Grave Diggers

by Stephen Fleischman

I didn’t believe I’d ever see it.

Grave diggers at work.

It’s an honest profession, I know. Bodies need to be buried. Right now they’re working at a frantic pace. You can barely hear the moaning for the swishing of the shovels.

There are bodies lying all around. Lehman Brothers (both of them), Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other familiar names we’ve seen on television. Some of the dying are trying to survive by clinging to each other. They can come up with all kinds of Byzantine arrangements. But most of them are too far gone. They need to be gotten out of the way before the stench of the toxic assets becomes overwhelming.

Spurred on by their foreman, Hank Paulson, who is only the Secretary of the Treasury, the diggers are working at breakneck speed. You’ve got Bob Rubin, one time arbitrage expert for Goldman Sachs, an old crony of Hank and a pal of Bill Clinton in whose administration he learned to swing a shovel. You’ve got Joe Cassano, formerly Chief Executive Officer of American International Group’s Derivatives Unit. Cassano’s business was underwriting a huge proportion of the global credit bubble – including the vast American subprime mortgage market. And as house prices in the US fell, the AIG books began to unravel. You’ve got Richard Fuld, Jr. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., under Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection, one brokerage firm the government didn’t think worth bailing out. You’ve got John J. Mack, Morgan Stanley’s chief. The New York Times says Jack Mack, just “cannot catch his breath”. His bank was hit hard by the wallop of the market, its share price plummeting 26% to $12.45. Jack angered many hedge funds by getting regulators to restrict short sellers. It didn’t last long. Within twenty-four hours, regulators lifted the temporary ban. But Jack wasn’t out of the woods. His cohorts were at him again when Morgan Stanley tried a Hail Mary by fomenting a deal to raise $9 billion from Mitsubishi UFJ in Japan but with the way the market is there, it doesn’t look too promising. But Jack is pretty good at wielding a shovel.

Back in the middle of the 19th Century, a young man in Germany with a full head of hair and a bushy beard predicted all this would happen.. He made the most extensive analysis of the workings of the capitalist system to that time. He wrote a book called “Das Kapital”; its first volume was published in 1867.

When the authorities didn’t like what they read, they kicked Karl Heinrich Marx out of Germany. He spent most of the rest of his life in Paris, Brussels and London meeting with other budding socialists and making trouble. He participated in the organization known as the International Workingmen’s Association, otherwise known as the “First International”. He also finished writing the other three volumes of his book with his collaborator, Friedrick Engels.

They spent a lot of time at the British Museum in London.

Marx predicted that the clash, under capitalism, would come between the bourgeoisie and the working class. You don’t hear those words today—bourgeoisie—working class. No Siree. You hear entrepreneur—working families—working together as one big family, we are told. That’s because the bourgeoisie (establishment) doesn’t want you to understand the nature of the class struggle or to question where “profit” comes from.

That’s the question. What is the source of profit?

It was a monumental discovery of Marx. It was a discovery that ranked with Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and Sigmund Freud’s ego, super-ego and the id.

Profit, Marx proved, is the gain capitalists receive by paying workers less than the full value of their labor. Here’s how it works: In a free labor system, under capitalism, labor is a commodity like any other. You pay your worker a wage that represents only a part payment for the value he produces. You have only to extract the surplus value that the worker contributes to the making of the product. You call it profit and say it is derived from entrepreneurial skill, reward for taking risks, from the machinery, the land, or other such gibberish. Once you extract the surplus value the worker creates, let him be free to go his own way and the devil take the hindmost. There is always a plentiful supply of labor to be had.

What! Our revered capitalist system is based on out-and-out thievery! The capitalist steals the surplus value of the labor the worker puts into the commodity being produced! What a discovery!
Marx made another earthshaking discovery. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction. “What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”
Is that what we’re seeing now in the USA?

We’re a long way from socialism even though we’re nationalizing part of our financial structure. Perhaps Socialism is sneaking in through the back door. It might not be such a bad idea!

Under capitalism, the assault on labor has been overwhelming, continuous, inhuman and destructive from the beginning of the industrial revolution to this very day. No wonder unions are dysfunctional and chaotic. So are most of their leaders. If they’re not coerced, co-opted or corrupted, they’re framed, jailed or neutralized in some way. Only when capitalism is in the throes of crisis, deep depression and near collapse can labor leaders like Eugene V. Debs or John L. Lewis emerge.

Marx believed that capitalism, like previous economic systems will lead to its own destruction. Capitalism cuts from under its own feet the very foundation on which it produces and appropriates products. What it creates, in the process, is its own grave-diggers.

Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, capitalism, itself, will be replaced by another form, be it communism or some form of socialism allowing for a public and private sector in the economy.

There are few parts of the world that were not significantly touched by Marxist ideas in the course of the twentieth century.