Labour Community
I think there is a common issue to all good examples of social progress I came across, or learned of. It says, if labour is ruled by people and their purposes, life works fine. The opposite common issue says, if labour is controlled by the purpose to increase capital, it not only will contradict most people's life-necessities and vital interests, even worse, it will soon run out of control and finally will endanger countless lives in a global scale. So, as I see it, there is showing a contradiction between life and capital. Either life rules money, which makes as much sense as life can provide, or money rules life, which makes nothing but money. If capital is ruling, it turns to an end in itself.
I want to consider this rather cruel impression. If life rules money, people are empowered to control their labour and their social relations too. People can decide according to their beliefs, needs and wishes, discuss several possibilities, decide for one out of them, and finally will start working for a common goal. In this case money will be a tool. It can be a local currency, a mean of calculation and exchange, or even just a contract. Power stays in the hands of those, who are working together. Everybody knows the result which is aimed at, and has an idea how common work is intended to support the community's life. There might remain some differences in social statuses or functions of members, but will be tolerated, as long as the common goal becomes obviously attained.
Such “labour communities” are controlled by labour, while labour is controlled by life. The common issue is life, or life is the very common of such communities. These can be cooperations, villages, regions, countries, or undertakings, unions, combines, indeed organizations of any kind. As long as money stays a tool, common issues will work, because labour is controlled by life. In other words: policy must rule economy, and policy must be ruled by life. If life is our decisive common, policy is nothing else but our common voice of life. Apparently we do need such a policy.
If we change this relation, turn it upside down, we'll have economy ruling policy, and as a result, capital ruling life. This is the actual situation, and in my view makes all the examples of social trouble I get across. So I ask: is capital really apt to rule life, after all? Owners of small capital will tell us, they can't do else, even if they wanted, since there was no other system. Owners of big productive capital will tell us, the actual system is much more effective than any other, as history has entirely proofed. Finally, owners of finance capital won't talk to us, but their executing staff will argue to be well in control of the only possible and thinkable system.
So what to believe?
If capital was able to rule life, hunger and poverty should not exist any longer, since capital is heaped up beyond power of imagination. So some doubts may inevitably be persisting. Even worse, capital needs a growing economy, to grow itself. A capital stopping to grow would stop to be a capital. It was to destruct itself, if doing without profit.
But life on this planet is limited by the planet itself (apart our iron ball is not growing as well). Sure, labour is to transform nature for the means of life. But life cannot grow beyond the borders of both labour and nature. So, on the one hand, we have life with its common skills called labour. We might call our labour a human seed planted into nature. It will grow and spread to change the planets surface in the very sense of life. We will do much alike to the protozoans, who did create the atmosphere long before creating plants and higher species - and finally us too, since we are only another combination of our predecessors.
We can say, the growth of human life is limited by the skills of our labour. If mankind some day will realize the borders of its skills, it will face the borders of human life as well. Men and women will restrain from generating too many children then. This cannot be a surprise, since it had been this way ever life was emerging. New will only be the global scale of such an insight and planning. Assuming that human life somehow knows what it's doing, we might expect a proper planning of labour and conduct as well, if not restrained by some strange powers wanting else.
On the other hand we stare at a capital with its insatiable hunger for profit, demanding and enforcing a steady growth of economy. Can any economy grow forever, if the planet will not? So what is the logical end of capitalism? Destroying one part to have the other one growing again? Aren't some recent wars fatally remembering of such fatalistic logics? Is this a policy for life?
Nothing else? But sure. If no sufficient profit is liable, capital will not be invested and labour cannot start to work at all. In this case life will depend on capital, because labour depends on profit. Another innocent Malthus might occur and suggest: let them starve who are too many (since ruthlessly ignoring the supernatural boundaries of profit when entangled in desire). So, listening well to such friendly advisors, we find another limitation of life, neither drawn by the planet, nor by nature, nor by the skills of labour, but merely defined by sufficient profit.
Nowadays this limitation is called the blessing of “free market”, where investors may feel entirely free in blessing, ignoring, swallowing or destruction. Certainly any economy will limit the power of labour, but if economy is limited by sufficient profit, some strange results are to be faced.
Let us consider both movements mingled in one. On the one hand, life proceeds according to the skills of labour (including certain kinds of entangling). On the other hand, capital grows according to its power of making profit. The common movement of both is showing like this: finance capital rules productive capital, and this way controls first labour, and then life as well. We need to notice: labour not only has to achieve skills to continue life, but needs to provide more and more skills to serve demanded profits as well. Otherwise, labour would get stopped short and thus life too. So far, this is the actual situation. Life is cut short by his master, while being a servant of capital.
Now there are showing up several possibilities, maybe degrees of failure, maybe chances.
The first possibility is the most likely one. It says, labour cannot raise enough profit and thus becomes stopped to an undesired degree. This has already become true and was the reason for finance capital to emerge. Since much bigger a profit can be raised by speculation (aiming to swallow other capital), production looses investors.
If labour could also do without any, or with only a little profit, it would raise enough food and life-supply for all people. But labour is not empowered or allowed to do so, since it doesn't get paid any more, after having been deprived from production means long ago. Too little profit is limiting labour and life, but not in the way as Malthus has thought, but instead, because much more profit is heaped up elsewhere for contented reasons like swallowing rivals.
The second possibility is, labour stays unemployed to a degree too high for life's demands. In this case poverty and hunger will grow faster than the given progress of capital. “Given” in this precious surrounding means, that the profit rate is assumed by investors and becomes granted by investment-banks, gifted local governments and obedient undertakings.
Meanwhile idle capital will find more and more rivals to be cheated, suppressed or robbed. Thus big military forces will arise along with according strategies, accompanied by penetrating propagation of cruel enemies. All of these are to be feared, so far as needed to stay true, namely to the brave heros and other holy ones, protecting the isle against insurrection and capture. And so on. If we failed to see too clearly yet, history would gladly teach us another time, and once more, and so on, until we agree to a sufficient profit rate.
The third possibility is to disentangle both movements. In this case labour starts working without capital, empowering itself to take control. This is showing recently in those places, where capital's logical course keeps endangering life. In all such cases life started to organize people, to do without and even against the priests of money, just for the very sake of survival.
I suppose, this third possibility is the most proper one. It just fits. If we don't wait any longer for the wisdom of capital (any capital market freed of social control included), we might create and achieve some good chances to stay part of life on this planet. (So that protozoans will not have to re-combine in a second try). Labour shall rule society and thus ensure life by its mere skills. Indeed, control is only one among these precious skills, and if money can't, we need something more able and reliable. What could it be, if not us ourselves?
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