- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Socialist Job Rotation = Twisting in the Wind

Posted by: Dr. Cruel on November 19, 1999 at 00:42:05:

In Reply to: What about job rotation? posted by Gee on November 18, 1999 at 21:32:06:

Good morning. I am a capitalist, desirous of becoming part of the wave of the future, a proletariat revolutionary. Reading a bit of Egyptian metaphysics and work force methodology, I hit upon a brilliant brainstorm (worthy of my class, of course).

First, I find a group of fiendish capitalists, nefarious each and every one. I then hire a group of heavily armed mercenaries, checking them well to see if they suffer from even a smidgeon of compassion. Seeing nothing of the sort in them, I task my merry thugs to work the capitalists mercilessly, developing a bare path of stagnant and polluted wetlands. They will toil at creating a fully mechanized, self-sufficient "means of production" apparatus, which shall effortlessly manufacture all the goods I and my minions would possibly need to live in luxury for the rest of our days. I am careful to include a repair system that is also automated, and a renewable fuel source (I fancy something nuclear, but augment the system with a solar array - just in case).

Finished, I declare the bourgeois pigs "emigrants (the ones who escape) and rebels (those I manage to catch and execute)", confiscate their property, and declare the new state a "dictatorship of the proletariat". I invite a few friends here to reside in my new socialist dominion (you know who you are).

I have thusly:

1) Abolished property in land and vow to apply all rents of land to public purposes

2) Instituted a heavy progressive income tax (namely, everything and anything that a capitalist might dare have)

3) Abolished all rights of inheritance (as Alexander said, 'To the strongest ...')

4) Confiscated all property of emigrants and rebels ('natch)

5) Centralized credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly

6) Centralized the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state

7) Extended the factories and instruments of production owned by the state, brought into cultivation waste lands, and improved the soil in accordance with a general plan

8) Established an equal obligation of all to work (at the only labor remaining; to wit, the bashing of foreign tresspassing 'reactionaries'), and of industrial armies, especially for agriculture (mechanized, of course)

9) Have combined agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradually abolishing all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country and

10) Prepared fo rthe free education of all children in public schools (of which there, happily, are none). Needless to say, there is no child labor either. Whatever education exists is combined with industrial production, etc.

In place of my old bourgeois society, steeped in classes and class antagonisms, I have emplaced an association in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all.

Soo ... What do you think? Does Uncle Joe gets your all approval again? Or what?

"Doc" Cruel


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