Start Date: April 28, 2002 Finish Date: June 25, 2002

"The working people should be protected by law; if they are not, the capitalists will require just as many hours as human nature can bear. We have seen here in America street-car drivers working sixteen and seventeen hours a day. It was necessary to have a strike in order to get to fourteen, another strike to get to twelve, and nobody could blame them for keeping on striking till they get to eight hours.

"For a man to get up before daylight and work till after dark, life is of no particular importance. He simply earns enough one day to prepare himself to work another. His whole life is spent in want and toil, and such a life is without value." - Robert Green Ingersoll, Eight Hours Must Come

Section I: Introduction

     It is rather obvious to see the failure of Capitalism. The producers of wealth remain to be the slaves of the iniquitous tyrants who we call Capitalists. The machinery that makes the goods that are consumed by society was created by the worker, and it is operated by the worker, yet it is through Capitalism that the fruits of labor go directly to the owners of the machinery. So it goes, though, that the owners of capital are consequently devious and ruthless when it comes to protecting their ill-gotten possessions For the sake of profit, they will force men to work as long as they possibly can, they will force them to work in dangerous conditions, they will lower the wages to only as much as the worker can live on, they will trade compassion for brutality, they will commit every desecration upon the living spirit of mankind, they will be marked as tyrants in the halls of injustice, they will condemn the poor classes to a life of endless labor and toil, they will do as much as they can to further profits, and they will do this at the cost of the lives of the workers. And when all this injustice and heartlessness has been wrought about the good of mankind, they will turn to the Capitalist economist and philosopher, and ask them to call Capitalism a blessing, a liberty. Capitalism has been founded on lies and fraud -- it is nothing but organized cruelty.

Section II: Capitalist Theory and Defense

     The theories and ideas of Capitalism have failed miserably. A Capitalist may stress the boundaries of language as much as he wishes by making his outrageous and impractical claims. "If the workers are not paid enough, then they will strike and earn better pay," or, "Capitalism gives freedom to citizens," or, "Socialism is slavery to the masses," or, "Competition benefits the worker, the consumer, and the investor." Data and information has confirmed again and again that these are lies and treacherous ones at that. They have been used as justification for brutality and heartlessness. Walking hand in hand with Capitalism is deceit, being watched over by the angels of greed and envy. For nearly two hundred years, the situation has remained the same: workers were only given enough money to survive. They would be given what was needed to put bread on the table and a roof over their heads -- in many conditions, even today in the United States. The fact that they are even given that much is proof that they are important to the economy. If the workers were so unnecessary to a society, then the Capitalists would refuse to pay them. But the worker is the origin of the Capitalist's wealth, so he is only being practical minded by providing him with enough pay to survive.

     Property -- Capitalists will assert that everyone has a private right to it and that any violation of this right is theft. Communism is theft, because it divides property evenly, taking from the rich and giving to the poor, thus violating the rights of the rich. Socialism is theft, because it puts restrictions on property and uses public funds to aid the poor, thus violating the rights of those who own property. We must understand property, however, and the mechanics that have governed it for years and years. For quite some time, there has been a divide or a separation between the workers and the Capitalists. The Capitalists have owned all of the property and the Proletariat have owned no property. The Proletariat must live. Like any organism, they need food, water, and shelter. Yet they have none of that. The Capitalist class will make an offer to the Proletariat. They will offer some food and some water for the labor of the Proletariat. "Work my factories, dig my mines, farm my fields, build my houses," will be the demands of the Capitalists. Yet the Capitalist makes a pitiful offer. Sometimes it is only around ten to twenty cents in our modern world. The Proletariat must accept this offer. There is no option or choice in the matter. If they refuse the offer from the property-owning class, then the Proletariat and his family, his children, will starve and die.

     It is this, Capitalism, that is slavery. The Capitalists make their money from the blood and the sweat of the worker. It is also true that the Capitalists may demand anything from their worker: 16 to 20 hour work days, working in dangerous conditions where death or maiming may occur, working for an extremely small amount of money where the basic necessities are barely met. Capitalists can demand whatever they wish from the worker for the simple reason that the worker must eat and must live. The worker could go to another Capitalist looking for a better offer, but Capitalists themselves are in competition with each other on how low they can pay their workers. The workers could collectively refuse to accept this system and do no work at all, but with no food, no water, no housing -- how long would they last without what they need to live? Not quite long. So the life of the Proletariat is either a short life, one that ended by a factory danger or by refusal to partake in the system. Or the life of the Proletariat is a long, bitter journey: trying to survive on a small wage, every day another challenge over life, every day another piece of their soul is taken, every day just filled with more labors and toils than can be endured.

     Yet it is the claim of the Capitalist that Socialism and Communism are theft! The Proletariat owns no property and the Capitalist class owns the means of production. The worker is forced to work in factories with low pay and high hours, under dangerous conditions. If they do not work, they do not get their wage; and without a wage, then they cannot pay rent, or buy food, or support themselves in any way. They cannot start their own business, because they have no money to start it with. Here is the worker: the creator of society. He builds the buildings, produces the products, farms the crops. But it is the Capitalist class, those who hire the Proletariat, who reap the rewards of the buildings, of the products, of the crops. They do no work nor do they benefit society. Day and night, the lives of the Proletariats are full of misery and suffering, toil and work. There is no relief from the anguish of how far Capitalists will push them. It may be the claim of the Capitalists that it is theft to divide property or control it in some way. If that is true, then what can be said of Capitalism, to force a man to work for 100 hours a week and then reward him with only enough money to buy food and water? What can be said of a system where the man who produces the buildings, the products, the food, and then rewarded in the end with a wage that can barely cover living costs? Capitalism is not simply theft -- it is slavery.

     The Proletariat are born into a society that is fostered by Capitalists. Those who own the machinery and the factories will want more cheap labor. It is asserted by the Capitalist philosophers that no person owes anyone else anything. The Capitalist class are under no obligation to offer higher wages or safe working conditions or only a small amount of hours per day -- this is the claim of their philosophers. To be able to pay workers any wage, or to force them to work in any appalling condition, or to force them to work for any amount of hours -- this is called Free Trade. It is a slavery and there is nothing free about Free Trade. Under this infamous ideology of Free Trade, workers can be forced to do work that gives $10,000 to their employer, but they themselves may only be paid $10 by their employer. If the worker looks for work anywhere else, they will not find dissimilar conditions. The philosophers of Capitalism will call minimum wage laws theft, they will call minimum working hours a crime, and they will call safe working conditions a form of tyranny.

     The question still remains: are the Capitalist classes under any obligation to the Proletariat? Since it is the Proletariat who produce society and the wealth of society, including the wealth of the Capitalist, it is certainly true that the Capitalist class owes the Proletariat. These things they call robbery -- minimum wage, safe working conditions, minimum working hours -- are things that we are justified in demanding from them. If a king cannot govern us with the coercion of his military, then by what right can a Capitalist govern us with the coercion of starvation? Both Monarchy and Capitalism are tyrannical and neither are fit for a free people. The justification for Socialism is this: the Capitalists do owe an obligation to the Proletariat. This obligation comes from the Proletariat providing the Capitalist class with their products, their buildings, and their profits. It is the duty of the Capitalist class to provide well for their workers, just as it is the duty of a father to give his children nothing but affection and kindness, just as it is the duty of a government to uphold justice and liberty. The Capitalists may debauch Socialism or Communism as theft as much as they want, but the fact still remains: a Capitalist's wealth is gained from the labor of another. Since the wealth of the Capitalists is dependent upon the work of the Proletariat, the Capitalists owe part of the wealth to the Proletariat. This is the justification for Socialism.

     There are those, however, who may disagree with this justification. "To produce the wealth of society is not enough to be granted any wealth by the society," the Capitalist may argue. They assert that the Capitalist classes can make any offer to the Proletariat and still be regarded as moral individuals. After all, argue the Capitalist classes, without them to offer wage for labor, the Proletariat would have no work and would consequently have no money or food. For such this thieving, Capitalist class to disguise themselves as either moral or helpful to society and the Proletariat is a lie and a fraud. The worker will spend his entire life working for the Capitalist class, and he may only earn 1/100 of the profit he produces for the working class. The deal made by the Capitalist class is an unfair deal. Whatever formal exchange of money or labor may take place, the fact remains the same: the worker makes the wealth of the employer, and the employer makes the poverty of the worker. If laws were in place that forced the employer to offer a decent wage, decent hours, decent working conditions, then this would be Socialism. The law would claim that a man should earn what he deserves -- and the Capitalists will call this theft and plunder! It is theft and plunder, though, to force the Proletariat to work in poor conditions with terrible hours and awful pay, when the Capitalist class grows richer and richer.

     Yet, it may still be argued that the current plight of the Proletariat was created through the fair and completely legal exchange of money. That, as the Capitalist class offered a wage for work, he did not force the Proletariat to work. The actions of the Proletariat were completely based on free choice: to work or not to work for the Capitalist class. The Capitalists contend that they deserve the freedom and liberty to offer whatever wage they want. That they can offer only pennies an hour to their workers, only offer jobs where they must work 100 hours a week, only offer them jobs where they work in inhumane conditions where they may be maimed or killed. The Capitalist class asserts that they have this right to do with their property, for such is the nature of the right to property. Yet the Capitalists fail to see that this is slavery. To destroy competition, the Capitalists give such a low wage that it makes it impossible for any Proletariat to become a Capitalist. Stuck in their position in life, with a low wage, working in brutal conditions, forced to labor for most of their existence, these Proletariats are slaves to the Capitalist machine. By what justification do the Capitalist class owe the Proletariat anything more than slavery? It is that the Proletariat are supported, even in such bitter and horrendous conditions, by the Capitalist class. Just as it would be unethical for a father to force his child to work for 16 hours a day, it is also unethical for the Capitalist class to force the Proletariat to work 16 hours a day. The Capitalist class owes it to the Proletariat because the Proletariat create the goods and services of society, and because it is the deal of the Capitalist class to pay the Proletariat, therefore, it must be a fair deal.

     Within the Capitalist system, however, the class which rules over the means of production may make unfair offers. They may offer their worker a wage that is worth only 1/100th of what the worker produces. They may also only offer the worker unsafe conditions or working for 12 or 14 hours a day. Anyone who makes these offers is making an unfair offer. The unfair offers of the Capitalist class are what it an injustice, a form of brutality and cruelty. If a man must pay one thousand times as much as the actual cost of pill that is required for living, is this not an unfair deal? Does it not fill the life of the victim with fear and suffering, giving them no choice of vitality and humanity, disallowing them from freedom and life? "Profit" or "risk cost," whatever the excuses of Capitalism are, they are simply lies, frauds, and utter hypocrisies A Capitalist philosopher may ask, however, "What about gifts and other transactions? Should everything in the economy be governed?" What makes wage slavery unfair is that the workers have no other choice. They may work for subsistence wage at one factory or at another. In any case, they are given no choice, no option. When given the offer of food and water, which they cannot deny, in trade for slavery, it is an injustice.

     The purpose of an Industrialist society, of mass production, of the assembly line, is that by working together, we get more done than when working alone. This can quite clearly be seen in history when factories were capable of producing larger quantities of products at a cheaper price, as opposed to the individual work shops. However, what we find is that the owners of capital have become richer with this advancement while the Proletariat workers sank deeper into the quick sand of Imperialism, oppression, and tyranny.

Section III: Socialism and the Rights of the Worker

     It remains quite clear that Capitalists are less interested in providing humane conditions for their workers and are more interested in accumulating profit. As far as wages go, they will be as low as the worker can possibly stand. To quote Karl Marx...

The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer. What, therefore, the wage laborer appropriates by means of his labor merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. [The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels, 1848, chapter 2.]

     It was this, the Subsistence Theory of Wages, that was developed from those economists, such as Marx and others, that has remained as a concrete law governing the economy for hundreds of years. It was over 100 years ago that these ideas were theorized. They claimed that the businessmen would refuse to pay its employees more than they need to survive. For these long, arduous years, it has been proven again and again. I have already shown ample evidence that the current minimum wage is only a subsistence wage -- if it may even be called that, to force workers to work 60 or 70 hours per week to survive. No Capitalist philosophy can dismiss the historical truth of the subsistence wage. But it will be inevitable that it will make attempts to dismiss it, and it should be so, because it is a philosophy that creates misery for the masses and isolate instances of power for those in control, and because it is an economical system based on lies and fraud.

     However, it is almost fruitless to point to the current faults of a system without offering a solution. When we point to the flaws in a system, it may eventually lead to a solution, but the problem of ameliorating Capitalism and its slavery has been an urgent cause. It has been an urgent cause for hundreds of years, for as long as tyranny was opposed by justice, and for as long as there has ever been a solitary sentiment of humaneness in humans. What, however, could possibly be offered in place of Capitalism that will, instead, offer better conditions for the worker and fair compensation? What could possibly be a better system that will allow for Human and Animal Rights to rise above the greedy corporate interest? What could there possibly be that would allow for fairness and justice?

     Socialism. By this, I mean the government partially controlling the economy. First, this means imposing economical regulations on the economy: minimum wage, minimum working hours, safe working conditions, etc., etc.. We have seen in Third World Nations that are wracked with Capitalism that the bosses show absolutely no affection for the workers. They will beat them, harass them, publicly disgrace them. There are incidents where the Capitalists will rely on the state to beat down and murder the workers who oppose tyranny. This is Capitalism at its worst and a revolution is needed. The rights of the worker is as follows...

The First Right: The Right to Life and Liberty. The first right of the workers is the first right of the people. They have the right to work without harassment, without the threat of physical abuse, without being killed, without being beaten, without being scolded, humiliated, tortured, or imprisoned. Under a Capitalist system, workers may sign a contract waving these rights when they need food. In the Socialist system that abides by justice, such contracts will be invalid under the law.

The Second Right: Freedom of Association. An individual has the right to belong to any organization that they wish. Whether or not such an organization's background is controversial or not, no employer can deny them the right to belong with such an organization.

The Third Right: Fair Compensation. Of all of the imperatives of Socialism, this is the greatest one. Not only is it important that workers are paid enough to survive, but it is also important that they are paid enough so that they can live to some reasonable degree of luxury. The fact that there are millions unskilled or uneducated workers does not deprive them of the right to have some of the luxury which they are directly responsible for producing. The fruits of their labor and toils should not go right to support the Capitalist class, which obtains such labor without offering any of their own -- unless exploitation, abuse, and oppression themselves can be regarded as productive forms of labor. The third right of workers is this: they have the right to fair compensation, to feed themselves and their family, as well as to live in luxury.

The Fourth Right: Safe Working Conditions. This has been one of the areas which Socialists have been rather successful, although not entirely. It is true that the days where one had the chance to lose a limb while at work in the US are gone, there are still many Third World Nations where such is not the case. As well as being deprived of the first right of the workers, these workers in Third World Nations have to face the chance of being killed when they go to work. This death comes in from multiple fronts: from bosses, from zealous overseers, from army soldiers, from riot police, as well as from dangerous, unsafe machinery. There must be fair, equal, and just treatment of all people -- not just in the United States. Revolution for all. The fourth right of the workers is this: the right to live and work in an environment that is not harmful to their health.

     These may be regarded as the Four Rights of the Workers. Now, though, that such rights have been established, in what manner may we go about in enforcing them. There is only one solution: the government must enforce these rights. Just as it has been relegated to defending the rights of life, liberty, and property, it can also be relegated to defending the Four Rights of the Workers. The First Right of the Workers can be enforced by making it illegal to beat, maim, or abuse any worker, or coerce them into any form of undesirable action -- and it is equally illegal for any business to offer a contract where they may commit such actions. The Second Right of the Workers can be enforced by also making it illegal for employers to discriminate between union workers and non-union workers. The Third Right of the Workers can be enforced by making the minimum wage over $12 and securing overtime pay after a worker has worked 30 hours per week (6 hours a day). The Fourth right of the Workers can also be enforced through the law, making it illegal for a business to operate with dangerous machinery.

     It will be, of course, the enforcement of Third Right of the Workers that some may become somewhat suspicious of. If the minimum wage is raised to $12, as fair and as just a wage that will be, then what will happen to the industries? How will they survive? It is quite clear, though, from the statistics that I provided, that an increase in minimum wage would hardly affect their performance. Furthermore, it is true that when minimum wage is increase to $12, those who are currently being paid $12 will probably be making $24. The middle class and the lower class, both working classes, will see in increase in compensation. One may claim that this would cause inflation, but this is not true. Economically, the only time inflation has ever occurred is when there was too little amount of a product (such as land) that everyone wanted to buy. It also important to understand that the first minimum wage law started in 1938, at $0.25 per hour, and that the Great Depression -- a time where inflation was commonplace -- occurred much earlier than this.

     The most important aspect of Socialism, however, is to have state-run businesses. With these businesses, they can accomplish much more than the corporate businesses: higher wages, cheaper products, higher quality of products, and still a decent profit. It has been the long-held notion of the Capitalist philosophers that if the corporate interest is served, then all of our interests are served This, like many of the claims of the Capitalist philosophers, is little more than a lie and fraud. However, although many Socialists support having all industries completely run by the state, I believe that there should be a sort of mixed economy. By having the government own and run 30% to 50% of the industries, it provides a standard for the other non-government owned industries. That way, Socialism doesn't take control of all industries by force, and the economic rights of which Capitalism so proudly boasts, still exist. "Competition is good," the Capitalist may argue, but competition is useless if there is no standard. If workers have to choose between $1.00 an hour and $1.05 an hour, it is competition, but it certainly is not helpful or good at all. So, in that sense, it lacks a standard. Since there will be government businesses offering fair wages, fair prices, and quality products, other businesses will have to compete or withdraw from business. However, the sole purpose of government businesses is not simply to provide a standard for the rest of the economy: it is to serve the workers and the consumers in a fair, decent, humane fashion. The United States government has been running businesses for years, such as the police departments and the public schools. Although we do not traditionally think of those as industries, there are many private security industries and private schools that lose customers due to the government funding such industries of their own; and, even though such government industries may require reform, it can hardly be denied that they are an instrumental part of a good economy.

     We find, most certainly, that Capitalism is not to serve the interests of the consumer or the worker, but to serve corporate interest. In history, it is not uncommon to find a business in one industry that bought out the competition and formed a monopoly. With the creation of the monopoly, also, came the liquidation of competition. Products were offered at outrageous prices and the consumers had to pay; and they had to pay because there was nobody else offering that product. Socialism would make such anti-competition monopolies illegal. It is also easy to see that if there are no ecological laws put in place, the environment would soon become the fodder of corporate gluttony and greed. At Bho Pal, for instance, thousands of workers were killed because the factory refused to follow safe working condition standards. These atrocities must be destroyed, and Socialism is the only remedy.

Section IV: Our Children

     A Capitalist may point to Adam Smith's An Inquiry Into the Wealth of Nations and state, "Our nation is doing well, as our businesses are prospering and our kings are the richest on the earth." But if a nation's children go starving and unsheltered, then no Humanitarian will call that country the golden land of opportunity. Capitalism has allowed every brutality to be committed in the name of profit, and then it has labeled itself as a sort of freedom. Our children are starving in the streets, as 20% of them live in poverty conditions. However, our Capitalists still persist that it is only by giving in to corporate interest that anyone will get food. Hypocrisy, ignorance, and brutality -- these are the ingredients of Capitalism.

copyleft notice and responsibility clause (read this first before reading anything else on the site)