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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Capitalist production
Message-ID: <380@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Mar-85 18:08:29 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.380
Posted: Mon Mar 25 18:08:29 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Mar-85 06:12:30 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 78

From JoSH:
> Laura has, perhaps without intending to, put her finger on the very
> reason that people *do* work for wages (and value "having a job" so
> highly).  Why indeed become a "wage slave"?  In a word: security.
> The worker is not utterly secure (who is?) but considerably more so
> than the capitalist.  The workers of this country make an order of
> magnitude more, in sum, than the capitalists.  If they wanted, they
> could just buy them out.  Why don't they?  They are, simply,
> comfortable.  Sure, they want more.  Everybody always wants more.
> Those who want it enough to pass up the beer and football games are
> able to succeed here more than anywhere else in the world; when they
> do, they are called -- capitalists.

It's not often one finds such a clear depiction of the fantasy world
in which a good many libertarians evidently dwell.  The workers,
indeed, make an order of magnitude more than the capitalists because
there are two orders of magnitude more workers than capitalists.
Most of workers' income goes to basic living expenses and is not
available to invest in large quantities of stocks, bonds, trusts, and
real estate.  I'd like to ask the local janitor if his preference for
security is the real reason he doesn't just save up his money and buy
a controlling interest in IBM, but I'm afraid of getting punched out.
I wonder if JoSH has calculated how long it would take a typical
worker to save enough money so that he can live comfortably on his
"unearned" income.  Remember, this "typical" worker has a family to
support.  Let us have some facts and figures, please, and some kind
of evidence beyond bald assertion that the wage-slaves are contented
with their life down on the capitalist plantation, or would be if it
weren't for the damn-yankee abolitionists who want to abolish wage
labor.  Studs Terkel's book *Working* is a very readable eye-opener
for those who look through rose-colored glasses at the "comfort" and
"security" typically enjoyed by American workers.  Security, my ass.

The outcome of capitalism in the US is not legions of contented
wage-slaves tap-dancing on the levee, but rather a massive
concentration of wealth in the hands of an elite.  Here are some
facts on the distribution of wealth in the US (from various sources,
available on request.)  Wealth is much more unevenly distributed than
income, mainly because income is taxed and wealth mostly is not.
Hence the rich prefer to keep their wealth in the form of stock
holdings, real estate, etc.  Officially, profits and interest account
for only about 2-3% of the national income, but this is misleading
for two reasons: most profits are retained and reinvested, thus
increasing the wealth but not the income of the stockholders; and the
huge salaries of executive brass are really a share of the profits.  

In 1969, Americans with gross assets of more than $60,000 owned
$1.224 trillion (in terms of 1985 dollars, of course, this would be a
much larger figure).  This relative share of wealth has remained
essentially unchanged since 1945.  The top 0.5% of individuals have
consistently owned 20-25% of the nation's wealth in the postwar
period.  In 1972, the same 0.5% owned 49.3% of all corporate stocks,
and the richest 1% of the population owned 56.5% of stocks, 60% of
the bonds, 52.7% of the debt instruments, and *89.9%* of the trusts.  

What about the people on the bottom?  The bottom quarter of the
population possesses negative wealth -- they are net debtors.  The
bottom four-fifths possesses wealth which almost equals that held by
the top 0.5%.  Furthermore, most of the wealth possessed by this
four-fifths consists of homes (generally mortgaged) and consumer
durables which do not generate income for their owners.  This
income-generating wealth is generally safe from the ups and downs of
business cycles, barring a collapse of the economy on the scale of
the Great Depression.  The very rich in the US can pass along this
huge concentration of wealth to the next generation, very often
through trusts.  Yet the value of trust funds is excluded from the
estate tax returns which form the basis for most estimates of wealth
in America (see John A. Brittain, *Inheritance and the Inequality of
Material Wealth*).  

Turning to Britain, we find that in 1973 the bottom four-fifths of
the population held 13.6% of the total wealth, compared to about 23%
in the US.  Wealth in the US is almost as unevenly distributed as
in Britain with its aristocratic social structure.  This suggests
that the maldistribution is built into the structure of capitalism
itself.  

Richard Carnes