The western societies beyond doubt create ‘wage slaves’ but this slavery though unmitigated remains unstigmatised. The term ‘menial work’ does not exist in their lexicon. People do not hesitate to work as security guards or even as ‘cleaners’. At least their society has embraced the division of labour without shame, which it has advocated and imposed upon its citizens. Every work is dignified, no matter in developing countries how hideous it may appear. Mental labour commands no superiority over physical labour. A bus driver as a ‘wage-slave’ draws almost the same return what in his nascent career a doctor in philosophy in any faculty receives after an ardent mental toil of several hours a day. Miners and corporations, however, are different species altogether.
Health, education, the right to exist and the somewhat restrained right of freedom of expression — with the exceptions of a few taboos such as criticism of the Holocaust, committed either by the Nazis or the one organised and regulated by imperialism — are taken for granted. These are not privileges belonging to a select few, the chosen ones, but deemed as sacred rights for all and sundry. A sublimated instinctual freedom, a tremendous allurement that provides a reinvigorated body for the production of surplus value. This follows partial economic liberalisation leading to predetermined freedom of choice, which is negation of freedom but looks like one, and provides a regulated catharsis to the actual producers of wealth. This kills two birds with one stone, satisfaction of Eros represses the aggression while un-freedom is mystified by freedom to choose, which is always the same. Liberty becomes a powerful tool for domination and, and as Marcuse says, “the web of domination becomes the web of reason.”
With the US being the exception, all basic facilities for minimal existence were guaranteed in most European states till recent past. Despite recession acting as an Achilles heel of the capitalist mode of production, the natives including the migrants are faring far better than what they needlessly suffer in the developing countries. Of course in these ‘lands of opportunities’ the opportunists alone sail smoothly since they are the ones who control the means yet to reassert their hegemony they need a class of inventors, researchers and consumers. Hence, the emphasis remains on research since every new invention in public domain once turned into a commodity brings fortune for the private sector.
Deprived of necessities, can one blame the workers of developing, destroyed or droned states for leaving their respective countries? Can the process be arrested through legislative measures? “You cannot make people good by the act of parliament”, replies Oscar Wilde. “Good laws do not make a good society; only a good society can make good laws.” A state that utterly fails to provide the living wage with a decent health care system cannot expect its citizens to stay loyal to it, that too when its politicians are drenched in the quagmire of Panama while its Praetorian guards and bureaucrats are making hey under the swollen roofs of plundered money.
After a tempestuous journey when the twilight of life descends on the individual, yet again he is bewildered to find an abyss gazing at him. In the absence of a welfare system, pensioners, widows and senior citizens look toward the only institution that apparently keeps their savings somewhat at par with the official figure of inflation, albeit it invariably turns out to be a hoax. In recent years, a blatant assault on this institution has left this venerable segment of society in sheer destitution. The profits offered by the National Savings have ebbed to dismally low levels. Can the ruling class afford to survive on a paltry sum of 800 rupees (7.50 dollars) a month? Not in its most horrific dreams.
What an irony that on one hand, the weaker segment of society is forced to tighten its belt, while on the other the same elite has borrowed money from international Euro market, selling 10-year bonds offering a staggering interest rate of 8.25 percent. Who will pay this sum? The carpet-beggars who back in 1999 committed an overnight robbery on national exchequer fleecing the nation by plundering the reserve worth billions of dollars, and yet staged a comeback due to the political vacuum and are still calling the shots despite having their stingy figures mired in the Panama scam; or the ones who despite their on-field shabby performances amass 19 percent of its total budget yet cannot find strength to fight beyond few days. Perhaps none of them! Like always another unborn generation would have to bear the burden of this debt, which has not even remotely contributed to this crime.
With the present and the future both doomed, that too without a hint of a possible shimmer, who would like to invest his/her life in the wilderness of dejection. One sets one’s boat in lethal waters only when in one’s native land the misery of life outweighs the misery of death. This is how the ‘boat people’ come into being. Similar conditions are likely to become extremely conducive for the most unlikely revolutions. It is only that people are afraid of freedom since they are conditioned to do so. Once the western shores get saturated this ‘cheap’ labour will be back, and they shall grab the throats of the elites. Gramsci states only then the rulers will realise their folly why they left this hoard unattended but by that time it will be too late to mend.
(Concluded)
The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at [email protected]