I think "Communist" is essentially a code word for "Labor Union"

[Myra Bronstein]

What do you all think?

[Magda Hassan]

Oh yeah. It's also code for anyone not god fearing, apple pie loving, motherhood respecting too. It's a well known fact that communists eat babies and will come to your home at midnight and break your windows, smash grandma's porcelain, molest your daughters, burn your family photos and piss in your pot plants if you don't hand over all your money to them.

On the other hand 'business' is also code for society. So all policy must include 'business' as it is for society, that is everyone. All business indicators must be responded to and business needs met. But you're on your own as an individual or human being. Only corporate personhood matters.

[Magda Hassan]

Seriously though. The whole relationship of workers to owners is quite clear. It is the owner of capital/business who desires to maximise profits (for them selves). Profit is the surplus value. This is the difference between what the worker is paid and what the item made/service provided by the worker is sold for. Only the worker can make this surplus value. No worker, no labor, no surplus. In a truly equitable and just society the worker would receive the full value of their labour. They would be paid for what they produced in full. If the worker is a co-operative (or family business) member this profit is distributed amongst the co-op (or family) members. But if, as is usual in a capitalist society, s/he works for a private company or organisation this surplus value is kept by the owners. It is 'magically' transmuted into the private property of the owner of the business and kept by them as decreed permissible by the (capitalist) laws of land. Just as owning slaves was okay in law in slave owning times. It is labor stolen from the workers. Hence Proudhon's quote "Property is theft". Business owners know this and workers know this. Even if only on an intuitive level not academically (if interested read Marx Das Kapital heavy going in parts but very worthwhile). Ways an owner can maximise profits are reduction of capital costs and/or increase in production. A worker can do both by being paid less than others doing the same work (less capital cost - labor being a cost of production so go to China/Mexico where it is cheaper-race to the bottom) and they can be required to work more for the same money (increased production) Make 100 widgets and hour instead of 75 widgets an hour but the hourly wage for the worker/producer remains the same. Effectively a pay cut for the worker but a 25% increase in profit for the owner. That is why business are forever wanting workers to make 'sacrifices'. Work harder, increase productivity, longer hours, less conditions, go with out wage rises etc. which all lead to increased profits. Trade unions want their members to get a bigger slice of the surplus value created by their members (and workers in general). Most unions for some reason are even okay about keeping capitalism but just want a bigger slice of the profit pie. Business hates organised labor of any kind because it threatens their profits. So anything they can do to divide workers from each other they do - confidentiallity clauses, restriction of union activities etc. See how much more difficult it is everywhere for workers now that the USSR and East European states have had a counter revolution? Divide and conquer. Break workers, communities and nations up into little individual atomised components and do what you want. Keep the strategy of tension happening. Don't let things settle long enough for people to connect and talk and compare and most importantly organise and build an alternative. Keep the homeless moving on. Keep the workers heads down. Keep them exausted and frightened. Fascism is a business wet dream. Capitalism will always lead to fascism without a united working class to resist it.

[Mark Stapleton]

I think you've said it all, Maggie.

There's also other more insidious ways of keeping labor costs down---get the Government (taxpayer) to underwrite mass immigration, for one. They will also obligingly underwrite all the social costs involved in overcrowding, joblessness, higher crime rates, lack of adequate infrastructure etc.
(N.B. any infrastructure which makes a buck like telecommunications, power generation etc, then the corporate sector would love to participate. But if you're talking about unprofitable infrastructure, like public schools, then forget it.)

Mass immigration at a time of economic depression, housing shortages, water shortages and environmental degradation guarantees one thing---a large pool of cheap and desperate labor.

There were times when high immigration was desirable. This is not one of those times. The Australian immigration minister has stated it's very important for our global 'brand name' that immigration remains high--it's at its highest level in the history of this country--as if that kind of marketing spin lingo is somehow important or relevant.

The Minister says he is sympathetic to the arguments for high immigration which have been pushed by the Business Council of Australia. I thought politicians had a binding agreement with those who put them there. I don't remember voting for the BCA. Suddenly the Government listens to them and not us.

They're packing them in in London, Paris, Sydney and wherever they can get the Governments to do their bidding. Bastards.

[Magda Hassan]

Unemployment is a favorite tool of the bourgeois technocrats. A large pool of unemployed always keeps wages down (that is profits up) Full employment is highly undesirable for this kind. That will lead to higher wages and more concessions WRT conditions. When BHP closed their Newcastle plants it was totally devastating for Newcastle but the share price sky rocketed. Immigration is one way to do this especially if the birth rate is low.

[Myra Bronstein]

Unemployment is a favorite tool of the bourgeois technocrats. A large pool of unemployed always keeps wages down (that is profits up) Full employment is highly undesirable for this kind. That will lead to higher wages and more concessions WRT conditions. When BHP closed their Newcastle plants it was totally devastating for Newcastle but the share price sky rocketed. Immigration is one way to do this especially if the birth rate is low.

Another advantage of high unemployment, from the perspective of the regime--more people join the military for lack of better options. More warm bodies (though they don't always stay warm) to deploy to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan... all the PNAC countries.

[Myra Bronstein]

Seriously though. The whole relationship of workers to owners is quite clear.... Keep the workers heads down. Keep them exausted and frightened. Fascism is a business wet dream. Capitalism will always lead to fascism without a united working class to resist it.

Precisely.

Agenda item #1 for workers = a united working class.
Agenda item #1 for industrialists = a divided working class.

[Myra Bronstein]

Ok, there seems to be some consensus that "Communism" is, at least to some degree, a code word for "Labor Unions."

So, when did it become a code word?

Was it in 1933 when Hitler solidified power after the conveniently timed Reichstag fire (the German 911), blamed the "Communists," banned Unions, sent Union leaders to concentration camps, seized all Union funds, and replaced collective bargaining with regulation by the new government?

Or was it earlier?

[Magda Hassan]

October 1917 in the Julian calendar. Or November 1917 in the Gregorian calendar. Precisely. The 10 days that workers managed to take over a whole country for themselves struck fear into the heart of every elite, aristocrat, bourgeois and bourgeois wanna be. Prior to that time their fear was of anarchists. All the attention of the Czarist police was on the anarchists. Once they realised that workers could ORGANISE and take control for themselves the horror of their underestimation dawned on the ruling classes and we have never heard the end of it. It was also something of a surprise to the communists because it was expected that only in an advanced industrial country like Britain could the workers succeed. Russia was very primitive and backward compared to Britain industrially. The key difference to anarchism is the skill that communists have in organisation. Not that anarchists don't have their own talents and contribution to make in a transition of class rule or revolution.

Hitler knew all the above and which side his bread was buttered on.

[Myra Bronstein]

October 1917 in the Julian calendar. Or November 1917 in the Gregorian calendar. Precisely. The 10 days that workers managed to take over a whole country for themselves...

Hitler knew all the above and which side his bread was buttered on.

Thank you Maggie, this is just the information I'm seeking.