UNRENTABLE, UNITE!
Robert Kurz
Capitalism is not a possibility, but a threat for mankind. Even many in better positions start to realize it. The underlying logic to this system is as simpler as brutal: finally, the right to exist is guaranteed only for what or who is profitable. Just profit is not enough, it has to reach the height of profitability standard whose level, in capitalist-financial terms, is placed higher and higher every time.
This means two things: In the first place, capital has na insatiable greed for human work that it must transform in more capital, looking forward to the objective of irrational appraisal. From this point of view, people is material, " manpower ", and nothing else. In second place, work is "valid" only as a means of profitability. Capitalist greed for vital human force exploitation is forced to follow this mechanism.
In a certain way, this essential brutality is in ambush in the unconsciousness of the system’s order. It is so terrible that nobody wants to see it, nor managers, politicians or ideologists. But it exists, and it sticks to its final consequences: All those without working capability are "worthless lives" at first sight. So are children and adolescents under working age, except if they are extenuated as work material as soon as they can walk. So are sick and handicapped persons, and so far, because they represent expenses. And obviously so are aged people that no longer have capability to work. The same principle is applied to them, except if they become profitable even on their deathbed. Finally, so are the jobless that become "surplus". Capitalist logic not only passes this sentence on individuals, but also on circles and institutions: formation, education, social services, health services, art and culture, seem dead expenses that should be ruled out.
Obviously, whatever society applies this logic will immediately enter collapse. But it is the logic of capital, blindfolded and insensitive as a physical process. Capitalism has to be somehow deceived in order to leave humanity as material for its own insatiable demands. Originally, survival in this context and with "unrentable needs", was only women's task. The appraisal process hasn’t rejected the feminine flesh, that is to say, "the nerve, the muscle, the brain" (Marx). However, a double burden has been imposed to women. The same thing took place in capitalist societies of State in the old East block, in the western centres or in the shantytowns of the Third World: after concluding their daily work, true work begins with the reproduction work for the part of "valueless" life from the capitalist point of view.
Women living alone should have succumbed a long time ago under this burden, or society should have dissolved. That is the reason why the State had to create additional secondary areas, derived of the "valueless" life" outside profitability, by means of taxes, contributions and security systems, therefore, in a certain way by means of the "bleeding" of the profitable process of appraisal. In accordance with its distance, this was seen as more or less "social". And the historical criticism of capitalism was limited in great measure to the quantity of the bleeding, while the terrible basic logic remained intact, in the shade. This was possible (with the crises interruptions) while the appraisal process was historically rising, and could absorb more and more profitable work. But with the third industrial revolution, this expansion has stopped. The level of profitability is too high; it surpasses more valid people able to work. As consequence, the bleeding of the appraisal for the secondary areas is worn down.
The jellyfish head, hidden up to this days, becomes visible to capitalist logic. In the entire world the "no-profitable ones" have to test the respective "life’s devaluation" absolute or relative. It affects in the first place long term unemployed people, children and teenagers, the sick, the handicapped and the old. The speed of this process depends on the country and the situation in the world market, we walk in this direction without stop. Also in the RFA, hardly relatively "rich" in the capitalist way: the benefits of the social insurance will be diminished, the medical cares, the assistance to the sick and old persons are decreasing, the social pensions are deviated, the nursery schools are closed. In schools, the mortar falls down from the walls, didactic material is old ant out of date. W don’t see the end of new projects of cuts. Quietly, the whole social reproduction is buried.
"Agenda 2010" is an agenda about insanity of profitability that no longer recognizes any social or moral barrier, because its margin has become too narrow. Political and economic classes only come back on the silent social capitalist physics. And the old and abandoned criticism of capitalism, limited to simple bleeding of the appraisal declines. The old specialists of the social improvement have been recycled to the cosmetic limitation of damages in the deteriorations. Those supposed to bury capitalism have become assistants to those who bury mankind. Under these historically new circumstances, the old social-democratic union role has become, in terms of its social content, its contrary.
It would be flattering to call corrupt commitment the result of the weak revolt against the "Agenda 2010", unfortunately predictable. Where the government's ability should be sacrificed on behalf of social resistance, on the contrary it sacrificed social resistance on behalf of government's capability. But things won't be limited to this Agenda. What they want to sell as sacrifice for the supposed substantial maintenance of the "unprintable" vital areas is only one part of the way toward the historical dead end alley of the capitalist cannibalism. This system of biophobia is no longer allowed to deceive. It is the own absurd principle of profitability that has to fall: Non profitable, unite!
02.05.2003 Original in German: Unrentable, vereinigt euch!
http://www.nd-online.de/artikel.asp?AID=34738&IDC=33&DB=Archiv
Translation into Portuguese: Nikola Grabski
http://obeco.planetaclix.pt/indice.htm
Translation from Portuguese into Spanish: Daniel Cunha.
Translation from Spanish into English: Contracorriente