The source of any wealth, besides nature, is human labor. Everything that surrounds us in our daily life - palaces, skyscrapers, jet planes, trains, cars, television sets, radio and so on, luxury articles as well as necessary articles of consumption - is created by human labor. Part of this wealth is appropriated without indemnity by the ruling class. The mechanism of the appropriation is always different and depends upon the degree of the society's development. Consequently rich people exist only because poor people exist. The latter, besides producing the means of existence for themselves, have to work more in order to produce the means of existence, including luxury articles, for rich people. From here it follows that rich people, in all times of history, in order to maintain their status have to compel poor people to work. For this reason laws and the state came into existence.

The laws are established by the dominant class and so they reflect their interests. No matter how complicated they are, the essence of these laws is very simple: to force poor people to work, to keep them always in a poor state, because if everybody were rich, who would work? - and to make rich people even richer. In order to make these laws work in real life they have to be supported by force, thus requiring the creation of army, police, prisons, in short, the state. Otherwise none of the poor people would work freely of their own will for rich people.

Depending on the productivity of human labor, methods of compulsion of poor people to work are always changing along with forms of the state and its laws. But their essence always has been the same: everyone will be rich except for the poor people.

Under slave-owning, slaves were compelled to work by using physical force. Slaves owned nothing at all, and, naturally they had only one right: the right to work. Slaves lived only in order to work. They were born as slaves and they died as slaves. Slave owners treated them not as human being but as one of the things that belonged to them according to the law. For this reason it was legal for the slave owner to kill or to sell a slave.

                                                 Economic compulsion

With improvement of the means of labor, slave labor became unproductive. The growth of social productive forces was due to considerable improvement in the means of labor and deeper social divisions in the labor force - and on the other hand, growth of commodity industries made available many luxury articles, which more and more increased the appetite of slave owners.

To satisfy newly developed wants, the slave owners were very much in need of greater quantities of commodities for sale. So they were interested in raing slaves' productivity of labor which by that time had reached its limits. It is well-known fact that under the same conditions, the dependent's labor is less productive than that based even on minimal material incentives. For this reason feudal society came into existence and it replaced the slave owner one. Under the feudal state, methods of compulsion changed from force to economics. The former slave got the right to live. The peasant still was personally dependent on the feudal lord, acquiring a plot of land and the implements of labor for its cultivation. On this plot the direct producer carried on his natural economy. In return for the land received from the feudal lord, the peasant had to give part of his harvest to his master, state and church. Everything left after that belonged to the peasant, so the latter was more interested in performing his job well than slaves had been. In this case each side, peasant and feudal lord, benefited from the arrangment. For the peasant the principle "live in order to work" was replaced by the principle "work in order to live." As for the feudal lord, he obtained increased profits produced by feudal peasants.

But again the rules of the economic game were legalized so that the peasant always had to be a peasant. In other words,he was taxed to such a degree that what was left was only enough to feed his family and to plant seeds for the new harvest. Certainly under such a system there are exceptions, and some peasants managed to save money and buy out their independence from feudal lord. The exceptions did not change the basic rules of the game: on the contrary, they made a system more efficient by planting the seeds of hope in the souls of the majority of peasants, that they might obtain their freedom by working more productively to produce more product for themselves.

It is woth noting that the means of profiting by the feudal lord from his peasants changed all the time, but the rules remained the same: to make the peasant's work more efficient in order to get more profit from him. In the first stage of the development of the feudal system the peasant had to work a certain number of days in a year on the master's field; during the rest of the year, the peasant cultivated his own land.

Very soon the feudal lord noticed that the peasant worked more productively on his own land than on the master's land. For this reason labor rent was changed in the form of rent in kind, which meant that the peasant from now on had to deliver every year to his master a certain amount of articles of consumption. Later on, with expansion of the consumables market, it was more profitable for feudal lord to replace rent in kind by money rent. Because, getting money directly from peasants, the master did not need anymore to sell articles of consumptions on the market in order to satisfy his wants.

On the other hand, progressive changes of economic forms of compulsion under the feudal system not only increased profit for feudal lords but improved tremendously the living conditions of peasants by expanding the limits of their personal consumption. On top of that, his personal dependancy of the master became more and more formal, especially in the last stage of feudal development, when rent in kind was replaced by money rent. Under these new conditions, not personal dependency but the desire to make more money for himself was the real stimulus for the peasant to work more productively. Under a system of fixed money rent the more the peasant will produce on his land the more he can sell on the market, leaving for himself more money.

With the emergence and development of industry, the feudal ruling class was replaced by capitalists, and the peasant's labor was replaced by wage labor of workers. This was a more progressive form of exploitation of the oppressed class than that of feudal labor. First, the worker has complete personal independence. Second,his working day is much shorter than that of the peasant. Third, the productivity of labor under capitalism grows much faster as a result of improvements in productive capital. For this reason, material conditions of life of the worker become better and better, the workers work less in order to live better. But even under these conditions the economic policy of the capitalist state is built on the old, proved princple: to keep working people on an economical level that forces them to work all the time.

                                          Salary of the working people

Under capitalism the salary of the working people always stays on a level that forces people to work every day in order to maintain a normal way of life. It does not allow them to get rich or quit the process of production before retirement age. However it does not mean at all that living conditions of the working people under developed capitalism can not be significantly improved.

                                      The length of the working day

How many hours per day the people work is determined by the productive forces of the society. The higher productivity of labor, the less people work. Why? The answer to this question the reader will find in the following chapters.

                                                          Taxes

Direct taxes are deducted from your salary in the amount established by law. Indirect taxes we pay when we buy or sell something. Raising taxes, the state decreases the real income of the working people. By doing so the state eliminates the relatively quick possibility for workers to accumulate money for early retirement or for being temporary unemployed.

Inflation is the most dangerous enemy of the working people. It reduces the purchasing power of money and as the result of it the real income of workers is diminished. For the rich people inflation is less dangerous because they invest their money in stocks and real estate, the value of which is always growing in proportional to inflation.

On one hand, credit makes the market of consumer goods more accessible for working people; on the other hand it makes them hard every day to pay back money with interest to the bank. As the result,the price of the commodities sold on credit to poor people is higher than those sold to rich people for cach. So the credit promotes the reduction of their real salary and the reduction of the possibility to save money for future uses like early retirement.

The probability to win in lotto is one in ten millions, i.e., one person out of 10,000,000 can become a millionaire. So to buy a lottery ticket is a free will tax under lottery dressing.

The permanent existence of unemployment among working people plays into capitalists' hand, because unemployed workers create competition on the labor market which leads to reducing salaries. For this reason, the bourgeois state tries to maintain a level of unemployment by issuing new regulations regarding immigration level and unemployment eligibility - however they don't speak openly about it.

The state pays unemployment benefits for six month to workers who lost their jobs. On everage, the benefit is equal to 50% of the worker's salary but cannot exceed $350 per week at the present time. During this period the worker has the right to accept a job with a salary equal to his old one. After six months the state stops paying unemployment benefits to the worker and so the latter has to accept any job with a low salary.

                                         Short vacation

Fear of losing a job keeps working people in constant stress, as a result of which is the health of working people deteriorates much sooner than the health of people not influenced by vicissitudes of the job market.

Typically the worker in the USA gets a two week vacation, if he has been with a company less than a five years, and an extra week for each of the following five years of work for the same company. Short vacations are not enough to restore employees' health. Such a system of vacations attaches workers to the same place, depriving them of the possibility of getting better paid job, because by changing jobs they lose not only additional vacation but also the accumulated length of service on which retirement benefits are based.

Since the majority of working people don't have the opportunity to save enough money for securing their old age, they have to work until 62 - 65 years old in the USA, until they reach the retirement age legitimized by the state. So retirement age is one of those levers by using which the state forces people to be in the job market.

Along with creation of economic conditions compelling people to work until retirement age established by law, the state had to create jobs to keep unemployment at an acceptable level 1 - 5%.

If a higher percentage (10-15%) of working people are out of jobs, the result is serious conflicts between poor and rich in a society. In such cases the government is forced to take actions to stimulate the economy. These include a lower interest rate on the money borrowed by the businesses, reduction of taxes on capital, increase in a government spending on development of military industry and creation of public jobs.

Under a decreasing average salary the state is responsible for supporting a domestic solvency market, of which the aggregate salary of all working people is an important part. If workers' income falls twofold and the working population doubles, the solvency of the domestic market remains of the same level. Creation of low-paid jobs is the easiest way for the state to respond to the decrease in the average salary of working people. In the United States until 1970 most families relied only on the husband's income, which was enough to support the whole family. At the present time in most families both spouses have to work full time to maintain the same level of living. It is a simple representation of the fact that the average salary of the American people has dropped twofold.

Our acquaintance with the basic rules of the capitalist game helps us to understand many otherwise unexplainable government actions. Why does the government remit some billions in debts or grant billions of dollars to other foreign countries for their political favors or why does the government invest billions of dollars on useless projects? This at a time when 10% of the population is below the poverty level and more than 20% of the population does not have access to basic medical services, not mentioning 8% of the population is out of a job. Why for the same committed crime, does the law punish poor people more severely than rich people?

Such government actions, as we see, are easy to explain knowing the essence of the capitalist laws. It is easier for the state to grant 10-20 billion dollars of tax payers' money to another country than to give this money directly or indirectly to the working population of their own country. In the first case the dominant class of the other country is going to be enriched, or if this money will be spent on purchases of American goods, the profit of domestic companies will increase, consequently so will the demand for labor power. Those government actions do not contradict the basic principles of the capitalist game: everybody will be rich besides the poor. In the second case, if the government spends the money on improving living conditions of working people or increases unemployment benefits or prolongs the period of eligibility for those benefits or increases pensions for elderly people or reduces the retirement age - then government violates those basic principles of the capitalist game described above. Economic policy of the capitalist world is built in such a way as to keep the working population in fear. The possibility of losing one's job creates fear, uncertainty of tomorrow causes fear, lack of the minimum of means of existence after retirement creates fear. When the oppressed class is in fear, it is easier to govern it and the rich feel more comfortable.

Government absolutely does not care if tax payers' money is uselessly spent on enrichment of capitalists, but as soon as this money is intended for improvement of living conditions of working people, legislators, most of whom represent the interest of wealthy people, deliver a thousand arguments to prove the unfairness of this decision.

All judicial systems are built to support economic policy of the state in relation to the economically oppressed mass of the population. If a poor man robs a bank, he gets sentenced for life without any chance for parole. But if executive president of the bank acquires bank money illegally, he can get away eventually with a light penalty. It takes years to investigate a financial crime. It takes additional years to prove his gilt. Also, his political connections within government circles put him in privileged position. In the worst scenario he gets imprisoned for a few years with a right to parole after a short period of time in prison. The essence of the laws is if the poor want to be rich breaking the law, they have to be discouraged from this desire forever, as it undermines the fundamental rules of capitalism, where the poor must always remain poor. Quit the opposite takes place with wealthy people. Their actions are illegal but do not contradict the rules of the capitalist game, under which the rich aspire to be even richer.

At all times in history the exploitative class endeavors to gain enrichment by creating the economic conditions for working people to be more productive, meaning production of more profit for them. Consequently, the ruling class always was in charge of production and indirectly promoted the increase of productive forces of society by squeezing more profit out of the working class, at the same time improving living conditions of the whole population.

To become rich one has to possess certain abilities: managerial skills, quick wits, exceptional memory, ambition, striving for money and for power over people, common sense, magnetic personality, the guts to commit justified risk and to be immoral under certain conditions. The more those qualities are developed, the more wealth one possesses. By the way those abilities are inherited, and so for this reason the majority of rich people intermarry inside their circle.

At the times of the slave owner and feudal society one acquired wealth at birth, because wealth was inherited from generation to generation. Under capitalism, aside from the inheritance of wealth, poor people who possess exceptional abilities get a real opportunity to become rich. There are numerous examples, but such people represent a small fraction of working people. As in an army, when a private becomes a general it is an exception to the general rule, so in a society at large, the probability of the poor man becoming rich is relatively low.

 

Back to main page

Download a free web counter here.