I am now reading “The human condition” by Hannah Arent…
a question she brings out is this question of labor and society.
among other functions we have as a society…
we have “action, work, labor” which is how she lays out our various
possibilities in existence… we have a fourth possibility of course,
contemplation…
now let us think about the possibility of being free… freedom…
Freedom: the quality or state of being free such as
- the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action…
- liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another: independence…
- the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous…
- unrestricted use…
now let us think about work… I work to make a living… to put food on the table…
now do I have “freedom” to be exempt or released from something onerous, work?
no… clearly not…in other words, if we work, and most people work, then
we are not, not free… we are forced by necessity or we are constraint in our
possibilities and we must work… hence we are not free…
and what happens when I work? my effort, my production is taken in a couple of
different ways… for example, I own a sandwich shop… I make sandwiches as a living…
I have no other employees…so I work for myself, to put food on the table…
we also have other aspects of this production we need to understand…
the state takes taxes out of my production… so I make 20 sandwiches a day,
at $10.00 a sandwich…so I have made $200 dollars this day making sandwiches…
let us remove, (to make the example easy to understand) expenses of $150…
so today, I made $50 with my own effort ahhhh, but let us not forget we have to
pay taxes…so, the government takes (as its share of my production) half…
so, I now have made $25 dollars today with my effort…now the conservative
rails against this “theft” as somehow being unfair…by taxing the worker his
share of his production…but that is somehow the price of operating in
civilization…the cost of doing business in our society…
now has I have pointed out a number of times, if I were to work for
a large grocery store chain, (Like the one I work at) I get $10 per hour,
and by my effort, I created $20 of profits, the company takes that extra
$10 of my effort… that is how the company makes its profits, by
basically stealing my effort in making those sandwiches…and of course,
the state then takes a % out of my income, leaving me with say, $7.50 dollars per hour,
of money after the state takes their share and the company takes their share…
now the conservative rails against the state for taking its money,
but not against the company for taking its money…
and the liberal rails against the company for stealing money from
the employee and care’s less about the money taken by the state…
and why is this?
because the money taken by the state is returned to us in the form of
government services… we have roads we can travel on, we have schools
to teach our children, we have our garbage picked up on Fridays…
there are benefits to our money going to the state… and we receive
those benefits every day in those services provided to us by the state…
the conservative fails to understand or fails to see the benefits provided
by the services of the state as being of benefit…
if conservatives had their way, there wouldn’t even be a state, a government
in existence… the private sector, business would provide all such services,
of course at a cost…
but let us think about this… what benefits do we receive when the company
steals our money? well, we have a job?..and we might, might get raises…
but the company steals its money and then does whatever it wants with that money…
in other words, do the workers see any benefits increasing because of the
money stolen by the corporation? no, in fact, the corporation is fixated on
reducing cost… reducing how much workers are paid, reducing how much
is paid for in terms of costs like materials and taxes and upkeep of the corporation…
in other words, we get few if any benefits from the company stealing our money,
whereas if the state steals our money, we do get and can keep a number of
benefits from the state…so the money stolen from us by corporations flow
one way back to the corporation and the money stolen from us by
the state does flow back to us in the form of services…more of a 50/50
spilt in terms of the state…
and it is upon the basis of this return we get from the state, that
liberals support the use of taxes…but as the state removes or reduces
benefits to its citizens, it becomes more and more like a corporation…
in which the money flows one way and one way only… just like a corporation…
so, this is an argument for the state allowing such things as paying for abortions…
this is a benefit for its citizens… and thus make the exchange between citizen
and the state more equitable… we received services in return for our taxes…
that makes paying taxes more fair if we receive some benefits in return…
something that doesn’t happen when our efforts/production is stolen
by the corporation…the value of the state comes from the benefits we
receive back from the state…the greater the benefits that are returned
from the state, the greater the state become more of a partner, then
the competition as defined by the corporations…the corporations
hold the state, as does the conservative, as an evil, some might consider it
a necessary evil, but an evil nevertheless…whereas the liberal can, rightfully so,
consider the state as something more then just an evil entity, by the
benefits we receive back from the state in services rendered…
the greater the benefits received from the state, the more we can
approve of and aid in the state…in other words, the state that
offers us greater and greater benefits is the state we want to
get and engage with… we can define the state as an entity
that provides us with services that we cannot get in any other way…
so we see the problem with the conservative is that they have
a distorted and mistaken understanding of the role of the state
and the role of corporations…benefits received make the state worth
having and being build into something greater…whereas we don’t get any
such benefits from the business/corporation…
now one argument coming from conservative might be that we have no say
how the government/state dictates the benefits we might receive from it…
actually agree… as the current form of government is bought and sold
by big business… ( look at the state governments of such states as Wisconsin,
Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakota’s… they are simple employees/divisions of
large corporations)
so the answer is not less democracy as conservatives claim, but more and
more inclusive democracy… everyone who is 18 and up can vote… regardless
of their status… in other words, we promote a greater degree of democracy
in America…so one solution to our current crises in America is we generate
more democracy, not less… we take government out of the hands of big
business and return it to the people…we remember that the value
of government lies in the benefits that the government returns to its
citizens… the more benefits, the more useful the government is,
the less benefits, the less useful the government is…
Kropotkin