The Brownite Serfdom of our Age

Men make their own history, said Marx, and for the most part he was right. Each of us creates our own wealth through the use of our labour at a price. Some of us do it by means of self-employment, whilst others take jobs. But we still produce, increase overall capital, and in many cases share in that capital.

The idea of production as the key indicator of a society's mode of wealth creation has a ring of truth about it. Sure it's not scientific, it's a political theory about the division of labour and power. And, during each changing mode of production, from the family to feudal, to bourgeoisie to what we have today, change has occurred not through man-made revolution but instead a natural process spurred on by freedom, liberty and ever increasing population.

The Left will of course tell you that our current capitalist mode of production produces a situation of social injustice, and, ergo, they are for creating social justice. They do this on the basis of assuming that the only equitable end is equality of outcome through the tax system, or at least a narrowing of outcome between individuals.

In recent years they have "achieved" this through the use of tax credits. Take tax, move it around a bit, and give it back to someone based upon a complicated means test. If the person's circumstance changes, reduce the amount you give them back at a notional reduction rate of around 70%.

The result is that your average worker on just above minimum wage cannot do overtime, and cannot easily work for notionally more money, or else face a reduction in benefits that exceeds that which they could earn by working more if they so choose. This is a fact not lost on, for example, your average supermarket worker, who will be able to calculate whether they should do some overtime.

This is made all the more troublesome for someone like the girl at the checkout in Sainsbury or Tesco as well, because these companies positively encourage the uptake of shares yearly. The companies, to use a Cameronism, share the proceeds of growth with their staff in accordance with their responsibility and position within the company.

Such schemes bind the interests of the company closer to the interests of the workforce, as the share offers provide the workforce with the ability to take ever increasing ownership of the fruits of their production in terms of their personal capital.

The problem of course is that owning shares changes the workers tax credit outcome whilst they own them. As the share value increases (hopefully) their tax credits decrease at a proportionally faster rate. The result is that many of them simply take the bonus money instead and get hit just the once by the Revenue.

Tax credits in effect make personal production worthless as a means of creating personal wealth. The vanguard elite, for that is what the Government is, say they want social justice, yet have created a system that manacles those they claim to be helping to the state. By design the system is a social teleology for those it ensnares.

If you cannot earn more money because when all the maths is done by the system of the state you lose money overall, then far from it being a matter of social justice it becomes, in fact, a system of serfdom. Where Marx observed our 'slavery' to the wage such that you need to work to live, and you cannot work without increasing someone else's capital. Today those on the lowest of income still work to live, but cannot earn more without decreasing their own capital.

Perhaps the new rallying cry of genuine social justice should be: "Tax credit slaves of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains"?