Posted on 12/14/2002 10:06:33 PM PST by doug from upland
Well, here they go again…it's Hollywood's Sean Penn
To call him stupid's really too kind
He is off to Iraq…let's hope he won't come back
The worthless scum can kiss my behind
I hope he's a human shield…I hope he's a human shield
That is what I'd really like to see
If he is Saddam's shield…if he is Saddam's shield
Eating lead would be just fine with me
This useful idiot…is really full of ****
But isn't that the liberal way
He's wasting so much air…you and I ought to care
A thermobaric would make my day
I hope he's a human shield…I hope he's a human shield
That is what I'd really like to see
If he is Saddam's shield…if he is Saddam's shield
Eating lead would be just fine with me
Some people assert that the reality is different when the speech is made by a wage slave, a worker. Nothing could be further from the truth. When a poor and miserable worker cheers work he is betraying his class, renouncing its immediate and historic interests and, as a result, it is unable to constitute itself as the proletarian class against capital. Strictly speaking, he is a useful idiot (5) who continues to maintain and develop work and who, no matter what his intentions, objectively contributes to the development and intensification of the exploitation of the whole of the proletariat.
It is all the more important for capital to have a worker extolling the virtue of work, because, as an idiot, he is even more useful in convincing other workers to resign themselves to work and exploitation. From the point of view of class struggle, his position is, without doubt, on the side of capital. In objectively acting for an increase in the relationship between surplus value and variable capital (thus positioning himself against the immediate interests of the working class in the struggle against the rate of exploitation) (6) he is globally defending alienated work, the very foundation of this society of exploitation of man by man; in doing so, he places himself against the historical interests of the proletariat.
This speech remains essentially bourgeois, not only because it serves capital, but also because it is made by capital, despite emanating from the mouth of an intermediary.
In its own process of worldwide industrialisation, in the procreation of its characteristic wealth and poverty, capital itself increasingly develops the technical means to make its slaves work, to enable them to increase their output, to leave their lives behind in things which are, after all, their non-property, an alienated world of things which oppose, exploit and oppress them.
New methods, new machines, functional music, climbing the party ladder, trade-unionist and political speeches, control of time and movement, promotion within the union, "long live work" (even if stated by workers themselves!)... all signify: everything for increased and improved exploitation.
Capital has perfected itself and its methods for intensifying exploitation. To this end, there is nothing more useful than a worker who shouts "Let’s work!". In doing so, the worker reveals himself to be no more than a carthorse, a beast of burden expending brute, general, indifferent, abstract energy which is transformed into an oppressive power, into capital, which again demands fresh blood from this same beast of burden to create more capital. This process demands even more work, more muscular effort and, in turn, this new capital needs to feed on life’s blood in order to make even more capital, intensifying the effort of its own stooges. It is impossible to ceaselessly renew capital without necessarily killing proletarians at work. Capital can only exist and persist by continuously changing itself into even more capital. As the enlarged reproduction of the exploitation of work, it is a pressing need for capital, for its essence of dead labour, to kill living labour so that it becomes more capital. It is this that drives it. It has to pile up corpses and mountains of objects with no other use but destruction, which is, after all, just a double way of accumulating dead labour. Capital can do nothing else but become more capital by using work, by accumulating it as dead labour, and, notably, by making use of useful idiots who idolise it in shouting "long live work!"...The only way in which this infernal cycle can end is by dictatorship against capital and its society of wage slavery.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.