Exploiting Workers and People

 WHEN A HUMAN BEING is presented with an opportunity to benefit, financially or otherwise, by abusing, exploiting, or deceiving another person, it almost invariably will. Such is the nature of the animal world,in which any and all behavior can be justified on contrived, fabricated moral grounds. We are hard wired to do this, to exploit all opportunity, for our own survival. Whether we call it good or bad is up to us, and nobody else. The best, most obvious modern example and manifestation of this is capitalism.The exploitation of all possible resources for personal profit is central to the theory of capitalism; nobody disputes this, as we outlined in the "Bible" of capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations", published in 1776, b y Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. Capitalistic exploitation of workers, material resources and market conditions began early and often, most notably in eighteenth century Great Britain, in the coal and textile industries. In the early industrial revolution, in which the mass production factory system emerged in England and spread to the rest of Great Britain and the continent,, working conditions were from the beginning miserable, dangerous, deplorable. The early generations of factory owners gave no consideration to the health and well being of the workers. It was considered perfectly normal and acceptable to squeeze as much productive labor as possible out of the workers, and to spend no more money on them than absolutely necessary, in terms of wages and general factory conditions, and working conditions reflected that parsimonious approach. Maximum worker exploitation meant maximum profit, and profit was the only motive, in keeping with standard theory and practice. Employers had no obligation to ensure the health and welfare of the workers, according to the ethics of early corporate capitalism. Decades,indeed well over a century of hard, sustained, often violent struggle by organized laborers to force corporate capitalistic power into conceding the bare minimum of reasonable treatment of workers, in terms of wages, working conditions, and worker benefits, have finally at long last given some degree of comfort to the massive but exploited working class in our modern economy. Yet, the fight for workers if hardly over. Arguably, it has barely begun. Over the past forty years of conservative neo-liberal economics corporate power has done great damage to labor unions, greatly reducing their size and influence, destroying their bargaining power, leaving workers unprotected more than previously. In particular, wags have stagnated, while corporate profits have increased dramatically. Many of the world's largest corporations, many of them American, particularly such giants as Wal Mart and Amazon, have a horrible record of treatment of workers, and despite whistle blowers and bad publicity, little has been done to improve the situation. Like Karl Marx said over a century ago: workers of the world, unite! You have only your chains to lose.