Kapitalismus und Wohlstand
- DRAFT 2.0 -
Us , I mean us humans in Western societies, it is now generally quite good. In fact, we live in a sense, in an affluent society with more wealth than ever before. The reason for this prosperity is our capitalist economic system, at least that is the established view. This View, we want to now consider more closely.
To anticipate one thing clear: Here, if by "capitalism" or of "capitalist" is mentioned, then this does not mean the little shop on the corner, and not the hard-working the man has built up a lot of effort in order to supply his family with it, but that form of global capitalism financed by large corporations which originated in the Industrial Revolution was and is often referred to by critics as a predator or casino capitalism. And with capitalist corporations are meant, such as Wal-Mart with profits of $ 400 billion in the year, Exxon Mobil and Gazprom, which came through the theft of natural resources such as oil and gas wealth, earning companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin the billions in arms sales, companies like Nestle and Monsanto that the theft of basic foodstuffs such as water and Rice make their money, or companies like Nike have been rich by letting children produce in Asian sweatshops for a few cents an hour shoes and clothes which they then sell at exorbitant prices. And individuals with annual salaries in the billions that are concerned with here capitalists such as John Paulson is neither produced nor something done for the people but useful services sein Geld allein durch Wetten gegen Banken, Währungen und Nationen verdient und sich allein im Jahr 2010 über ein Jahresgehalt von über $5 Milliarden freuen konnte. [1]
Heute machen die 200 größten Konzerne jährlich gemeinsam achtzehn Mal mehr Umsatz als das Jahreseinkommen der 1.2 Milliarden ärmsten Menschen (24 Prozent der Weltbevölkerung) zusammen ergibt, und während der Umsatz dieser Konzerne 27.5 Prozent der weltweiten Wirtschaft ausmacht, beschäftigen sie nur 0.78 Prozent der weltweit vorhandenen Arbeitskraft. [2] Dies sind die Kapitalisten, von denen hier die Rede ist. Auf den folgenden Seiten soll es aber nicht um Kapitalismuskritik gehen, sondern schlicht um die Frage, inwieweit diese Form des Kapitalismus funktioniert und für den Wohlstand unserer westlichen Industrienationen verantwortlich ist.
Kapitalismus funktioniert
Die gängige Meinung ist die, dass Kapitalismus funktioniert und das er uns Wohlstand gebracht habe. Kapitalismus erzeugt Wohlstand, so heißt es jedenfalls, und deshalb ist Kapitalismus gut und für alle von Vorteil. Dies ist eines der häufigsten Argumente für die Legitimation des kapitalistischen Systems, wenn es um die Frage nach dessen Nützlichkeit für die Menschen geht. Bei genauerer Betrachtung stellt sich jedoch ziemlich schnell out that this argument is to be used only to a limited extent. Just because we are now better off than a hundred years ago, that is namely far, that the capitalist system is responsible and advocate for it. Also, the standard of living of the slaves in the United States was the beginning of the nineteenth century, much higher than the beginning of the Eighteenth. Today, however, this would take no one with intelligence as an argument for slavery at hand.
The same argument could justify a system such as Stalinism, because even under Stalin, the economy of the Soviet Union developed relatively well. It was also the great fear of Western Regierungen: Dass sich die Sowjetunion als Modell für die Modernisierung innerhalb einer einzigen Generation präsentiert und dies auch Länder der Dritten Welt beeindrucken könnte. Hitler hat ebenso für eine gewisse Zeit für eine Verbesserung des allgemeinen Lebensstandards und für einen wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung Deutschlands gesorgt. Doch das ist noch lange kein akzeptabler Grund zu behaupten, der Nationalsozialismus wäre eine positive und vorteilhafte Entwicklung für die Menschen damals gewesen. Als Argument für den Kapitalismus ist die Tatsache, dass es uns heute besser geht und wir in relativem Wohlstand leben also im Grunde nicht sonderlich geeignet, da diese Argumentation zur Rechtfertigung aller möglichen Systeme verwendet could be. Moreover, this improvement in living standards - allegedly by capitalism - live only a small proportion of people in capitalist systems.
When we speak of capitalist systems, so most people get only the rich nations of Western Europe and the USA in mind. That are also poor countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria and Colombia capitalist systems, however, because many people think at all in that context. If you look in the real capitalist world, however, once more, such a one thing stands out quite quickly apparent: today is basically almost the entire world capitalist, and almost all Welt ist arm. So sieht die kapitalistische Expansion und die Verteilung des Wohlstandes aus: Die reichsten ein Prozent der Menschen besitzen heute 40 Prozent des weltweiten Vermögens [3] und die sieben reichsten Personen haben zusammen mehr Vermögen als das gesamte Bruttoinlandsprodukt der 41 ärmsten Länder dieser Welt [4], während die Zahl der Menschen die in Armut leben schneller wächst als die Anzahl der Weltbevölkerung. Kapitalismus scheint demnach für die meisten Menschen nicht sonderlich gut zu funktionieren, tatsächlich scheint er bei näherer Betrachtung nur für die Kapitalisten wirklich gut zu funktionieren.
Man kann jetzt argumentieren, dass dieser Kapitalismus doch zumindest We have procured in the Western world has a relatively good standard of living. Consider this argument now in more detail. we leave them once the massive inequality in Western countries aside, we can set aside the millions of people who live from hand to mouth and all those who have no real economic security. Let us take all the desperate at the lower end of society aside, the impoverishment of the public sector and the continued destruction of a livable environment. Once we accept the idea that we live in great material wealth, which compared with most of the world, and even true. Many people in the Western world live a pretty good life in Prosperity.
But where does this wealth? What is the reason why we live here now so well? Is this really the merits of capitalism as we try to tell its supporters? A look at the economic history of the last hundred, two hundred years reveals a slightly different picture. The capitalists have not given us all these things you may generally implies prosperity with pure philanthropy out. History shows that our prosperity is much more due to the ongoing democratic struggle against the capitalists. Why we do not work here for 15 cents an hour, like the people in Haiti or Indonesia? This is because that we simply have a higher self-esteem? Hardly. The reason for this is that the democratic class struggle is the most advanced players with us further, at a lower level of the general population. And this is only during the last few generations has happened.
A quick look at our economic history
Industrialization began in the 18th Century through the development and dissemination of various technical innovations, such as the steam engine, various machines for textile production and processing and machinery for metal production. The first industrial nation was England by mid- 1800, industrialization spread over most West European countries and across the United States. England was at the beginning of industrialization very protectionist and tried his lead by export bans of machinery and construction plans to secure and professionals are, as far as possible prevented from passing on their knowledge to other countries. But from the late nineteenth century widened the spread of the industrial market economy in countries around the world.
beginning of the nineteenth century the social class of landless workers, the fastest growing group in the industrialized societies, and their life was of utmost Poverty characterized. In the course of industrialization, many of the obsolete by then quite well the current by-sector, which had primarily been the possible anyway in poverty among peasant classes to survive. By proletarianization but also many other trades such as weaving, for example, have been taken seriously, who were confronted by the ongoing industrialization with an over-mighty competitors. Mass poverty was the result, and many of the industry that survived could only do so by minimizing the maximum wage level. The number of factory workers increased steadily and almost all of them were living in inhuman conditions, marked by poverty, unhealthy living and Arbeitsverhältnissen und elementarer Unsicherheit hinsichtlich ihres Lebensverlaufes. Ohne irgendwelche Rechte und Ansprüche bestand ihre Lebensaufgabe einzig darin, in den Fabriken der Kapitalisten zu deren Bereicherung verheizt zu werden.
Da die Kapitalisten einen ständigen Nachschub an verheizbarem Menschenmaterial benötigten ging die Obrigkeit in Form von "sozialer Disziplinierung" bald systematisch daran, ihre Untertanen für ihre eigenen Interessen nutzbar zu machen. Dem Wirtschafts- und Sozialhistoriker Sidney Pollard zufolge bestand das Problem anfangs vor allem in der „Kontrolle von widerspenstigen Massen“, [5] die an eine rigide Fabrikdisziplin mit einem monton-industriellen Zeitrhythmus gewöhnt had to be. The supervisors and foremen in the early factories were working with "carrot and stick". break as the pressure medium functioned positive incentives such as performance-related pay or bonuses and dissuasive Zwangsmaßmahmen of corporal punishment of up to wage deductions and fines to the resistance to the unfamiliar Arbeitszumutungen. [6] The first industrial worker generations that were in the factories working, had to previous life and work habits to give up, no matter whether they were employed in agriculture, working from home or craft before. Work-rate and work intensity was now given them by the machine cycle, the intervals based on the factory order. A rigid discipline on the part of factory owners should make for obedience and docility to the supervisory staff and subordination of all behaviors under the goal of maximum utilization of production capacity, who gave the respective machines.
Until the spread of industrial capitalism, the lives of the people most of solidarity-protectionist structures such as extended families, village communities, clans, guilds, etc. have been coined, which offered them protection and social norms and practices regulated. The state did not now it, break out his "citizens" from their old social structures to isolate them and his own general to submit valid standards to make them obedient and serviceable citizenship. This social adaptation of people procured by the state bodies such as schools, prisons and military. So the people were gradually integrated into the new structures influenced by industrialization. After the successful reprogramming of human migration that took in the cities are on the rise, as they now hoped there to get hold of a small share of the prosperity that had come to industrialization a few. In addition, the rural home could work with the growing and cheaper competition from factory products not keep up what many farmers and craftsmen has forced her sold to small, unprofitable piece of ground or get out of their lease or sell their small workshops. In search of other livelihood activities began to change as small farmers and landless so increased to migrate in search of work in the cities. Once there, they were mostly disappointed. Wrested from their traditional well-known structures, the people were called into the cities on their own. The Subsistenzbasis they had on the country still fell away in the cities. In rural areas, people were still embedded in social structures in which a survival for them was still possible if they were unemployed or sick. In the cities they were when they were unemployed, sick or old, plain with nothing.
about life in Manchester of the 1830s, which at that time as a "shock city" and was known among other things, by Friedrich Engels was used as an object of study, Tocqueville reported, "A dense black smoke above the city. Through it the sun as a disc without rays. In this light veiled move incessantly three hundred thousand human beings. Thousands noise sounded incessantly in this damp and gloomy labyrinth. But it is not the usual sounds that rise from the walls of other large cities. The steps a bustling crowd, the creaking of the wheels that rub their serrated edges against each other, the hiss of steam that escapes the boiler, the steady pounding of the loom, the heavy rolling of that encounter each car - these are the individual sounds that make the ear . [7]
This was the environment in which people who had known until then only the simple life in the country, thousands forced into by the industrial revolution were there to serve as a wage slave of the capitalists. That was what the capitalists and plutocrats on the particular efficiency and profits from were seen in these people: wage slaves, cheap labor should cause the least possible cost to maximize their own profit. The result was starvation wages that were only slightly above the subsistence level, just so high that the workers are not starving, so it was common for both women and children had to work to ensure the survival of the family. Education and training was therefore denied to most children. During the early phase of industrialization were working times of 16 or more hours a day and usually leave not even the name was known for. Even in the early 20th Century, yet in most European countries working days of 12 hours is normal. Only in the wake of a sharp class confrontation between farm owners and capitalists on the one hand, and wage-earning proletarians on the other hand, was also politically significant, and given the threat of social revolution occurred under the conditions of continuing demographic change to gradually improve the living standards of industrial workers. The
with the Industrial Revolution spreading capitalist mode of production caused more crisis-ridden social situations, leading to permanent and sometimes explosive contradictions between the affected parts of the proletarian society on the one hand, and in particular the other hand, as factory owners hated entrepreneurs. Criticism and resistance riefen nicht nur die Verbreitung von Kinder- und Frauenarbeit unter inhumanen Bedingungen hervor, sondern auch das neue strikte Fabrikregime, das die aus handwerklichen oder landwirtschaftlichen Arbeitszusammenhängen stammenden Arbeitskräfte einer ungewohnten industriellen Zeitdisziplin unterwarf. [8] Im Lexikon der Wirtschaftsethik heißt es dazu: „Die Bedingungen des Lohnarbeitsverhältnisses konnten vom Arbeitgeber einseitig diktiert werden, weil Koalitions-, Streik- und Tarifvertragsrecht weitgehend fehlten. Schutz vor den Grundrisiken des Daseins (Krankheit, Unfall, Alter, Arbeitslosigkeit) gab es für die aus herkömmlichen sozialen Bindungen herausgelöste Lohnarbeiterschaft nicht.“[9]
the turn of 18 to 19 Century saw in England was among the first major protest since the resistors and the increasing spread of factory-like machine work is too competitive to the then widespread home working. The awards, which were able to achieve the DIY for their products, tended increasingly to that of the cheapest machines jeweis make, which made it impossible for the home workers to sell their products and thereby earn their living from it. The first highlight of the resistance was the collection of the Luddites in the years 1811 and 1812, which ran from Nottingham, starting soon in England followers. Only massive military operations and the draconian punishment of the parties by execution or forced transfer to Australia, this movement could die down. contributed
According to Marx and Engels on the "unleashing of the productive forces" and to spawn new machine production increased competition leading to the factory owner bourgeoisie the seeds of inevitable self-destruction. The pressure to minimize production costs to the market with low prices for manufactured goods to stay competitive drive, according to Marx, the capitalist bourgeoisie to an ongoing reduction of wages paid to the proletarians. These were driven by in absolute misery, and had no other Option but to merge eventually masse to take the fight against their exploiters and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat as a preliminary stage of a classless society.
One of the few who was looking for ways to for the industrial wage workers delivering adequate existence was that of an apprentice in the textile industry to the factory manager ascended Robert Owen, who took over in 1800 the cotton factory of his father in Scotland New Lanark. In its operation not only the children work for all children until the age of ten years has been prevented, but Owen had also set up a school for working children aged two years, affordable living space built for the workers in the area and a lot more what the workers helped to lead a decent life. Although Owen thus created a thriving model plant and the model character of his approach around spoke quickly, it took a long time before this type of enterprise was popular. Under the impact of initiatives have, however, Owens founded in the early 1820s craftsmen first cooperatives, whose members include each other in the housing provision, sickness, unemployment and old age support and organized a joint child care. But it was not until the 1830s, the trade union movement in the trade unions accepted form, against the was judged "tyranny of the masters and factory owners" and raised to represent the interests of wage workers and political demands, such as on the right to vote for the House.
From the beginning of 1800, began working in the UK and the USA for the first time to organize in so-called "combinations" or "unions", the predecessors of what we know today as trade unions to fight for decent wages and better working conditions. In response, the authorities responded with stringent means, the military had to shoot the striking workers, they imprison, torture and execute them for yourself. The workers' organizations, and of Kind of protests or gatherings were simply banned and so the workers then had to change these laws can fight only for the right to choose, and do this within reason to fight they had to first of all to freedom of assembly. In this way they have repeatedly put obstacles in the way because of political and economic democracy, the capitalists have always feared most of all - and with good reason, because they knew the biggest enemy and the greatest threat to Democracy is the plutocracy, and vice versa. Already James Madison explained that the task and responsibility of government would be to protect the wealthy minority of the poor majority. The generations of workers during industrialization had every little law and even the slight improvement in living standards, fight hard and long, and all that they could expect from capitalism and from the authorities, was most violent and persistent resistance.
A new dimension was given to industrial mass protest movement in 1819 in Manchester, where came together at the St. Peters Field 100,000 people to a peaceful demonstration. When they suddenly attacked by a militia meeting in firearms was, there were 11 dead and 150 to 200 heavy casualties. Pierenkemper wrote this: „Die nun folgenden nationenweiten Sympathie- und Solidaritätsbekundungen mit den ‚Helden von Peterloo’ – wie diese in Anlehnung an die kurz zuvor erfolgte Schlacht bei Waterloo genannt wurden – trugen ganz wesentlich dazu bei, die Probleme der industriellen Arbeiterschaft in das öffentliche Bewußtsein zu rücken und sich mit ihren Forderungen auseinanderzusetzen.“ [10]
Erst allmählich bildeten sich nach den ersten Wellen erfolgloser Protestaktionen organisierte Ansätze zur Verbesserung der Lage der Arbeiterschaft, wenngleich zaghaft und mit vielen Rückschlägen. Im Zuge der Verfassungsreformen, insbesondere nach Aufhebung der Koalitionsverbote, in Great Britain in 1824, on the continent until the 1860s and 1870s, it was possible for the workers, build more efficient forms of organization. In the UK, Chartism in the 1830s to the first organized mass movement of workers and also the two most influential theorists of the revolutionary labor movement, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, their work began in the wake of the Chartist write. After struggling with economic liberal interest groups (anti-corn law league) against the high import duties on grain, the more expensive the food. In the "People's Charter" (1839) the demands of the mass movement was put down in writing: general equal suffrage, abolition of political privileges on the basis of property, laws against economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement. 1839 came to bloody clashes with the Chartist movement of the British executive and after 1848 it lost its importance.
The state level is now slowly starting to worker protection laws such as the Factory Act of 1833 or the Mining Act of 1844 by. With the Mines Act was enacted a law forbidding it to make children work in mines in 10 years. This law was passed after it was revealed that five would work six year old children partly naked in the mines, which upset the then Victorian society something added. The factory was allowed to Act limited the working hours for children which is by law to be aged between nine and thirteen years only eight hours of work.
about the forms of exploitative child labor in mines reported Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England "," In the coal and iron mines children work from 4, 5, 7 years, most of them are, however, over 8 years old. They are used to the material broken loose from the break after the Pferdeweg or the main shaft to transport, and the train doors, which separate the various sections of the mine to open at the passage of workers and material and close up. In order to oversee these doors are usually used to young children who must in this manner 12 hours a day sitting in the dark alone in a narrow, often wet way, without having just as much work as would be necessary to protect them from the stupefying, brutalizing boredom of doing nothing to protect. The transportation of coal and iron stone, however, is a very hard work, there must be this dragged away material in a rather large skid without wheels over the uneven bottom of the tunnel, often over moist clay or water, often up steep slopes, and by galleries which are sometimes so closely that the workers on his hands and feet have to crawl. are added to this hard work, therefore, older children and adolescent girls taken away. " [11]
While now the capitalists under public pressure to do so by wrestled for a few improvements in working conditions of children provide to aggravated it with the same time but the New Poor Law of 1834 the pressure on the lower classes to seek some means of wage labor. The protests and strike action spread, however, if slowly, is increasing. On the continent, gained mass organizations of the workers in the last third of the 19 Century in importance in the form of trade unions, self-help cooperatives and finally, workers' parties.
But soon after workers were able to record their first successes and the first Labour had won were conducted clever counter-measures by the capitalists in the ways, in an attempt to protests and early forms of labor organizations to prevent. One of these counter-measures were the sweatshops. The term sweatshop came in 1830 on the working conditions in English textile workshops (workshops) to describe. [12] The so-called Sweater were middlemen in the "sweating system" which should guide wage workers in the manufacturing of clothing and used to mostly small rooms were called sweatshops. The role of the sweater as middleman was in this "sweating system" of crucial importance as it fulfilled the task of keeping the workers in isolation in small working groups with the result that the workers became impossible to organize themselves against their own employer . Schneider and other clothing manufacturers took this sweater under contract which, in turn, had sub-contractors, who in turn sub-contractors, and each of them withheld money from the original contract. One of these subcontractors then finally turned to the workers, he paid with the remaining money in the piece rate. This sweater made their money then the fact that they are most desperate people für ihre Arbeiten suchten, welche sie zu niedrigsten Löhnen für sich schuften lassen konnten.
Durch die Schriften von Friedrich Engels und Charles Kingsley wurden diese Sweatshops Mitte 1840 erstmals einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit bekannt. [13] Der Begriff Sweatshops wurde bald nicht mehr ausschließlich für die Textilbranche verwendet und wurde zu einem Synonym für die Arbeitsbedingungen in verschiedensten Branchen und das „sweating system“ verbreitete sich recht schnell aus England ausgehend in die USA und auch in alle anderen Industrienationen. Aber auch die Arbeiter setzten ihren Kampf um bessere Lebensverhältnisse fort und protestierten und streikten weiter. So erreichten sie etwa, das der Factory Act 1844-1878 had to be renewed six times in order to improve working conditions. While the people of industrialized nations here were slow to gain a better standard of living-won, began to capitalists to expand their empire all over the world.
Imperialist expansion of capitalism
The industrial nations were to Kapitalakummulation since its beginning to rely on those countries that we know today as the Third World deprive their natural resources and labor power of their populations, if necessary by force to exploit. Over-production of goods which inherently the nature of the capitalist system is, has meant that markets had to expand further and further to reach the necessary resources. That the greed of the capitalists and the increasing strengthening of the interests of the workers resulted in many of the now capitalist western countries, around 1900 to a new level of colonization of foreign territories for the purpose of spreading the capitalist system and a new form of imperialism between 1875 and 1914 experienced its first heyday.
one defines "imperial trade in general as a rule that quest, which the influence of a powerful nation to other areas will expand, then there was of course already in antiquity, the Middle Ages and the era of mercantilism imperialist domination quest, but got imperialism under the conditions of a modernized capitalism in times of widespread industrialization increasingly violent additional facets. Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were either made by direct means or indirectly through military conquests, by political conformity or economic constraints according to the needs of the imperialist states available. These needs were especially cheap labor, cheap exploitable raw materials and new markets for Surplus products. For in contrast to the colonial policy of mercantilism these external sites were no longer solely subject to Plünderungszwecken, but also in order to increase long-term relationships with new trading their own profits. And this imperialist expansion of capitalism took place rapidly and violently.
Africa in 1875 was still less than 10 percent under European rule, in 1900 discovered the continent's nearly complete division. In the years 1876-1914 increased only England, the former colonial power, number 1, their colonial possession of 225 million to 335 million square kilometers. Around 1876 were about 67 percent of these World of Europe and countries dependent on what emerged from European colonies. This number increased to 1914 to 84 percent. The rural exodus and urbanization in the developed nations, especially England walked, advancing rapidly. Only in 1750 were 5.9 million compared to English (not Scotland) 25 million French, 1850, the ratio stood at 20.8 million Britons, Scots and Welsh to 35.8 million French people, and around 1900, the population of Great Britain with 37 million people French (39 million) has almost caught. [14]
The race of the industrialized, capitalist countries for economic Spheres of influence led to considerable tensions, such as the Fashoda conflict in 1898, the Moroccan crisis in 1905-06 and the Balkan Crisis 1911-1913 and promoted the general willingness to military conflict. The turn of the century was marked by the expansion of capitalism and industrialization, and of spreading violent conflicts around the world, caused by the careless and exclusively profit-oriented behavior of the imperialist states. The industrialization of Western nations was already in full swing, and after the capitalists to the people there their "prosperity" in the form of 16 hours work days at subsistence wages bescherten, gingen sie in ihrer grenzenlosen Philanthropie daran, diesen Wohlstand auch rund um die Welt zu verbreiten, wenn nötig auch mit Gewalt.
Heute ist mehr oder weniger die ganze Welt, meist gewaltsam, in dieses kapitalistische System integriert worden. Natürlich hat sich das System auch in mancher Hinsicht verändert, sich angepasst. Die alten imperialistischen Großmächte wie England oder Portugal sind verschwunden und durch andere Imperien, allen voran die USA, ersetzt worden, doch die grundlegende kapitalistische Motivation der permanenten Vermehrung von Profiten mit allen Mitteln hat sich nicht verändert, was beispielsweise an den Sweatshops ersichtlich ist. Von ihnen hat man lange nichts mehr gehört, sie schienen verschwunden zu sein. Im Zuge der Globalisierung entstanden aber neue und komplexere Formen der "Sweater" oder Subkontraktoren, in welcher Firmen in Ländern der Ersten Welt Hersteller in Ländern der Dritten Welt heranziehen um ihre Produkte dort zu möglichst niedrigeren Kosten erzeugen zu lassen. Über die Textilhersteller von damals, die während der Industriellen Revolution ihre Sweatshops betrieben haben schreibt Todd Pugatch: „Multinationale Textilfirmen sind im Kern Marketing - und Designunternehmen geworden die auf fremde Subkontraktoren für ihre Produktionsbedürfnisse angewiesen sind, ein System welches Konzerne von ihren Produktionsprozessen entfremdet.“ [15]
sweatshops were to stop at the beginning of the industrial age is a means to an end to the capitalist order in a time of growing revolt against their system, the organization attempts by their laborers, which they did in the long run, therefore, was dropped and the concept behind the sweatshops eventually . however, it was never really disappeared. The rapid economic globalization and reduction of trade barriers in the postwar era has produced a system of exploitation of wage differentials by multinational corporations try to minimize costs and maximize their production and profits. This resulted in lots of huge factories that foreign multinationals are the subcontractors their employees under sweatshop conditions, working at low wages can. And even in Western countries such as Germany or the U.S. sweatshops are becoming more common. So a modern wage slave earns in a modern sweatshop in Honduras $ 0.24 for the production of a - how should it be different - sweatshirts, which is then sold under the brand name Sean John for $ 50 in the U.S.. [16]
But it is by far not only the sweatshops that have persisted since the dawn of industrialization. Apart from surgical modifications of the capitalist system remains still the same. What were wage slaves in the system earlier, nennen die Kapitalisten heute Humankapital und das ist ausschließlich dazu da, möglichst viel Profit zu möglichst niedrigen Kosten zu produzieren. Die alten Imperien in denen sich die Plutokraten des Staates bedienten um ihre Interessen durchzusetzen mögen verschwunden sein, doch inzwischen haben die Kapitalisten ihre eigenen Imperien in Form von Großkonzernen geschaffen welche, was Macht und Reichtum anbelangt, die alten Imperien weit hinter sich zurück lassen, auch wenn sie im Vergleich flächenmäßig winzig sind. Und wie damals haben selbstverständlich auch heute noch die „Bewohner“ eines Imperiums – in diese Fall also diejenigen, die davon abhängig sind – einen gewissen, wenn auch marginalen Proportion of its wealth.
The prosperity which capitalism brought
in the traditional sense prevail now no empires in the form of various powerful nations more about other areas, the empires of today are multinational corporations that the economic, and therefore the political and social development of all countries in the world to control and manipulate their own interests accordingly. The population of developed countries has now won a relatively good standard of living, which has contributed to the expansion of the capitalist system was driven faster and faster. As initially mentioned, today nearly the whole world is capitalistic, and almost the whole world is poor. While the profits of the capitalists themselves during the 2008 financial crisis grew steadily widened the inequality of the distribution of wealth produced by capitalism permanently and is now as big as never before. To illustrate the degree of inequality existing today: imagine a birthday party in front of 10 people. One of these people will now be 99 percent of the birthday cake, leaving the other 9 people the remaining one percent left of it which they then have to share. [17]
This is how the distribution of wealth and the prosperity of the capitalist system that the world has brought. For the majority of the population of this world live in poverty in inhuman conditions for a small proportion of the population live in prosperity in a shrinking middle class, and for a small group of people to live in absolute material abundance. But the 500 richest billionaires in the world (or about 0.000008% of the world population) do with $ 3.5 trillion from about 7 percent of global gross domestic product. The total assets of 8.3 million richest people in 2004 U.S. dollars was 8.30 trillion and thus gave them control of nearly a quarter of global finance capital. [18] The richest one percent of people own 40 percent of global wealth, the richest 10 percent own 85 percent of them, from [19] while almost half of the current world population of less than $ 2.50 and 80 percent of people less than $ 10 a day lives and 100,000 people die each day due to poverty. [20] produces much the prosperity of the capitalist system.
All the progress and prosperity that we have in the Western world today is, upon closer examination of our economic history, not of merit and not the purpose of the capitalist system, but on the contrary, the people have acquired all these things in spite of capitalism. The wealthy classes, the rich bankers and merchants, the nobles and the slave owners, they fought all always opposed any form of democracy and against any fundamental democratic rights such as universal suffrage, after all, they were the ones the laws for the suppression of the masses had written and provided for compliance.
They were working people, and their continued struggle against the capitalists, leading to a slow improvement in their situation. The workers were the ones who fought for an eight-hour workday, for workers' rights, universal suffrage, for public Bildungseinrichtungen und öffentliche Sozialdienstleistungen. Sie waren es, die unerbittlich für einen anständigen Lebensstandard, für Mindestlöhne und gegen Diskriminierung kämpften. Und es waren die Plutokraten, die Kapitalisten, die gegen all diese Dinge gekämpft haben und es auch heute noch tun. Sie kämpften gegen angemessene Entlohnung und sie kämpfen immer noch um Lohnkürzungen. Sie kämpften gegen Arbeiterrechte und soziale Dienstleistungen, und sie tun dies heute noch. Sie kämpften gegen Umweltschutzbestimmungen und sie kämpfen heute noch dagegen an und untergraben sie auf jede Weise weil sie fürchten, dadurch ein paar Dollar oder Euro zu verlieren. Aller Wohlstand und alle demokratischen Rechte die wir here today, have only had the greedy clutches of the capitalists are torn and they are still trying to take away the people of these things again, and every little achievement is constantly in danger of being wiped out by the capitalists. And with this same situation at the beginning of industrialization, with the saw, the workers in Europe and the U.S. faced over several generations, are now confronted the people in the Third World face.
of economic history in the present economic
Kapitalismus funktioniert
Die gängige Meinung ist die, dass Kapitalismus funktioniert und das er uns Wohlstand gebracht habe. Kapitalismus erzeugt Wohlstand, so heißt es jedenfalls, und deshalb ist Kapitalismus gut und für alle von Vorteil. Dies ist eines der häufigsten Argumente für die Legitimation des kapitalistischen Systems, wenn es um die Frage nach dessen Nützlichkeit für die Menschen geht. Bei genauerer Betrachtung stellt sich jedoch ziemlich schnell out that this argument is to be used only to a limited extent. Just because we are now better off than a hundred years ago, that is namely far, that the capitalist system is responsible and advocate for it. Also, the standard of living of the slaves in the United States was the beginning of the nineteenth century, much higher than the beginning of the Eighteenth. Today, however, this would take no one with intelligence as an argument for slavery at hand.
The same argument could justify a system such as Stalinism, because even under Stalin, the economy of the Soviet Union developed relatively well. It was also the great fear of Western Regierungen: Dass sich die Sowjetunion als Modell für die Modernisierung innerhalb einer einzigen Generation präsentiert und dies auch Länder der Dritten Welt beeindrucken könnte. Hitler hat ebenso für eine gewisse Zeit für eine Verbesserung des allgemeinen Lebensstandards und für einen wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung Deutschlands gesorgt. Doch das ist noch lange kein akzeptabler Grund zu behaupten, der Nationalsozialismus wäre eine positive und vorteilhafte Entwicklung für die Menschen damals gewesen. Als Argument für den Kapitalismus ist die Tatsache, dass es uns heute besser geht und wir in relativem Wohlstand leben also im Grunde nicht sonderlich geeignet, da diese Argumentation zur Rechtfertigung aller möglichen Systeme verwendet could be. Moreover, this improvement in living standards - allegedly by capitalism - live only a small proportion of people in capitalist systems.
When we speak of capitalist systems, so most people get only the rich nations of Western Europe and the USA in mind. That are also poor countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria and Colombia capitalist systems, however, because many people think at all in that context. If you look in the real capitalist world, however, once more, such a one thing stands out quite quickly apparent: today is basically almost the entire world capitalist, and almost all Welt ist arm. So sieht die kapitalistische Expansion und die Verteilung des Wohlstandes aus: Die reichsten ein Prozent der Menschen besitzen heute 40 Prozent des weltweiten Vermögens [3] und die sieben reichsten Personen haben zusammen mehr Vermögen als das gesamte Bruttoinlandsprodukt der 41 ärmsten Länder dieser Welt [4], während die Zahl der Menschen die in Armut leben schneller wächst als die Anzahl der Weltbevölkerung. Kapitalismus scheint demnach für die meisten Menschen nicht sonderlich gut zu funktionieren, tatsächlich scheint er bei näherer Betrachtung nur für die Kapitalisten wirklich gut zu funktionieren.
Man kann jetzt argumentieren, dass dieser Kapitalismus doch zumindest We have procured in the Western world has a relatively good standard of living. Consider this argument now in more detail. we leave them once the massive inequality in Western countries aside, we can set aside the millions of people who live from hand to mouth and all those who have no real economic security. Let us take all the desperate at the lower end of society aside, the impoverishment of the public sector and the continued destruction of a livable environment. Once we accept the idea that we live in great material wealth, which compared with most of the world, and even true. Many people in the Western world live a pretty good life in Prosperity.
But where does this wealth? What is the reason why we live here now so well? Is this really the merits of capitalism as we try to tell its supporters? A look at the economic history of the last hundred, two hundred years reveals a slightly different picture. The capitalists have not given us all these things you may generally implies prosperity with pure philanthropy out. History shows that our prosperity is much more due to the ongoing democratic struggle against the capitalists. Why we do not work here for 15 cents an hour, like the people in Haiti or Indonesia? This is because that we simply have a higher self-esteem? Hardly. The reason for this is that the democratic class struggle is the most advanced players with us further, at a lower level of the general population. And this is only during the last few generations has happened.
A quick look at our economic history
Industrialization began in the 18th Century through the development and dissemination of various technical innovations, such as the steam engine, various machines for textile production and processing and machinery for metal production. The first industrial nation was England by mid- 1800, industrialization spread over most West European countries and across the United States. England was at the beginning of industrialization very protectionist and tried his lead by export bans of machinery and construction plans to secure and professionals are, as far as possible prevented from passing on their knowledge to other countries. But from the late nineteenth century widened the spread of the industrial market economy in countries around the world.
beginning of the nineteenth century the social class of landless workers, the fastest growing group in the industrialized societies, and their life was of utmost Poverty characterized. In the course of industrialization, many of the obsolete by then quite well the current by-sector, which had primarily been the possible anyway in poverty among peasant classes to survive. By proletarianization but also many other trades such as weaving, for example, have been taken seriously, who were confronted by the ongoing industrialization with an over-mighty competitors. Mass poverty was the result, and many of the industry that survived could only do so by minimizing the maximum wage level. The number of factory workers increased steadily and almost all of them were living in inhuman conditions, marked by poverty, unhealthy living and Arbeitsverhältnissen und elementarer Unsicherheit hinsichtlich ihres Lebensverlaufes. Ohne irgendwelche Rechte und Ansprüche bestand ihre Lebensaufgabe einzig darin, in den Fabriken der Kapitalisten zu deren Bereicherung verheizt zu werden.
Da die Kapitalisten einen ständigen Nachschub an verheizbarem Menschenmaterial benötigten ging die Obrigkeit in Form von "sozialer Disziplinierung" bald systematisch daran, ihre Untertanen für ihre eigenen Interessen nutzbar zu machen. Dem Wirtschafts- und Sozialhistoriker Sidney Pollard zufolge bestand das Problem anfangs vor allem in der „Kontrolle von widerspenstigen Massen“, [5] die an eine rigide Fabrikdisziplin mit einem monton-industriellen Zeitrhythmus gewöhnt had to be. The supervisors and foremen in the early factories were working with "carrot and stick". break as the pressure medium functioned positive incentives such as performance-related pay or bonuses and dissuasive Zwangsmaßmahmen of corporal punishment of up to wage deductions and fines to the resistance to the unfamiliar Arbeitszumutungen. [6] The first industrial worker generations that were in the factories working, had to previous life and work habits to give up, no matter whether they were employed in agriculture, working from home or craft before. Work-rate and work intensity was now given them by the machine cycle, the intervals based on the factory order. A rigid discipline on the part of factory owners should make for obedience and docility to the supervisory staff and subordination of all behaviors under the goal of maximum utilization of production capacity, who gave the respective machines.
Until the spread of industrial capitalism, the lives of the people most of solidarity-protectionist structures such as extended families, village communities, clans, guilds, etc. have been coined, which offered them protection and social norms and practices regulated. The state did not now it, break out his "citizens" from their old social structures to isolate them and his own general to submit valid standards to make them obedient and serviceable citizenship. This social adaptation of people procured by the state bodies such as schools, prisons and military. So the people were gradually integrated into the new structures influenced by industrialization. After the successful reprogramming of human migration that took in the cities are on the rise, as they now hoped there to get hold of a small share of the prosperity that had come to industrialization a few. In addition, the rural home could work with the growing and cheaper competition from factory products not keep up what many farmers and craftsmen has forced her sold to small, unprofitable piece of ground or get out of their lease or sell their small workshops. In search of other livelihood activities began to change as small farmers and landless so increased to migrate in search of work in the cities. Once there, they were mostly disappointed. Wrested from their traditional well-known structures, the people were called into the cities on their own. The Subsistenzbasis they had on the country still fell away in the cities. In rural areas, people were still embedded in social structures in which a survival for them was still possible if they were unemployed or sick. In the cities they were when they were unemployed, sick or old, plain with nothing.
about life in Manchester of the 1830s, which at that time as a "shock city" and was known among other things, by Friedrich Engels was used as an object of study, Tocqueville reported, "A dense black smoke above the city. Through it the sun as a disc without rays. In this light veiled move incessantly three hundred thousand human beings. Thousands noise sounded incessantly in this damp and gloomy labyrinth. But it is not the usual sounds that rise from the walls of other large cities. The steps a bustling crowd, the creaking of the wheels that rub their serrated edges against each other, the hiss of steam that escapes the boiler, the steady pounding of the loom, the heavy rolling of that encounter each car - these are the individual sounds that make the ear . [7]
This was the environment in which people who had known until then only the simple life in the country, thousands forced into by the industrial revolution were there to serve as a wage slave of the capitalists. That was what the capitalists and plutocrats on the particular efficiency and profits from were seen in these people: wage slaves, cheap labor should cause the least possible cost to maximize their own profit. The result was starvation wages that were only slightly above the subsistence level, just so high that the workers are not starving, so it was common for both women and children had to work to ensure the survival of the family. Education and training was therefore denied to most children. During the early phase of industrialization were working times of 16 or more hours a day and usually leave not even the name was known for. Even in the early 20th Century, yet in most European countries working days of 12 hours is normal. Only in the wake of a sharp class confrontation between farm owners and capitalists on the one hand, and wage-earning proletarians on the other hand, was also politically significant, and given the threat of social revolution occurred under the conditions of continuing demographic change to gradually improve the living standards of industrial workers. The
with the Industrial Revolution spreading capitalist mode of production caused more crisis-ridden social situations, leading to permanent and sometimes explosive contradictions between the affected parts of the proletarian society on the one hand, and in particular the other hand, as factory owners hated entrepreneurs. Criticism and resistance riefen nicht nur die Verbreitung von Kinder- und Frauenarbeit unter inhumanen Bedingungen hervor, sondern auch das neue strikte Fabrikregime, das die aus handwerklichen oder landwirtschaftlichen Arbeitszusammenhängen stammenden Arbeitskräfte einer ungewohnten industriellen Zeitdisziplin unterwarf. [8] Im Lexikon der Wirtschaftsethik heißt es dazu: „Die Bedingungen des Lohnarbeitsverhältnisses konnten vom Arbeitgeber einseitig diktiert werden, weil Koalitions-, Streik- und Tarifvertragsrecht weitgehend fehlten. Schutz vor den Grundrisiken des Daseins (Krankheit, Unfall, Alter, Arbeitslosigkeit) gab es für die aus herkömmlichen sozialen Bindungen herausgelöste Lohnarbeiterschaft nicht.“[9]
the turn of 18 to 19 Century saw in England was among the first major protest since the resistors and the increasing spread of factory-like machine work is too competitive to the then widespread home working. The awards, which were able to achieve the DIY for their products, tended increasingly to that of the cheapest machines jeweis make, which made it impossible for the home workers to sell their products and thereby earn their living from it. The first highlight of the resistance was the collection of the Luddites in the years 1811 and 1812, which ran from Nottingham, starting soon in England followers. Only massive military operations and the draconian punishment of the parties by execution or forced transfer to Australia, this movement could die down. contributed
According to Marx and Engels on the "unleashing of the productive forces" and to spawn new machine production increased competition leading to the factory owner bourgeoisie the seeds of inevitable self-destruction. The pressure to minimize production costs to the market with low prices for manufactured goods to stay competitive drive, according to Marx, the capitalist bourgeoisie to an ongoing reduction of wages paid to the proletarians. These were driven by in absolute misery, and had no other Option but to merge eventually masse to take the fight against their exploiters and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat as a preliminary stage of a classless society.
One of the few who was looking for ways to for the industrial wage workers delivering adequate existence was that of an apprentice in the textile industry to the factory manager ascended Robert Owen, who took over in 1800 the cotton factory of his father in Scotland New Lanark. In its operation not only the children work for all children until the age of ten years has been prevented, but Owen had also set up a school for working children aged two years, affordable living space built for the workers in the area and a lot more what the workers helped to lead a decent life. Although Owen thus created a thriving model plant and the model character of his approach around spoke quickly, it took a long time before this type of enterprise was popular. Under the impact of initiatives have, however, Owens founded in the early 1820s craftsmen first cooperatives, whose members include each other in the housing provision, sickness, unemployment and old age support and organized a joint child care. But it was not until the 1830s, the trade union movement in the trade unions accepted form, against the was judged "tyranny of the masters and factory owners" and raised to represent the interests of wage workers and political demands, such as on the right to vote for the House.
From the beginning of 1800, began working in the UK and the USA for the first time to organize in so-called "combinations" or "unions", the predecessors of what we know today as trade unions to fight for decent wages and better working conditions. In response, the authorities responded with stringent means, the military had to shoot the striking workers, they imprison, torture and execute them for yourself. The workers' organizations, and of Kind of protests or gatherings were simply banned and so the workers then had to change these laws can fight only for the right to choose, and do this within reason to fight they had to first of all to freedom of assembly. In this way they have repeatedly put obstacles in the way because of political and economic democracy, the capitalists have always feared most of all - and with good reason, because they knew the biggest enemy and the greatest threat to Democracy is the plutocracy, and vice versa. Already James Madison explained that the task and responsibility of government would be to protect the wealthy minority of the poor majority. The generations of workers during industrialization had every little law and even the slight improvement in living standards, fight hard and long, and all that they could expect from capitalism and from the authorities, was most violent and persistent resistance.
A new dimension was given to industrial mass protest movement in 1819 in Manchester, where came together at the St. Peters Field 100,000 people to a peaceful demonstration. When they suddenly attacked by a militia meeting in firearms was, there were 11 dead and 150 to 200 heavy casualties. Pierenkemper wrote this: „Die nun folgenden nationenweiten Sympathie- und Solidaritätsbekundungen mit den ‚Helden von Peterloo’ – wie diese in Anlehnung an die kurz zuvor erfolgte Schlacht bei Waterloo genannt wurden – trugen ganz wesentlich dazu bei, die Probleme der industriellen Arbeiterschaft in das öffentliche Bewußtsein zu rücken und sich mit ihren Forderungen auseinanderzusetzen.“ [10]
Erst allmählich bildeten sich nach den ersten Wellen erfolgloser Protestaktionen organisierte Ansätze zur Verbesserung der Lage der Arbeiterschaft, wenngleich zaghaft und mit vielen Rückschlägen. Im Zuge der Verfassungsreformen, insbesondere nach Aufhebung der Koalitionsverbote, in Great Britain in 1824, on the continent until the 1860s and 1870s, it was possible for the workers, build more efficient forms of organization. In the UK, Chartism in the 1830s to the first organized mass movement of workers and also the two most influential theorists of the revolutionary labor movement, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, their work began in the wake of the Chartist write. After struggling with economic liberal interest groups (anti-corn law league) against the high import duties on grain, the more expensive the food. In the "People's Charter" (1839) the demands of the mass movement was put down in writing: general equal suffrage, abolition of political privileges on the basis of property, laws against economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement. 1839 came to bloody clashes with the Chartist movement of the British executive and after 1848 it lost its importance.
The state level is now slowly starting to worker protection laws such as the Factory Act of 1833 or the Mining Act of 1844 by. With the Mines Act was enacted a law forbidding it to make children work in mines in 10 years. This law was passed after it was revealed that five would work six year old children partly naked in the mines, which upset the then Victorian society something added. The factory was allowed to Act limited the working hours for children which is by law to be aged between nine and thirteen years only eight hours of work.
about the forms of exploitative child labor in mines reported Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England "," In the coal and iron mines children work from 4, 5, 7 years, most of them are, however, over 8 years old. They are used to the material broken loose from the break after the Pferdeweg or the main shaft to transport, and the train doors, which separate the various sections of the mine to open at the passage of workers and material and close up. In order to oversee these doors are usually used to young children who must in this manner 12 hours a day sitting in the dark alone in a narrow, often wet way, without having just as much work as would be necessary to protect them from the stupefying, brutalizing boredom of doing nothing to protect. The transportation of coal and iron stone, however, is a very hard work, there must be this dragged away material in a rather large skid without wheels over the uneven bottom of the tunnel, often over moist clay or water, often up steep slopes, and by galleries which are sometimes so closely that the workers on his hands and feet have to crawl. are added to this hard work, therefore, older children and adolescent girls taken away. " [11]
While now the capitalists under public pressure to do so by wrestled for a few improvements in working conditions of children provide to aggravated it with the same time but the New Poor Law of 1834 the pressure on the lower classes to seek some means of wage labor. The protests and strike action spread, however, if slowly, is increasing. On the continent, gained mass organizations of the workers in the last third of the 19 Century in importance in the form of trade unions, self-help cooperatives and finally, workers' parties.
But soon after workers were able to record their first successes and the first Labour had won were conducted clever counter-measures by the capitalists in the ways, in an attempt to protests and early forms of labor organizations to prevent. One of these counter-measures were the sweatshops. The term sweatshop came in 1830 on the working conditions in English textile workshops (workshops) to describe. [12] The so-called Sweater were middlemen in the "sweating system" which should guide wage workers in the manufacturing of clothing and used to mostly small rooms were called sweatshops. The role of the sweater as middleman was in this "sweating system" of crucial importance as it fulfilled the task of keeping the workers in isolation in small working groups with the result that the workers became impossible to organize themselves against their own employer . Schneider and other clothing manufacturers took this sweater under contract which, in turn, had sub-contractors, who in turn sub-contractors, and each of them withheld money from the original contract. One of these subcontractors then finally turned to the workers, he paid with the remaining money in the piece rate. This sweater made their money then the fact that they are most desperate people für ihre Arbeiten suchten, welche sie zu niedrigsten Löhnen für sich schuften lassen konnten.
Durch die Schriften von Friedrich Engels und Charles Kingsley wurden diese Sweatshops Mitte 1840 erstmals einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit bekannt. [13] Der Begriff Sweatshops wurde bald nicht mehr ausschließlich für die Textilbranche verwendet und wurde zu einem Synonym für die Arbeitsbedingungen in verschiedensten Branchen und das „sweating system“ verbreitete sich recht schnell aus England ausgehend in die USA und auch in alle anderen Industrienationen. Aber auch die Arbeiter setzten ihren Kampf um bessere Lebensverhältnisse fort und protestierten und streikten weiter. So erreichten sie etwa, das der Factory Act 1844-1878 had to be renewed six times in order to improve working conditions. While the people of industrialized nations here were slow to gain a better standard of living-won, began to capitalists to expand their empire all over the world.
Imperialist expansion of capitalism
The industrial nations were to Kapitalakummulation since its beginning to rely on those countries that we know today as the Third World deprive their natural resources and labor power of their populations, if necessary by force to exploit. Over-production of goods which inherently the nature of the capitalist system is, has meant that markets had to expand further and further to reach the necessary resources. That the greed of the capitalists and the increasing strengthening of the interests of the workers resulted in many of the now capitalist western countries, around 1900 to a new level of colonization of foreign territories for the purpose of spreading the capitalist system and a new form of imperialism between 1875 and 1914 experienced its first heyday.
one defines "imperial trade in general as a rule that quest, which the influence of a powerful nation to other areas will expand, then there was of course already in antiquity, the Middle Ages and the era of mercantilism imperialist domination quest, but got imperialism under the conditions of a modernized capitalism in times of widespread industrialization increasingly violent additional facets. Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were either made by direct means or indirectly through military conquests, by political conformity or economic constraints according to the needs of the imperialist states available. These needs were especially cheap labor, cheap exploitable raw materials and new markets for Surplus products. For in contrast to the colonial policy of mercantilism these external sites were no longer solely subject to Plünderungszwecken, but also in order to increase long-term relationships with new trading their own profits. And this imperialist expansion of capitalism took place rapidly and violently.
Africa in 1875 was still less than 10 percent under European rule, in 1900 discovered the continent's nearly complete division. In the years 1876-1914 increased only England, the former colonial power, number 1, their colonial possession of 225 million to 335 million square kilometers. Around 1876 were about 67 percent of these World of Europe and countries dependent on what emerged from European colonies. This number increased to 1914 to 84 percent. The rural exodus and urbanization in the developed nations, especially England walked, advancing rapidly. Only in 1750 were 5.9 million compared to English (not Scotland) 25 million French, 1850, the ratio stood at 20.8 million Britons, Scots and Welsh to 35.8 million French people, and around 1900, the population of Great Britain with 37 million people French (39 million) has almost caught. [14]
The race of the industrialized, capitalist countries for economic Spheres of influence led to considerable tensions, such as the Fashoda conflict in 1898, the Moroccan crisis in 1905-06 and the Balkan Crisis 1911-1913 and promoted the general willingness to military conflict. The turn of the century was marked by the expansion of capitalism and industrialization, and of spreading violent conflicts around the world, caused by the careless and exclusively profit-oriented behavior of the imperialist states. The industrialization of Western nations was already in full swing, and after the capitalists to the people there their "prosperity" in the form of 16 hours work days at subsistence wages bescherten, gingen sie in ihrer grenzenlosen Philanthropie daran, diesen Wohlstand auch rund um die Welt zu verbreiten, wenn nötig auch mit Gewalt.
Heute ist mehr oder weniger die ganze Welt, meist gewaltsam, in dieses kapitalistische System integriert worden. Natürlich hat sich das System auch in mancher Hinsicht verändert, sich angepasst. Die alten imperialistischen Großmächte wie England oder Portugal sind verschwunden und durch andere Imperien, allen voran die USA, ersetzt worden, doch die grundlegende kapitalistische Motivation der permanenten Vermehrung von Profiten mit allen Mitteln hat sich nicht verändert, was beispielsweise an den Sweatshops ersichtlich ist. Von ihnen hat man lange nichts mehr gehört, sie schienen verschwunden zu sein. Im Zuge der Globalisierung entstanden aber neue und komplexere Formen der "Sweater" oder Subkontraktoren, in welcher Firmen in Ländern der Ersten Welt Hersteller in Ländern der Dritten Welt heranziehen um ihre Produkte dort zu möglichst niedrigeren Kosten erzeugen zu lassen. Über die Textilhersteller von damals, die während der Industriellen Revolution ihre Sweatshops betrieben haben schreibt Todd Pugatch: „Multinationale Textilfirmen sind im Kern Marketing - und Designunternehmen geworden die auf fremde Subkontraktoren für ihre Produktionsbedürfnisse angewiesen sind, ein System welches Konzerne von ihren Produktionsprozessen entfremdet.“ [15]
sweatshops were to stop at the beginning of the industrial age is a means to an end to the capitalist order in a time of growing revolt against their system, the organization attempts by their laborers, which they did in the long run, therefore, was dropped and the concept behind the sweatshops eventually . however, it was never really disappeared. The rapid economic globalization and reduction of trade barriers in the postwar era has produced a system of exploitation of wage differentials by multinational corporations try to minimize costs and maximize their production and profits. This resulted in lots of huge factories that foreign multinationals are the subcontractors their employees under sweatshop conditions, working at low wages can. And even in Western countries such as Germany or the U.S. sweatshops are becoming more common. So a modern wage slave earns in a modern sweatshop in Honduras $ 0.24 for the production of a - how should it be different - sweatshirts, which is then sold under the brand name Sean John for $ 50 in the U.S.. [16]
But it is by far not only the sweatshops that have persisted since the dawn of industrialization. Apart from surgical modifications of the capitalist system remains still the same. What were wage slaves in the system earlier, nennen die Kapitalisten heute Humankapital und das ist ausschließlich dazu da, möglichst viel Profit zu möglichst niedrigen Kosten zu produzieren. Die alten Imperien in denen sich die Plutokraten des Staates bedienten um ihre Interessen durchzusetzen mögen verschwunden sein, doch inzwischen haben die Kapitalisten ihre eigenen Imperien in Form von Großkonzernen geschaffen welche, was Macht und Reichtum anbelangt, die alten Imperien weit hinter sich zurück lassen, auch wenn sie im Vergleich flächenmäßig winzig sind. Und wie damals haben selbstverständlich auch heute noch die „Bewohner“ eines Imperiums – in diese Fall also diejenigen, die davon abhängig sind – einen gewissen, wenn auch marginalen Proportion of its wealth.
The prosperity which capitalism brought
in the traditional sense prevail now no empires in the form of various powerful nations more about other areas, the empires of today are multinational corporations that the economic, and therefore the political and social development of all countries in the world to control and manipulate their own interests accordingly. The population of developed countries has now won a relatively good standard of living, which has contributed to the expansion of the capitalist system was driven faster and faster. As initially mentioned, today nearly the whole world is capitalistic, and almost the whole world is poor. While the profits of the capitalists themselves during the 2008 financial crisis grew steadily widened the inequality of the distribution of wealth produced by capitalism permanently and is now as big as never before. To illustrate the degree of inequality existing today: imagine a birthday party in front of 10 people. One of these people will now be 99 percent of the birthday cake, leaving the other 9 people the remaining one percent left of it which they then have to share. [17]
This is how the distribution of wealth and the prosperity of the capitalist system that the world has brought. For the majority of the population of this world live in poverty in inhuman conditions for a small proportion of the population live in prosperity in a shrinking middle class, and for a small group of people to live in absolute material abundance. But the 500 richest billionaires in the world (or about 0.000008% of the world population) do with $ 3.5 trillion from about 7 percent of global gross domestic product. The total assets of 8.3 million richest people in 2004 U.S. dollars was 8.30 trillion and thus gave them control of nearly a quarter of global finance capital. [18] The richest one percent of people own 40 percent of global wealth, the richest 10 percent own 85 percent of them, from [19] while almost half of the current world population of less than $ 2.50 and 80 percent of people less than $ 10 a day lives and 100,000 people die each day due to poverty. [20] produces much the prosperity of the capitalist system.
All the progress and prosperity that we have in the Western world today is, upon closer examination of our economic history, not of merit and not the purpose of the capitalist system, but on the contrary, the people have acquired all these things in spite of capitalism. The wealthy classes, the rich bankers and merchants, the nobles and the slave owners, they fought all always opposed any form of democracy and against any fundamental democratic rights such as universal suffrage, after all, they were the ones the laws for the suppression of the masses had written and provided for compliance.
They were working people, and their continued struggle against the capitalists, leading to a slow improvement in their situation. The workers were the ones who fought for an eight-hour workday, for workers' rights, universal suffrage, for public Bildungseinrichtungen und öffentliche Sozialdienstleistungen. Sie waren es, die unerbittlich für einen anständigen Lebensstandard, für Mindestlöhne und gegen Diskriminierung kämpften. Und es waren die Plutokraten, die Kapitalisten, die gegen all diese Dinge gekämpft haben und es auch heute noch tun. Sie kämpften gegen angemessene Entlohnung und sie kämpfen immer noch um Lohnkürzungen. Sie kämpften gegen Arbeiterrechte und soziale Dienstleistungen, und sie tun dies heute noch. Sie kämpften gegen Umweltschutzbestimmungen und sie kämpfen heute noch dagegen an und untergraben sie auf jede Weise weil sie fürchten, dadurch ein paar Dollar oder Euro zu verlieren. Aller Wohlstand und alle demokratischen Rechte die wir here today, have only had the greedy clutches of the capitalists are torn and they are still trying to take away the people of these things again, and every little achievement is constantly in danger of being wiped out by the capitalists. And with this same situation at the beginning of industrialization, with the saw, the workers in Europe and the U.S. faced over several generations, are now confronted the people in the Third World face.
of economic history in the present economic
Would all those generations of workers during industrialization not the major world have been willing to fight for every little bit of freedom and justice and would be gone only to the ideas of the capitalists, it would in our Western, "civilized" societies today still look no different than in the Third World . For indeed, this capitalist system works much better in capitalist countries like Indonesia and Nigeria, as in the capitalist Denmark or Sweden, where, from the perspective of the capitalists, all these unnecessary things are must to which they fight constantly, such as minimum wages, are entitled to paid leave , environmental regulations, workers rights, provident funds, social Services and democratic rules. Not in Western Europe, North America or Scandinavia, the capitalist system works best, but in those countries where democracy is weakest. The rate of capital accumulation per dollar invested is higher by many times in the third world countries where the public sector is small or absent and regulations are only marginally present or completely absent. Outsourcing is not operated by large corporations to the people in poor countries to help increase welfare, but only so to increase their own profit margins. You are leaving to countries where governments appreciate ein wenig Schmiergeld über alle anfallenden Externalitäten hinwegsehen, welche die Konzerne dort hinterlassen, und wo Gesetze je nach Bedarf ohne große Umstände abgeändert werden können.
Massive Subventionen, Steuerbefreiungen und andere Vergünstigungen sind die einzigen Gründe, weshalb hier in der westlichen Welt überhaupt noch Standorte der Großkonzerne vorhanden sind. Und unter der Androhung abzuwandern gewähren ihnen die Regierungen immer noch mehr Vergünstigungen. Drohungen und Erpressung seitens der Konzerne gegenüber dem Staat sind schon lange gang und gäbe. Es heißt dann einfach: Ihr wollt, dass unser Unternehmen hier building remains, then our public funds our factories and the infrastructure we need, we will not pay taxes on the contrary, we actually do still massive subsidies from you, such and such regulations must be revised again, and then, then consider we may and we still get our site up for a while. Companies like Nike have been using a long time for workers from Southeast Asia because they are not only much cheaper, but because the state regulations in these countries compared to those that were only marginally present in the U.S. or Europe. Coca Cola was his work in Zambia close because they do not want Steuerbefreiungen erhielten und die Tabakindustrie wandert aufgrund rückgängiger Einnahmen aus den USA und Europa nach Asien ab.
Die Washington Post berichtete 2002 beispielsweise, dass die Firma Levi Strauss & Company, welche praktisch ein Synonym für die USA wäre, beschlossen hätte, bis auf eine einzige alle Fabriken des Landes zu schließen und nach Übersee abzuwandern. [21] Nur einige Monate zuvor hat die Post in einem Artikel über Levi's enthüllt, dass die Firma in China Gefängnisseinsaßen als Billigarbeitskräfte zur Fertigung ihrer Jeans ausbeutet.[22]
In Germany, the state income tax by companies during the last 20 years have fallen by 50 percent, despite the fact that corporate profits have risen by 90 percent. The attempt Oskar Lafontaine, 1999 it amended tax increases for companies something was frustrated by corporations such as BMW, Daimler-Benz, RWE and the German Bank, by threatening to move their business or investments in other countries, should the policy of Government does not act in their interests. A spokesman for RWE was then making clear that it was about at least 14,000 jobs and openly threatened that if the investment position in Germany would no longer attractive, the group would consider every possibility, to shift its investments abroad. Within months, the German government decided to tax breaks for companies still below the level of the USA. An adviser to former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said this in Washington. "The German banking and industrial giants like Mercedes are too strong for the elected government in Berlin" [23]
device in a small business financial distress, so it just goes under and no one cares. The big corporations and banks, however, never have to worry about worry, because with the grounds that it would be "to big to fail", they can always count on the government, they always supported and possibly also saves taxpayers' money out of awkward situations. "Free Markets" is repeated mantra-like and reducing the welfare state is a permanent requirement. Social services and support and rights for the workers the capitalists see as completely unnecessary and a threat to their profitability and competitiveness. You ask yourself, however more and more state support, freedoms, entitlements and rights. Taxpayers' money to support the taxpayer appears to them as a paradox. With the billions an Steuergeldern zur Subventionierung ihrer Unternehmen haben die Kapitalisten offensichtlich jedoch keinerlei Probleme. So sieht die freie Marktwirtschaft im Kapitalismus aus: Privatisierung der Gewinne und Verstaatlichung der Verluste und Schulden. Unter einem erfolgreichen System verstehen die Kapitalisten etwas ganz anderes, als die „einfachen“ Bürger.
Ein weiteres, heute sehr beliebtes Mittel der Kapitalisten um ihre Gewinne durch Ausbeutung der Lohnarbeiter zu vermehren ist Lohndumping. Während die Profite der Konzerne immer weiter steigen, steigt auch die Zahl der „working poor“ immer weiter an. In ihrem Kampf um Profimaximierung sind die Capitalists was busy, the prosperity that we owe to capitalism, allegedly, to take away with us continuous support of the government. For example, a worker earns in the Mexican Aluminum Company of America's Ciudad Acuna factory between $ 21.44 and $ 24.60 per week, while a basket full of basic food costs $ 26.87. [24] In France, the share of low-wage earners from 11.4% in 1983 has increased to 16.6% in 2001. In England the figure was 27.6% in 2001 and in West Germany in 1997 at 35.5%, the findings of a study by the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) shows, it continues: "... The economic situation in Europe during the last 20 years to the emergence of a relatively new social category out [has], belong to the 'workers with incomes below the subsistence minimum' (ie workers who carry out the one job, but under one set remain poverty threshold). "[25] And our politicians announce this development still full of pride, such as former German Chancellor Schröder at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005:" We must and we have liberalized our labor market. We have built one of the best low-wage sectors, which is available in Europe. "[26]
Der seit Beginn des Industriezeitalters stattfindende Kampf zwischen Kapitalisten und Proletariern findet, wie wir sehen können, also heute noch genauso statt, auch wenn mittlerweile Kapitalisten nicht mehr als Kapitalisten sondern als Unternehmer, Proletarier nicht mehr als Proletarier sondern als Humankapital und Imperialismus als freie globale Marktwirtschaft bezeichnet werden. Nur die Sweatshops, die sind zwischenzeitlich eine Weile lang verschwunden, nur um dann vor nicht allzu langer Zeit von den Kapitalisten wieder aus der Versenkung der Geschichte hervorgeholt zu werden.
Vieles hat sich verändert seit Beginn des Industriezeitalters, was aber die Jahrhunderte hindurch immer remains the same, the motivation of capitalists is that it, like a view clearly in our economic history, in no way ever was about having the majority of people can live a comfortable life in prosperity, but only to professional maximization at any price. And they put up today, all their available resources and all their power to do one, its hard to maintain against the great mass of people gained status quo and their profits even further without regard to individuals, societies and environment in a delusion of endless to increase growth. Now when are therefore said to capitalism or does it not work, then we must always be specified, for whom this is true. Because of this huge, funded by big business capitalism does not at all good for the nations of the Third World and for many people in the First World not much. For the capitalists, but it works very well.
- Domingo Conte
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Sources:
[3] The World Distribution of Household Wealth , World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University ( 2007)
[4] see: World Bank Key Development Data & Statistics , World Bank; Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass, The World's Richest People , Forbes, March
3, 2007; World Bank's list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (41 countries), accessed March 3, 2008
[11] Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England , Barmen, 1845, p. 137f.
[17] The World Distribution of Household Wealth , World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University ( 2007)
[19] The World Distribution of Household Wealth , World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University ( 2007)
[24] Todd Pugatch: Historical Development of the Sweatshop , T INTS 92: The Nike seminar. April 30, 1998
[25] European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO): low-wage workers and workers with income below the poverty (2003)
[26] speech by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder before the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 28, 2005)
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