done its job. It has served its grand purpose. But now it is time to plan for it's death.

We can now see that the Lords of the New World Order are revamping the capitalist order. That means cutting wages, jobs, and generally making life more difficult for middle classes and working classes.

The point here is, it isn't capitalism that going to save us. It can't. Saving us isn't in the nature of the beast and, you should be forgiven if you think otherwise. It has pulled us out of feudalism and it has given us all this stuff. And it also has control of the media which is pathologically reluctant to criticize it.

The nature of capitalism isn't to feed you or anybody else. It isn't even about making cars, computers or Big Macs. Its about making capital. Making and selling commodities (stuff) is an inconvenient necessity to making capital.

You fit in this equation this way. Capital is used to own the manufacturing implements or the business that will be used as a tool to make money. It also buys you, the worker - the cost of your labour. This may be seen as a commodity - it is. The value of this commodity (your wages) is less than the value you contribute to the production process. This difference is the root source of capital.

The capitalist process cannot stagnate. It is a matter of necessitating constant growth and change. Profit accumulation depends on increasing the productivity of labour. The pressure to make the production process leaner and meaner drives manufacturing owners to buy and develop technology that will be more efficient (and drive you out of work). Your wages and your benefits are a drain on profit. A machine is more profitable and dependable than you are.

The problem is, for capitalists to sell products, workers must be paid a decent wage (as noted by Henry Ford). Credit is vital to this process, especially in our mature capitalist stage of development.

Credit allows us to buy things from a wage that doesn't yet exist. The idea being that when we make the money, we are good for it. But there are other problems and pressures developing in this process.

The capitalist needs more than to just squeeze more profit from a unit of labour (which gets increasingly difficult to do), he must also expand markets and this is accelerated as real wages decline (and with it, demand for goods and services). And as he does so, he becomes less reliant on domestic wages and more reliant on foreign wages. Workers are competing now with the lowest wage possible on a world scale.

In this process, capital itself becomes a commodity. This commodity is always, in reality, dependant on real profit which is based in real labour. Credit is based on labour that may not exist. For example, the trillions that the American taxpayer owes has to be paid from American taxes. But at this point the manufacturing sector has moved to China. Its like running credit cards to the max knowing you'll never pay it or, if you do, it will be a painful struggle.

So, capital suppliers (banks) provide capital and in return receive a portion of the money (profit) that was originally created by a worker (you). This is called interest.

The whole thing now is more to the capitalists liking. No more does he deal with the mess of a factory floor. Now he is dealing with stocks, bonds, and interest. He is buying and selling money. He is dealing in imaginary capital. The larger this world becomes, and it is a world of illusion, the more the profile of the worker is diminished. The less important he or she appears to be.

The recent money manipulations through sub prime mortgages and hedge funds are a clear example of this.

And now it appears to the capitalist that you are expendable. He forgot where he got his wealth in the first place.

The problem for the capitalists and for us all is that, for all its impressive gyrations and weight, imaginary capital is based in profit that is derived from skimming some profit from a unit of labour or selling products made from the labour. All the glitter of the gods of high capitalism isn't gold, it's made of rust.

The buying and selling of money; packaging it and breaking it up and repackaging it had become an industry on its own. It is an industry of schemes, illusion, and theft. Alan Greenspan and the neo con armies had believed that this is real, a real economy, or so it seemed. They had trillions in assets but the assets had no base in reality.

The real question now is; How much excess value can be derived from a unit of labour? How much wealth is there in the system?

The real answer is; Not much.

And as a result there will be an intensification in the process of squeezing an extra dime from a unit of labour. It will be called restructuring and a myriad of other new Orwellian terms that will surface to euphemize the degradation, the exploitation, and the impoverishment of the worker (you). They will have to expand the aggregate of surplus value (profit) through your degradation. There will also be considerable slashing and burning of capital and capitalist entities. We will be left with a bare bones and ruthless capitalist society.

What is most telling in terms of the de-valuing of workers and consumers and the worshipping of the criminals that have herded us to the edge of an economic abyss is the bailouts of the capitalists and especially the creditors. And, the ignorance of workers and consumers (you). Your tax dollars are meant to bail them out.

Many of them and many of you actually believe that wealth comes from the wealthy. The fact is, wealth comes from work and it comes from workers activity. This is the basis of wealth.

Until this fact is recognized by a critical mass, we will be marching in step as the Alan Greenspans and the thieves and billionaires that have caused this situation to occur.

And when it is recognized by a critical mass, we will take matter sinto our own hands. At that point the children stop running the household and we will develop an economic order based on human needs and based in basic sanity.