Controlling the multitude

Labour and capital oppose one another in a perpetual struggle over added value. Labour adds the value but capital owns the means of production. Labour cannot produce without the means, and capital will only furnish the means if it gets that share of added value called surplus value (rent, interest, dividends, patent dues and copyrights). What is surprising is that labour, which includes all those who work and hence just about everyone, allows capital, which is controlled by very few, to get away with this blackmail. Force of habit is part of the reason. Going back no farther than feudal times, the hierarchy of property rights has been implanted in the social consciousness by centuries of brute force and law enforcement, and has become an accepted fatality. But even brute force needs intermediaries. An army officer’s orders are obeyed because there are sergeants and corporals to transmit them vigorously. In the same way capital gives rank to some workers and uses them to control the rest. The ranking of the middle class is extremely varied, from its upper reaches, who are allowed to occasionally hobnob with the powerful few, to its lower rungs that dip in the amorphous throngs of poverty. The working class has been described as owning nothing but its capacity to labour. Members of the middle class distinguish themselves by owning something, most commonly a house and a pension fund. But this accession to property makes them its slaves not its masters. They own so little that it constantly risks slipping away and dropping them back into the “dangerous” property-less classes. The fear of losing rank in the social pyramid is probably the strongest hold that the few have over the many, a strangle-hold that perpetuates the system.