Sorry Country Gal, but you are wrong:

“Johnnycee, yes the workers often produce the wealth, but the business owners risk their capital in order for the business to exist in the first place.”

Workers always produce the wealth – and all of it. The only way value is “created” is by human beings working on natural resources i.e. labour, whether physical or mental. I challenge you to show how real, tangible wealth is created without human labour.

Capital is stored labour. I challenge you to think about where capital originated from – it will require a historical perspective. Capital just doesn’t grow on trees in the here and now.

Contrary to the myth perpetuated by capitalist ideology, money does not make money. Money simply enables its owner to employ the labour power of others - taking a share of the wealth created by that labour, and privately accumulate it creating more capital.

Capital is in reality the social wealth of all of humanity concentrated in the hands of a few. It belongs to all of humanity, but the reason it apparently “belongs” to the few is violence, threat of violence, and capitalist law and ideology. Take away the capitalist laws and property rights, take away their armies and police forces and jails, and the social wealth could be used to benefit all of humanity, not just the greedy few.

Nicely explained Tao. I wasn't as game to burst the romantic bubble of the 'selfless sacrificing for the greater good' by the business investor quite so harshly as you were.

Did you know that if all the world's capital was divided between all 6 billion plus human beings everyone would get $12million US dollars? Sounds like there is enough to go around for even the 'lazy dole bludging single mother' to have a reasonable standard of living and those with 'merit' over and above mere mortals to still get more than everybody else!

Thank you yvonne,

Yes, there is already plenty to go around. But imagine if we stopped spending precious energy and resources on waging war. Imagine the contribution that the billions of people all over the world, who get barely enough to live on every day, would make to our collective wealth if they didn’t have to spend their time and energies on scrounging a living.

As for working class people in “rich” countries, imagine if, instead of a few people creaming the excess production off the top as profit, the wealth that we collectively create was returned to the community and used to improve our lives.

We are so technologically advanced that everyone in the world could have a decent standard of living, food on the table, a roof over their heads, education for their children, medical care, clean water etc. It is completely ludicrous that the large majority of the world’s people live in abject poverty, and many of us are simply wage slaves living from pay to pay.

What is all this technology and “wealth” for if not to improve the lives of everyone? If anyone cares to look seriously, the world economic system is completely irrational and almost surreal.

Hegel, a German philosopher preceding Marx, once said something like – all that is real is rational, all that is rational is real – meaning I think, that once something in “reality” becomes irrational, and no longer necessary, it must be replaced with something more rational and “real”. This is a hard concept to grasp, and I don’t know if I do. Anyway… I believe we need to replace the current system with something more rational and real.

From each according to ability, to each according to need. Seems rational to me.

It is sad that a debate so important to workers is subject to extremist views never to be shared by those workers.
Communism is something that tells the workers what they want, if they want it or not.
Less than 2% of voters in this country ever vote for it.
Socialism , another thing suffers from the miss use of its name by communism.
Democratic Socialism at least is salable, and in the form of a hand up rather than a hand out could change the world.
I want to point out the nature of communism in my view, its supporters gather in small numbers, that is all they can muster, around any fight such as the anti workchoices one and pretend its a communist vs the rest fight.
It is not workchoices has declared war on low income workers ,and intends to spread to all who work.
The fight needs no weight in the saddle bags , communism is as big a threat to workers as workchoices.
And even less popular.
The fight to restore fairness at work is not a fight for extremism, after all fair go mate, is the Australian way of life far from extreme.

Tao, in many business machines are employed to aid production - yes workers are still needed but their direct contribution to wealth generation is lower. Also look at primary production, in many cases there are little employees - animals and ground provide the wealth generation. Most small businesses I know take less money to live off than their employees do (I am a small business public accountant), so your anti-business stance looks silly there.

Yvonne, I dont dispute your figures about spreading aroud the wealth. I find it reasonably plausible. One of the things that you dont take into account though is that not everyone is able to manage money - some could burn through that $12m in a few short years, rather than seeing it as a nest-egg that could last a life-time. There have been experiments done along these lines, eg what would happen if $100,000 was given to a homeless person. In this one, despite the fact that the person chosen waas not suffering from a mental illness (and could perhaps be expected not to manange money responsibily), the money lasted just 6 months. Simply giving everyone an equal share of the money pie is not going to even solve poverty, let alone long term social issues.

Yes, workers can SOMETIMES be easily replaced, but dont forget to do so means changeover costs, retraining costs etc. Often it is more profitable to give the existing workers a pay rise. Remember also that workers dont always want a payrise, some want flexibility, others want certain conditions improved, all of which costs money.

Dont forget that businesses ARENT always profitable. They do run at a loss at certain times. But even if the business is losing money, the workers dont have to take a pay cut (lay-offs will happen only under extreme conditions, as business knows it needs its workers in order to generate future income).

Yes, I dont think we should follow the path of the US, but neither should we follow the path of the USSR.

tao,
As Chris said we only get a choice of a right wing party dominated by the AWU faction, or an extreme right of small"l" or large"L".

PARTIES FURTHER TO THE LEFT HAVE BEGUN, ONLY TO COLLAPSE, so we are stuck with dumb and dumber, I'll stick with dumb, until a better option comes along. at least dumb have a left wing, and when it comes to it we are all capitalists, we working class want to sell our labour for the highest price we can get for it, that is where the AWU faction let's us down, here in Queensland they no longer call themselves the AWU faction because of all the corruption in the right wing, but a rose as a rose by any other name.