The Enslavement Of Labor

In the later part of 2008 Wall Street began its tumble, when actually the tumble started back in 2007, but became more visible in 2008.  It cost the American taxpayer almost a trillion dollars to help these firms out.  Then by the last of 2008 the auto companies asked for help or they would bust.  But unlike Wall Street, the auto makers took heat from Congress and the American people.  Labor took the most heat.  The auto workers and their union were blamed for all the ills of the companies.  Even the people in the middle class, mostly the workers, jumped on that bandwagon, blaming everything wrong with the car companies on the policies and practices of the union and its members.  NOTHING was further from the truth!

The problem was not that of labor, but rather the economic policies that have run this country for too long.

In the 19th century, American economist Henry George made some profound observations on his way to the formulation of the Land Value Tax (LVT)

When people are compelled to live on — and from — land treated as the exclusive property of others, the ultimate result is the enslavement of workers.  As population increases and productivity improves, we move toward the same absolute mastery of landlords and the same abject helplessness of labor. Rent will advance; wages will fall. Landowners continually increase their share of the total production, while labor’s share constantly declines.

To the extent that moving to cheaper land becomes difficult or impossible, workers will be reduced to a bare living — no matter what they produce. Where land is monopolized, they will live as virtual slaves. Despite enormous increase in productive power, wages in the lower and wider layers of industry tend — everywhere — to the wages of slavery (i.e., just enough to maintain them in working condition).

There is nothing strange in this fact. Owning the land on which — and from which — people must live is virtually the same as owning the people themselves. In accepting the right of some individuals to the exclusive use and enjoyment of the earth, we condemn others to slavery. We do this as fully and as completely as though we had formally made them chattel slaves.

Ownership of land is the basis of aristocracy. It was not nobility that gave land, but the possession of land that gave nobility. All the enormous privileges of the nobility of medieval Europe flowed from their position as the owners of the soil. This simple principle of ownership produced the lord on one side, and the vassal on the other. One having all the rights, the other none.

The essence of slavery is that everything workers produce is taken from them, except enough to support a bare existence. Under existing conditions, the lowest wages of free labor invariably tend toward this same state. No matter how much productivity increases, rent steadily swallows up the whole gain (or even more). Thus, the condition of the masses in every civilized country is tending toward virtual slavery — under the forms of freedom.

Of all kinds of slavery, this is probably the most cruel and relentless. Laborers are robbed of their production and forced to toil for mere subsistence. But their taskmasters assume the form of inescapable demands. It does not seem to be one human being who drives another, but “the inevitable laws of supply and demand.” And for this, no one in particular is responsible. Even the selfish interest that prompted the master to look after the well-being of his slaves is lost.

Labor has become a commodity, and the worker a machine. There are no masters and slaves, no owners and owned — only buyers and sellers.

The working class is being driven into this helpless, hopeless poverty by a force like a resistless and unpitying machine. It drives people to acts barbarians would refuse. The Boston collar manufacturer who pays his workers two cents an hour may sympathize with their condition. But, like them, he is governed by the law of competition. His business cannot survive if he pays more. And so it goes, through all the intermediate gradations. It seems to be the inexorable laws of supply and demand that forces the lower classes into the slavery of poverty. And an individual can no more dispute this power than the winds and tides.

The previous was from Henry George’s book “Progress and Poverty”.

There is a way out of this problem, but it will take the ‘nads to change it.  If not, then just sit back and this will continue to happen time after time.  The solution has a simple title–Land Value Taxation.