EDITORIAL
Simple math
A capitalist economic crisis means lean times for those
pounding the pavement hunting for work, or who have just given
up trying to find a job, or even those still hanging onto a 9
to 5. But it's hunger and want amidst plenty.
The wealth of goods and services that workers in this
country produce through their labor now exceeds $10 trillion
every year. $10 TRILLION. The sum is boggling. Do the math:
that's more than $30,000 a year for every single person, from
infants to centenarians, in the United States. At least
$125,000 for a family of four. Should even one person be in
need when there is such abundance?
Some would hasten to argue that the state machine needs a
big chunk of that for sanitation, Homeland Security and
military preparedness and other "social services." It certainly
does take more and more of the social surplus that used to
provide services like libraries and subsidized school lunches
and siphons it into burgeoning police agencies and the war
machine. But even taking that into consideration, it is obvious
that there is no excuse for poverty in the U.S.
Of course, merely re-dividing the wealth among individuals
is no long-term solution. Anyone who has ever played Monopoly
knows that when the property on the board has been bought up,
the banker is flush and the loser is busted.
Private ownership of all the collectively built tools and
generators of production continues to channel the lion's share
of the wealth to those who don't do the work.
How relatively easy it would be to meet the needs and
desires of all in a well-planned economy that was free of
capitalist dictates. There's way more than enough of everything
already to make life comfortable for all. Social ownership and
control of the wealth would mean that planning for real human
needs--including a clean environment and the development of
culture--could begin in earnest.
How quickly real reparations could be extended to all who
have suffered most from exploitation and tyranny.
Just because it's easy, however, doesn't mean it's simple.
The opulent owning class stands in the way, shielded by the
cops and court system, prisons and Pentagon, all a barrier to
profound economic and social transformation.
But the key is consciousness, the glue is solidarity and the
solution is revolutionary mass action. In the words of poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ye are many--they are few!
Reprinted from the Feb. 20, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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