“I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law and community moral restrains act as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, European governments, under pretense of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. If once our people become inattentive to the public affairs, you, Carrington, and I, and Congress, and judges, and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; experience declares that man is an animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington – January 16, 1787
“Class warfare is not, in the first place, a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. It has very little to do with what people in England call ‘class distinctions,’ meaning a peculiarly English kind of snobbery. It is not differences of wealth that cause class differences, but class differences that cause differences of wealth. The worker by his labor creates a certain amount of wealth, only part of which is returned to him in the form of wages, etc. The rest is appropriated by the capitalist, so called because his function is to accumulate capital in this way. The capitalist receives from a great many workers the extra wealth which they produce but do not need for their subsistence and minimal contentment, and bringing all this wealth together he is able to invest, to provide the conditions under which more work may be done — and so on. On this fundamental division between worker and employer the whole class system rests.
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The worker is whoever by productive work actually creates wealth. The employer is not simply anyone who makes overall decisions about what work shall be done and how; he is the one who takes the surplus wealth created by the worker and uses it (in his own interests of course) as capital. Capitalism is the system in which capital is accumulated for investment, in their own interests, by a group of people who own the means of production and employ large numbers of other people who do not own the mean of production but produce both the wealth which they receive back in wages and the surplus wealth which is used for investment by the owners in whatever way they desire. The wealthy and powerful are wealthy and powerful, they are the ruling class, in part because they are better at killing; the one thing they cannot do is carry on forever the fiction that their interests coincide with the interests of most of the community. They cannot forever con people into believing that it is in their own interests and that of their families to work or to die for the profit of the ruling class
The wealthy and powerful, the ruling class, are wealthy and powerful in part because they are better at killing; the one thing they cannot do is carry on forever the fiction that their interests coincide with the interests of most of the community. They cannot forever con people into believing that it is in their own interests and that of their families to work or to die for the profit of the ruling class.” -Herbert McCabe, OP
