A

Ruken İmşik

4 August 2016

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM

Has it ever wondered that behind the ejaculations of democracy and equity of capitalism why some are miserable and starving, while the others are filthy lucre? Through the capitalism, there is a symbiotic relationship between the state and the capitalists to gain more power, thus, the gap between the working class and the capitalists is getting enormous. So, the system of capitalism is not beneficial for the whole, because the state promulgates laws and collects taxes to fortify the superiority of the capitalists.

Opponents assert that the capitalist system promulgates the laws using its jurisdictional power to protect the society as a whole and vice versa. Meaning that, the state is not biased both politically and administratively. This idea is flawed, since laws promulgated are used to protect the property of the capitalists from the working class to avoid the jurisdictional invasion of the state. The abolishment of right to strike is attributed to destruction of bargaining power of labor, facilitation of dismissal of labor, thus protection of the capitalist. As Harvey (2006) mentions to demonstrate the restraint of the state over the working class: “The right to strike was outlawed and unions banned in key sectors”. For example, in 2014 in Turkey, right to strike was outlawed and some left wing labor unions were limited in the glass and mining sectors owing to the consideration of worker’s mass strike as threat to the security. Thus, by looking at the example, it can be concluded that state’s jurisdictional power does not protects the working class but the capitalists. Provided that, laws are to commoditize labor power by imposing tax which some had been coerced into being wage laborer. For instance, gathered under the title of the “welfare and residential criteria”, taxes are collected to bring “development”however, people are unable to afford the taxes which concluded in the dependency on the subsistence wage to continue living. As Karl Marx (1847) states “The wage laborer, sells his very self... He belongs to the capitalist class; and it is for him… to find a buyer in his capitalist class”. In other words, workers have been being transformed into the living commodities of the system using the discourse of development to protect the superiority of the capitalists and to commoditize labor.

Critics argue that taxes are collected fairly based on each individual’s income. However, in reality, in the practice of the regressive tax, imposed and applied by the capitalist system, the burden of the working class is remarkably more than that of capitalists. For instance, under the application of the sales tax, fees and the excise tax that are subunits of the regressive tax, each and every citizen pays the same tax for the same commodity. Yet, all the segments of the society do not have the same level of capital accumulation, thus paying the same tax is not fair at all. According to research done by Chandawat (1999): “… the incidence of sales tax on sugar and gur, edible, oil, vegetables, spices, tea and coffee is more on the poor than the others in urban as well as rural area”. In other words, almost every fundamental commodity that people have to buy is entitled to have the regressive tax that each and every poor suffer from. Moreover, opponents believe that under the system of capitalism, taxes collected are distributed fairly equally among society. This idea is incorrect because taxes are polarized in the hands of the capitalists, thus “the capitalist state socializes the risks and individualizes the revenues” (Wallerstein, 1996: 54) by abusing public earnings. Pointing out that, the capital accumulation which is basically derived from taxes is collected from each and every citizen within the boundaries, which refers to the socialization of the risks. And reasonable proportions of accumulation are going to the capitalist, which is attributed to the individualization of the revenues. For instance, the international company AIG, in 2008 during the financial crisis, was financed by the state using capital accumulation (Greenberg & Cunnigham, 2013).

To sum up, the capitalist system does not work for the society as a whole but for the capitalists, proving that all the law sanctions are for the sake of the relationship between the state and the capitalists. Laws are promulgated to embody the symbiotic power and to commodify the wage laborer. Likewise, the taxes are neither collected nor redistributed equally fairly. As the light was shed on the issue, the socio-economic situation of the working class will be dark and grim in the future.

REFERENCES

Chandawat, G.S. (1999). Distribution of tax burden and expenditure benefits.

Greenberg, M. R., & Cunnigham, L.A. (2013). The AIG story. 

Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons

Harvey, D. (2006). Neo-Liberalism as Creative Destruction

Marx, K., Engels, F. (1847). Wage Labour And Capital

Wallerstein, I. M. (1996). Capitalist Civilization.