Page 148
PART 9
CAPITALISTS DISTORT THEIR CONTRIBUTION
One of the most disgusting of all truths revealed through intimate knowledge
of the capitalist system is that nearly all members of the ruling class
know Karl Marx is correct. They are well aware of the fact that Marx
knows exactly what he is talking about. As previously stated, the bourgeoisie
are unscrupulous but not ignorant. Quite the contrary, they are to be
recognized for their determination, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. Anyone contending that capitalists are naive is only revealing his own unfamiliarity
with the structure and composition of the world at large. They direct
the entire system very effectively and couldn't help but know precisely how
it operates and who receives what. This is especially true of those
individuals at the apex of the economic pyramid who decide that which matters. For them to admit or even publicly hint at the actual structure of the system
is strictly taboo, however, because if socialism were instituted not only
would productive labor be required of all but the era of 3 cadillacs, 2 airplanes,
3 estates, an incredibly large bank account and more luxuries that one could
reasonably need in 20 lifetimes would be over. Only the laboring masses
would receive the benefits. By the time an individual has attained membership
in the ruling elite, he is creating so little and receiving so much that
revealing the whole "set up" would be unthinkable.
Cognizant of the overriding influence which material factors exercise
upon ideology, the capitalists keep other knowledgeable people from unveiling
the truth by paying them more and working them less. The higher men
rise in the financial hierarchy the more this philosophy is implemented.
Consequently, such groups as informed labor leaders rarely tell the workers
what is occurring because bribery has tied them to the cause of the property
owners.301
Capitalists believe everyone has his price and in far too many
cases they are correct.
Property owners have not only concealed the inner workings of their systems
and co-opted those who might reveal the truth but also concocted defenses,
such as those which follow, to justify their role in society.
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301(a) "The whole thing (causing labor leaders and parliamentarians
to deceive the workers--Ed) boils down to nothing but bribery. It is
done in a thousand different ways by increasing cultural facilities in the
largest centres, by creating educational institutions, and by providing co-operative,
trade union and parliamentary leaders with thousands of cushy jobs. This is done wherever present-day civilized capitalist relations exist."
(b) "Out of such enormous superprofits...it is possible to bribe the labour
leaders.... And the capitalists of the 'advanced' countries are bribing
them; they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect,
overt and covert.... For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie
in the working-class movement."
(c) "They represent the top section of workers who have been bribed by
the bourgeoisie, those whom we Bolsheviks called...'agents of the bourgeoisie
in the working-class movement,' and to whom the best socialists in America
gave the magnificently expressive and very fitting title: 'labour lieutenants
of the capitalist class'."
(d) "...the desertion of a stratum of the labour aristocracy to the bourgeoisie
has matured and become an accomplished fact...."
(e) "Most trade union leaders are liberals; Marx long ago called them agents
of the bourgeoisie."
(f) (Add) "Marx earned the honour of incurring the hatred of these scoundrels
(the labour aristocracy--Ed.) by openly branding them as traitors.'
(g) (Add) "...the labour aristocracy, most of whom are thoroughly and hopelessly
spoiled by reformism and are held back by bourgeois and imperialist prejudices.
Without a struggle against this stratum, without the destruction of every
trace of its prestige among the workers, without convincing the masses of
the utter bourgeois corruption of this stratum, there can be no question
of a serious communist workers' movement."
Page 149
"Don't we deserve to be rewarded for saving our hard-earned wealth?
Have we not risked our property in the arrangement? Where would the
workers be without us? Who would do the thinking and planning?"
302
These arguments are erroneous in their implications and deceptive
in their logic for several reasons. Firstly, property owners do not
become rich by working hard and saving their money. Nobody has ever
earned $300,000,000, for example, by honest, productive labor. If a
capitalist earned $100 an hour (a tremendous wage today, let alone many years
ago) and never rested from his labor, over 300 years would be required to
earn $300,000,000. The sheer physical impossibility of such an accomplishment,
especially when all personal expenses are subtracted, is so ridiculous as
not to be worthy of rational consideration. Since no one has ever earned
$300,000,000 by performing honest labor (working for a living), the only alternative
is to have taken that which others produced. 303
Secondly, any allegation by property owners to the effect that
their own funds were jeopardized is erroneous, because an extremely large
percentage of their wealth should not have been theirs from the beginning. It was taken from other people.304
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302 (Add) "It is precisely the shallowest sycophants of the
existing capitalist order of society who...describe the profit of the capitalist...as
a higher sort of wages, as the wages of abstinence (reward to the capitalist
for not playing ducks and drakes with his capital), as the premium on risk,
as the wages of management, etc."
303 "The capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion
to his personal labour and restricted consumption but at the same rate as
he squeezes out the labour power of others and enforces on the labourer abstinence
from all life's enjoyments."
304 (Add) "One often hears it said that the landlords and merchants
'provide work' for the people, that they 'provide' earnings for the poor.... Actually, however, the workers by their labour maintain themselves and also
all those who do not work. But for permission to work on the landlord's
land, in a factory, or on a railway, the worker gives the owner for nothing
all he produces, while the worker himself gets enough for a bare subsistence. Actually, therefore, it is not the landlords and the merchants who maintain
the workers, but the workers who by their labour maintain everybody, surrendering
the greater part of the results of their labour for nothing."
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Thirdly, despite a tight trade blockade by the United States and a pre-revolutionary
economy totally geared to the needs and desires of the United States, the
Cuban workers have shown that the workers can fare well without property
owners doing the thinking and planning.305
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305 (a) "At all costs we must break the old, absurd, savage,
despicable and disgusting prejudice that only the so-called 'upper classes,'
only the rich, and those who have gone through the school of the rich, are
capable of administering the state and directing the organizational construction
of socialist society.... But every rank-and-file worker and peasant
who is able to read and write, who can judge people and has practical experience,
is capable of organizational work. Among the 'common people' of whom
the bourgeois intellectuals speak with such haughtiness and contempt, there
are masses of men and women of this kind. This sort of talent among
the working class and the peasantry is a rich and still untapped spring."
(b) (Add) "We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer
or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.
In this we agree with the Cadets.... We differ, however, from these
citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that
only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administering
the state, of performing the ordinary, everyday work of state administration.... The chief thing now is to abandon the prejudiced bourgeois-intellectualist
view that only special officials, who by their very social position are entirely
dependent upon capital, can administer the state."
(c) (Add) "The illusion that only the bourgeoisie could run the state must
be fought against."
(d) (Add) "Joint work cannot be done unless there is order, unless all
submit to it.... Joint work does, indeed, require that there is supervision
to ensure the maintenance of order, but it does not at all require that
the power to supervise others should always be vested in the one who does
not work himself, but lives on the labour of others."
(e) (Add) "...they say the workers alone can never organise the country
and lead it out of economic chaos, that they will only create anarchy.
That is the lie which the capitalists of all countries are spreading in millions
of ways, and which non-party people, opponents of the Bolsheviks, are conveying
in thousands of ways...."
(f) (Add) "The enemies of the working people, the landowners and capitalists
say that the workers and peasants cannot live without them. 'If it
were not for us,' they say, 'there would be nobody to maintain order, to
give out work, and to compel people to work. If it were not for us
everything would collapse, and the state would fall to pieces. We have been
driven away, but chaos will bring us back again.' But this sort of
talk by the landowners and capitalists will not confuse, intimidate, or deceive
the workers and peasants."
Source 20,
Vol. 29, page 250
(g) (Add) "We shall discover we can develop practical activity, and shatter
that pernicious prejudice which for decades and centuries has been implanted
among the working people, namely, that state administration is the preserve
of the privileged few, that it is a special art."
(h) (Add) "One of the greatest drawbacks of our revolution is the timidity
of our workers, who are still convinced that the only people capable of
governing the state are their 'betters'--their betters in the art of robbery."
(i) (Add) "...all reactionary writers always explain that the masses have
democratic convictions because they are foolish, undeveloped and so on,
while the nobility and the bourgeoisie are developed and intelligent."
Page 151
Despite setbacks, Cuban production is far more equitably distributed and
the average Cuban is living better than before the revolution. And lastly,
in far too many instances property owners have not only failed to perform
manual labor but also, contrary to popular belief, failed to contribute thought
and planning. Once having attained a certain economic plateau, property
owners have nearly always employed others as thinkers and planners (Boards
of Directors, corporate executives, middle management, CEO's, etc.), thus,
becoming even more parasitic than before.
"Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labor so soon as
his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production,
as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision
of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage-laborer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires,
like a real army, officers (managers) and sergeants (foremen, overlookers)
who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function."
306
In effect, Marx contended that capitalists originally performed manual
labor and supervisory functions for which they were justly rewarded, while
simultaneously receiving unmerited income (profits) by exploiting their
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Page 152
laborers.307
Subsequently, they turned all manual labor over to their workers,
continued to exercise supervisory activity for which they were justly paid
and received ever greater profits. Finally, and this is the essential
thought behind Marx's statement, the supervisory functions were also given
to specially trained laborers,308
because the surplus value had grown to such proportions that the
capitalists realized they could live extremely well on the ever growing
profits alone. Through partial or complete ownership of businesses,
they received dividends on their stocks, while loaning wealth to businesses
yielded interest on their bonds.309
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307 (Add) "He (the capitalist--Ed.) creates surplus-value (profits--Ed.)
not because he works as a capitalist, but because he also works, regardless
of his capacity as a capitalist. This portion of surplus-value is no
longer surplus-value, but its opposite, an equivalent for labour performed."
308 (a) "Thirty years ago, businessmen, freely competing against
one another performed nine-tenths of the work connected with their business
other than manual labor. At the present time, nine-tenths of this 'brain
work' is performed by officials."
(b) "The capitalist mode of production has brought matters to a point where
the work of supervision, entirely divorced from the ownership of capital,
is always readily obtainable. It has, therefore, come to be useless
for the capitalist to perform it himself.... Co-operative factories
furnish proof that the capitalist has become no less redundant as a functionary
in production as he himself...finds the landowner redundant. ...the mere
manager (hired by the capitalist--Ed.) who has no title whatever to the capital
(the means of production--Ed.), whether through borrowing it or otherwise,
performs all the real functions pertaining to the functioning capitalist
as such, only the functionary remains and the capitalist disappears as superfluous
from the production process (but remains in the background accumulating vast
sums of wealth through collecting profits--Ed.)."
(c) (Add) "Thus the capitalist can no longer lay claim to his profits as
'wages of supervision' as he supervises nothing."
309 (Add) "In stock companies...labour is entirely divorced
from ownership of means of production...."
Page 153
Both dividends and interest are obtained from profits (surplus value).
When, for example, the previously discussed worker was paid $75 for producing
chairs which sold for $100, a $25 profit was realized and partially given
to the owners of stocks and bonds. As the amount received by the property
owners rose, the latter were increasingly able to shun all productive labor.
310
As a consequence of this evolutionary process, current property
owners do little or no work for a living although they seek to give the impression
of laboring immensely. Any small amount of labor they may fulfill is
infinitely less than the rewards they receive.311
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310 (a) (Add) "The gentlemen holding the shares grew rich for
not working."
(b) (Add) "...the whole social and economic structure of Russia (Read:
the United States--Ed.) yields most fruit to those who work the least.
Under capitalism that cannot be otherwise. It is the law of capital,
which rules the political as well as the economic life."
311 (a) "Actually they (landowners and industrial capitalists--Ed.)
get at present far too much for the little that they do...."
(b) (Add) "...most of the land and also the factories, workshops, machines,
buildings, ships, etc. belong to a small number of rich people. Tens
of millions of people work on his land and in these factories and workshops,
but they are all owned by a few thousand or tens of thousands of rich people,
landlords, merchants and factory owners.... All that is produced over
and above what is required to provide a bare subsistence for the workers
goes to the rich owners; it is their profit, their 'income.' All the
benefits arising from the rise of machines and from improvements in methods
of production go to the landlords and capitalists: they accumulate countless
wealth, while the working people get only miserable crumbs."
(c) (Add) Capitalism was once described as follows in a Bolshevik party
programme. "The principal specific feature of this society is commodity
production based on capitalist production relations, under which the most
important and major part of the means of production and exchange or commodities
belongs to a numerically small class of persons while the vast majority of
the population is made up of proletarians and semi-proletarians (semi-proletarians
are those who labor part of the time for themselves because they own a little
of the means of production and also spend time working for another property
owner as a hired employee--Ed.), who, owing to their economic position, are
compelled permanently or periodically to sell their labour-power, i.e. to
hire themselves out to the capitalists and to create by their labour the
incomes (which are vast sums indeed--Ed.) of the upper classes of society
(who perform no productive labor--Ed.)." (The ultimate destiny of the
semi-proletarians, like that of the petty bourgeoisie, is to be defeated
economically and driven into the proletariat--Ed.).
Page 154
In practical terms they devote all their time to lounging on beaches,
sailing yachts, flying private aircraft, playing golf, etc. while their wealth
is managed and invested by other hired laborers who forward sufficient funds
when they are requested.312
Defenders of capitalism contend that socialists are merely seeking to
transfer wealth from those who are affluent to those who are not.
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312 (a) (Add) "...the bourgeoisie has already come close to
occupying the position held by the nobility in 1789: it is becoming more and
more not only socially superfluous, but a social hindrance; it is more and
more becoming separated from productive activity, and like the nobility in
the past, becoming more and more a class merely drawing revenues...."
(b) (Add) "All the social functions of the capitalist (e.g., thinking and
planning--Ed.) are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist
has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing
off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists
despoil one another of their capital."
(c) (Add) What Engels once said in regard to the owners of railways and
sea-going steamships can now be applied to almost every capitalist.
"Thus we see that in reality the capitalist owners of these immense establishments
have no other action left with regard to them, but to cash the half-yearly
dividend warrants. The social function of the capitalist here (planning--Ed.)
has been transferred to servants paid by wages; but he continues to pocket,
in his dividends, the pay for those functions though he has ceased to perform
them."
(d) (Add) "...the decay of capitalism is manifested in the creation of
a huge stratum of rentiers, capitalists who live by 'clipping coupons'."
(e) (Add) "There is Saint-Simon's well-known assertion, on account of which
a court charge was brought against him, that the loss France would suffer
by the sudden death of a thousand of her highest officials or the members
of the royal family (or the richest property owners--Ed.) would be infinitely
smaller than that which would be caused by the death of a thousand of her
best workers."
Page 155
They assert that people lack property because they are lazy, indifferent
and/or less intelligent and that if socialism became widespread, incentive
would die and indolence would rule the land.313
Of course, the affluence of the rich can primarily be attributed
to the fact that they stole the bulk of their wealth from those who labor.
314
Marxists seek to reverse the process.315
Private ownership of the means of production and distribution
enables one to steal legally.316
Viewing a man who could earn $300,000,000 by honest labor and
living to give an account of his actions would be an unbelievable experience. It staggers the imagination to even attempt to conceive of his appearance.
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313 (Add) "It has been objected that upon the abolition of
private property all work will cease and universal laziness will overtake
us (mankind--Ed.). According to this, bourgeois society ought long
ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members
who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything (of real significance--Ed.)
do not work."
314 "The capitalists do not work, nevertheless they are rich. This takes place not because the proletarians are unintelligent and the capitalists
are geniuses, but because the capitalists appropriate the fruit of the labour
of the proletarians, because the capitalists exploit the proletarians."
315 (a) "One old Bolshevik (a Russian Marxist--Ed.) gave a
correct explanation of Bolshevism to a Cossack. The Cossack asked him:
'Is it true that you Bolsheviks plunder?' 'Yes, indeed,' said the old
man, 'we plunder the plunder'."
(b) "...'steal back stolen,' a slogan in which, no matter how I look at
it, I can find nothing wrong, when history comes on the scene."
316 "...the basic teaching of Communists that property divides
and labour unites. Private property is robbery, and a state based on
private property is a state of robbers who are fighting for a share of the
spoils."
Page 156
Under socialism incomes and wages would vary317
but an individual would be required to perform useful labor for every
dime received.318
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317 (a) "Marx and Lenin said that the difference between skilled
and unskilled labour would exist even under socialism.... that only
under communism (the final stage--Ed.) would this difference disappear and
that, consequently, even under socialism 'wages' must be paid according to
work performed and not according to needs."
(b) "...we shall introduce complete wage equality only gradually and shall
pay these specialists higher salaries during the transition period (from socialism
to communism--Ed.)."
318 (a) "'He who does not work, neither shall he eat'--this
is the practical commandment of Socialism."
(b) "Lenin, our great teacher, said: 'He who does not work neither shall
he eat.' What does this mean? Against whom are Lenin's words
directed? Against the exploiters, against those who do not work themselves,
but compel others to work for them, and get rich at the expense of others.
And against whom else? Against those who loaf and want to live at the
expense of others. Socialism demands not loafing, but that all should
work conscientiously; that they should work, not for others, not for the
rich and the exploiters, but for themselves, for the community."
(c) "...these superfluous mouths who are breaking the fundamental law:
He who does not work shall not eat."
(d) "(Under socialism--Ed.) the goods are distributed according to the
labour performed, on the principle: 'He who does not work, neither shall
he eat."
(e) "...the prime, basic and root principle of socialism: 'He who does
not work, neither shall he eat.' 'He who does not work, neither shall
he eat'--every toiler understands that. Every worker...everybody who
has suffered need in his lifetime, everybody who has ever lived by his own
labour, is in agreement with this.... In this simple, elementary and perfectly
obvious truth lies the basis of socialism, the indefeasible source of its
strength, the indestructible pledge of its final victory."
(f) "He who will not work, will have to go without food."
(g) "We have only one maxim, one slogan: All who work have the right to
enjoy the benefits of life. Idlers and parasites who suck the blood of the
working people must be deprived of these benefits. And we proclaim:
Everything for the workers, everything for the working people!"
(h) (Add) "With labour emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and
productive labour ceases to be a class attribute."
Page 157
If he produced $5,000 worth of value, then he would be paid $5,000; if
he produced $20,000 worth of value, then he would receive $20,000, no more
no less. Any amount of wealth could be earned providing enough value
were produced to equal the value of the money received.
319
An informed socialist worker would know that a large part of
his earnings was not being paid to property owners, factory managers, or bosses
and his time was not being spent laboring for others.
320
What greater incentive killer could there be than wasting time and
energy working for another if one needed every cent obtainable. Informed
capitalist workers, however, lack incentive because they realize the vast
bulk of their output has been entering capitalist coffers and that some corporate
executives, who are not even capitalists in the true sense,
321
have been receiving more than 300 times as much wealth as the average
line worker. In reality, capitalists have been committing the very act
which they attribute to socialism, namely, destroying incentive. Fortunately
for them and as a by-product of their propaganda efforts, most workers within
private ownership have not been aware of what has been occurring.
322
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319 (Add) "Communism (read: socialism--Ed.) deprives no man
of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to
deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such
appropriation."
320 (Add) "Wealth will then grow at a still faster rate because
working for themselves, the workers will work better than they worked for
the capitalists...."
321 "...only when he himself is wholly released from labour
does the employer of labour become a full-grown capitalist."
322 (Add) "Lenin noted, however, that some workers have been
aware of their plight and have resisted. "In the old capitalist society
discipline over the working people was enforced by capital through the constant
threat of starvation. This threat being combined with excessively heavy
toil and the workers' awareness that they were working, not for themselves,
but for somebody else's benefit, the conditions of labour became a constant
struggle of the great majority of the working people against the organisers
of production. This inevitably created a psychology in which public
opinion among the working people not only did not frown on poor work or shirkers,
but, on the contrary, saw in this an inevitable and legitimate protest against
or means of resistance to the excessive demands of the exploiters."
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