Does society have rights over the wealth produced
and how many?
Inequality in society today has reached absurd heights and the process of wealth accumulation continues to accelerate.
In 2017, 8 people owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population (3. 6 billion people).
82% of the wealth created globally in 2017 ended up in the hands of the richest 1% of the world's richest people, while the poorest saw no increase in their incomes. The real incomes of the world's poorest people have risen by just $3 a year in the last 25 years.
In the US, in 2017 the 3 richest people have wealth equal to that of the poorest half of the population. In 2014, the richest 1% held 39% of the national wealth, up from 22% in 1980.
In Germany, 10% of the population controls 40% of the wealth.
In Europe, according to 2016 data, 10% of the population owns 37% of the total income.
The $5. 3 trillion held by the 500 richest people in the world (in 2017) is equivalent to the sum of the debts of 120 countries on earth.
Africa has huge oil reserves, is home to 98% of the world's diamond production, and 77% of the world's gold production. But Africa (but. . . ) is plagued by hunger, poverty and utter misery.
Joseph Stiglitz, economist, Nobel Prize for Economics: "Inequality and poverty among children is a moral trivialisation. The right-wingers argue that poverty is the result of laziness and bad choices. But children don't choose their parents. "
In America, 1 in 4 children live in poverty. In Greece 1 in 6.
This monstrous and obscene inequality that oppresses people's lives, in order to be accepted, is accompanied by an equally incredible propaganda to justify it, where the concept of framing plays an extremely important role. Research has shown that our perceptions and judgements are hugely influenced by the context in which the analysis is placed. Inequality is framed in such a way as to make it seem fair or at least acceptable, or it is implied that the price of limiting inequality would be heavy.
Alongside the monstrous and ever-accelerating increase in the concentration of wealth, we also have a huge increase in the social (or relative) impoverishment of people, i. e. the mismatch between their standard of living and the level of social needs, which are increasing in parallel with the gigantic increase in labour productivity and which remain unsatisfied, which creates huge and intolerable problems for people (this regardless of absolute impoverishment, which may be reduced). We are not just talking about increasing needs in education, housing, health, in the usual sense.
We have an epidemic of mental illness (in England 1 in 4 adults have been diagnosed with mental illness - and it's not the only country). Mental illness is consistently associated with deprivation, low income, unemployment, low education, poorer physical health. Cancer patients are affected by a disease where 90% of the damaging factors are environmental (i. e. industrial, more correctly, capitalist).
The voices against this absurdity, the disgrace and the decline of humanity, are heard like a whisper in the river of "information" and the demands they contain go as far as the "Tobin tax", a "fairer" redistribution of wealth or gratefully accepting the charity of the rich.
Does society have rights over the wealth produced and how much?
"Technology works with science and science works with to move forward, so they are interlinked. For a technological discovery, theoretical knowledge from various sciences is necessary. For scientific discovery, technological equipment is necessary" [School Handbook on Technology].
Every inventor and innovator, in order to create his innovation, has relied on the vast amount of knowledge and progress accumulated by humanity. Isaac Newton put it correctly and analogically: 'If I could see further than anyone else, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants'.
People like Bill Gates, for example, achieved extraordinary achievements only because they were supported by a high level of education, scientific infrastructure and collective institutions that allowed them to acquire the necessary knowledge and experimentation.
But beyond these visible and detectable processes, on which the progress of humanity is based, there are other more fundamental, complex, long-term and invisible processes, of which Friedrich Engels gives us an idea:
"The concept of number is an "invention" of a wise man, only if we see it in isolation from society and its evolution. But for the wise man to be able to measure, he needed an ability to abstract from all other qualities of things, and to retain only their quantitative element.
This ability was acquired by humanity over a long series of millennia of action and reaction with nature, of experience. If we look at it this way, then the concept of number projects itself as an assimilation and pumping of the logic of nature, by the action of man. "
So when innovators claim the accolades, honours and rewards of society, we should also think that they should be much more grateful to society for giving them the opportunity to express their creativity and affirm their personalities by building on the toil and knowledge accumulated by humanity. Otherwise let them innovate outside of society. . .
The narrative of the elites and those who "humanity should be grateful to" is confined within the walls of a factory or a company. But humanity, in all its extent and historicity, even at its extreme limits, has always invented and created/produced and continues to invent and create/produce. Not, of course, in the sense of "scientists" "economists", but in the broad sense of contribution to the evolution of humanity. The concept of production/creation embraces every human activity and every resource of humanity, even its most extreme limits. For what is the evolution of the "bastard of the nun" who was born in a cave and became the leader of the 1821 revolutionary George Karaiskakis?
Or Stephen Hawking, the totally paralyzed top scientist? You can think of countless other such extreme examples. Do these types of creators and these types of activities have less impact on productivity? Do they contribute less to "GDP"? Let them claim it if they want. . .
Looking at things from such a perspective, we can understand that language (which is the result of cooperation, communication, work and struggles of any society and never the result of the inspiration of some innovators or individuals) and the literate and educated people who carry it (the whole of society), are the fundamental tool (or factory), on which every inventor/innovator steps and creates his inspiration, or the private individual his production and his property.
These are not the "framework" for the elites to rob and oppress people, but are the heritage, property and rights of humanity, which no generation can cede to private individuals. On these is based everything that is created or "produced" in society. On this is founded the right of society to everything that constitutes the wealth of humanity.
After all, if anything has become obvious today (remember how "scientifically" they cut our wages), it is that economic practice is not a science like physics or chemistry, but is saturated to the core with politics. This is beautifully described and explained by George Karabelias ("The new era of global capitalism"):
"In order to understand the current stock market phenomenon and the
entering the era of the "virtual economy", we should introduce the concept of the "social factory" and indeed on a planetary scale.
Big business doesn't just extract goodwill from the
specific workers, but from the whole planet, through a mythical transfer of resources enabled by the stock market and the incessant movement of capital.
This extraction of goodwill is not carried out through direct
labour relationship, but through the subordination of the entire planet
to the hegemony of capital, and of Western capital at that.
We are faced with a new system of extraction of surplus value at the national and transnational level, a system of direct transformation of society into an object of exploitation, where money flows, the monopoly of knowledge-information and military power are transformed into a direct factor in the exploitation of capital. The valorisation of capital is almost immediately transformed into a political element. "
If people stop accepting the present situation as logic and realize their rights, the system will have collapsed. Because 9/10 of the elites' rule is based on propaganda and corruption and only 1/10 on power and weapons. If the propaganda collapses, the effectiveness of violence is annihilated.
The great battle must therefore be fought for these hidden concepts and ideas that nobody is discussing today. People need to become aware of their rights.
They will probably accuse us of being "populists". Well, yes! We are populists. IN NOSTI! Because we care about all peoples, all over the planet. That is, we are HUMANISTS! Let them blame us. . .
15 October 2018
George Papanikolaou
