[Peace-discuss] Right to wealth

[C. G. Estabrook]

Unjustifiable wealth indeed.  Can you really look at the state of the
destitute in the world (and in the world's richest country) and defend the
concentration of the control of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite?  The
situation is getting worse, not ameliorating.

The economic process of the world is one of massive, on-going theft. The
self-styled "owners" are constantly stealing the labor and the resources
that belong to all of us by means of the wage-contract -- as one historian
says with justified bitterness, "The 'equal exchange between free agents'
that reproduces, hourly and daily, inequality and oppression."

Establishing democratic controls over land and labor against those who
claim to own them should be the goal of any progressive movement.  There
is no reason that the property required to produce food, clothing, and
shelter should be in private hands (primarily the dead hands of
corporations) -- where they have arrived by means of theft and revolution
-- and not controlled by all of us.  What do you think the invasion of
Iraq was about?

Nor is there any reason that the vast majority of humankind should have to
search desperately for someone to whom they can rent what makes them human
-- their work of head and hands -- in order to eat regularly.  It is
obscene to defend a system based on the forced prostitution of work.  
Chattel slavery seemed quite reasonable to perfectly intelligent Americans
in an earlier generation, just as wage slavery seems so to ours.  But
another world is possible.  --CGE

 
On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 Dlind49 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 11/27/03 11:54:35 AM Central Standard Time, 
> galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu writes:
> 
> << Of course you're right that "military, militia, or law enforcement will
>  always be necessary" to protect the unjustifiable wealth of the few
>  against the demands of the many -- domestically and world-wide -- but I'm
>  surprised to hear you admit it. As the late Mayor Daley of Chicago put it,
>  "The policeman is not there to create disorder, the policeman is there to
>  preserve disorder."
>  
>  Happy Thanksgiving, Carl
> 
> Carl:  "unjustifiable wealth?"  we sure do disagree!  and no I am not
> saying that the military is necessary to as to you say: :""military,
> militia, or law enforcement will always be necessary" to protect the
> unjustifiable wealth of the few against the demands of the many --
> domestically and world-wide"  - are you advocating revolution and
> theft / stealing from certain individuals to give that to others?
> 
> How about you giving 80% your own income to those who you claim
> deserve it by fact they exist?
> 
>