What class are you then? Some of you will say "working class" either in pride or in shame. Some of you will say you're middle class in pride or in embarrassment, as you try and forget your roots and think how far you've come. It's become a modern myth, or downright lie, that class struggle and class war are dead. Ex ship's steward John (2-jags) Prescott reminds us we're all middle class now.Awfully strange then that a fifth of Scots live permanently at the fringes of poverty, and the wealth gap between the poorest and wealthiest has grown again (Does it ever shrink?). The truth about class might surprise you, but only because our society brainwashes us to think of it in a certain way.

Class creates your income, not income creating class. And there are only two classes (there are differing levels of income within a class, but this does not change the fact that there are two classes). Before you start to think we've lost our marbles we'll let the cat out of the bag. Read on. The two classes are the working class and the capitalist class. So why would it be that there are only these two basic classes?

How It Is

Well, there is a relationship between these two groups - they are dependent on each other, but their rewards are very different. Workers have to work for the employing capitalist class, for the simple reason they have no choice if they wish to live through having an income. The capitalist class need workers for if there were no workers then the capitalist could not make one cent of profit. This last point hints at the at the heart of the relationship. And it is this - the working class own none of the means of wealth production (land,factories, offices, communications,transport, mineral rights etc.) but produce everything. The capitalist class own all the means of wealth production, but produce absolutely nothing. The ownership of the means of wealth production (the sanctity of property ownership) is enshrined in law, not to mention in the mouths of politicians,in the columns of the papers the capitalist proprietors own, within the common values of society, in the education system that helps to form those values and can be, and is, enforced if need be by the coercive forces of the state at the end of a truncheon and riot shield, and by the use of armed force - most notably when capitalists of different nation states go to war over profit interests. They are not daft though - wars are over their profits or their attempts to gain power in order to make profits, but they have armies,navies and air forces made up of workers to kill and die for them. It is ironic that the wealth of the capitalist class is created by workers and defended by other workers, in other words a possible perpetual economic win\win situation for them (At least for the most powerful ones)

KARL MARX REVEALS
THE CON TRICK Marx in his scientific study of the expropriation of surplus value (Capital VOL 1) uncovers the one and only source of profit - surplus value! Put simply, workers create more value than they receive back in pay, that extra wealth they have created becomes their free gift to the capitalist.

And does the latter say thanks? Well, NO, he tries to extort even more! Marx has either been maligned or ignored by modern economists, who merely rationalise capitalism on behalf of their capitalist bosses, but his findings are indisputable for they can be tested successfully against reality - his analysis checks out, scientifically and mathematically, because he got it right! This is why Marx, or rather his findings, are so maligned - the capitalist class don't want their trick to be found out on any scale. Read the book(or chapter) and check it out for yourself! There is, therefore, no such thing as a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

The class struggle is present all the time, though workers will be more, or less, successful at fighting it at differing times. But it reaches into our lives all the time, every day - our income and our debts, our health, our access to education that is not biased, our experiences at work, the stresses we end up enduring (or not) and even our life expectancy. Never mind what it does to our hopes, dreams and aspirations, not only for ourselves but for our fellow human beings with whom we share this planet. Capitalists are impelled to make more and more profits, they cannot do so if workers are eating into them asking for more money, even if that is to keep up with the bills and the ever increasing cost of actually living.

So the capitalist must always be trying to depress wages and salaries to the lowest levels they can. This is not in any workers interest, ever. What with Blair following the fatten - the - fat - cats policies of his predecessors, and trade unions becoming eunuchs in the industrial harem, many being led by "Uncle Toms", the capitalist class is winning hands down at the moment. The new reality - work insecurity, more low payed work, more temporary and short term jobs, more attacks on benefits, armies of the unemployed hidden by sleight of hand and description - is nothing more than the old reality carried out more ruthlessly. It is only set in stone if we let it be.

Of course the working class are helping to support all this. Capitalism can only work with the (willing or unwilling) support of the working class. Are you supporting it, willingly? If so your fellow workers have nothing to thank you for, at all. It may seem fair enough if you are voting for the politicians who are wanting to administer capitalism if you think there is something in it for you. On the other hand it is other workers who have to suffer the repercussions of what you are supporting.

The Eternal Capitalist

Might the problem be that you never think about what class you really are, or you don't care? There are many people around who imagined themselves as comfortably middle class and now find themselves unemployed, redundant or persuaded to take early retirement (very often harassed to take it!)Ill health can be enough to shatter illusions of what class you think you're in. If you have no choice of whether you work, and somebody else has the right to exploit you against your will as regards work conditions and remuneration(and a whole raft of other things),then you are working class. It's not a state of mind,or a lifestyle choice, it's an economic fact!

It's the perpetual catch phrase of the politician "we've all to tighten our belts".This is usually backed up with some notion that the more wealth we create for the capitalist, then the more trickles down to us. Ignored in this is the fact that if it trickles,then this is only because it torrents upwards firstly. 385 billionaires own the same amount of wealth as half of the human race. What's so special about them? - nothing, but they own the means of wealth production and workers gift them the extra value that the workers create with their labour.This is not a divine magical right,it only exists because we let it! If we want to democratically change this we outnumber them almost billions to one-WHAT ARE WE SCARED OF?