| Abolition of private property of capitalist type |
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| Written by Ianko Stoianov |
| Saturday, 27 September 2008 18:19 |
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Abolition of private property of capitalist type Today's neo-liberals and their predecessors have invariably been foaming at the mouth saying – and, without question, they will continue to say – that capitalist economy based on the energetic principle of private property is the most productive and the most enterprising economic system as if it was the only possible realisation of this principle; time will refute them and their thesis. They have always been hiding and still diligently hide the fact that being absolutely exploitative by its very nature the capitalist form of the principle of private property is fated to preserve a significant degree of the inhumanity of the preceding social orders such as slavery and feudalism. "Blind" and "deaf," they neither want to hear nor to see that capitalist economy is based on free and ruthless exploitation of man by man; yet, in their heart of hearts they know that in its capitalistic form the energy of the principle of private property derives from the greed of the wildest, still uncivilised will for life, which is undoubtedly profoundly rooted in the self-preserving instinct of both animals and human beings. The road to freedom of Big Capital to exploit the modern proletariat is a road to the enslavement of the proletariat, which Hayek – one of the ideologues of modern neo-liberalism, – never wrote and could not have written about at all. Not only has the capitalist kind of wealth creation always been as profoundly unethical as all other political orders based on the utter lack of ethics of the fundamental principle of private property in its inhumane form but – from the point of view of the highest end of the universal will, which aims at preserving the human species, – it is also one of all possible worst social-economic systems for it is based on greed, rapacity and all other horrifying features of human nature. In no way can Capitalist Will be made ethical for it is based on the utter lack of humanism of its fundamental principle of private property of capitalist exploitative type. There is no doubt that capitalism was the revolutionising force, which changed the modern world. Capitalist societies are really and truly highly productive; however, a genuinely humanist society cannot but actually be at least as sufficient and even more productive without being what capitalism has been all along – totally immoral. Capitalism is based on the biggest exploitation of labour by capital, on lies in the media and government, on lust for wealth and power at all costs. Since the very beginning of the invention of private property the task of every government of the rich has been to use the army and the police to defend their really "sacred" private property, and in no way to allow the people to come to power but to terrorise and manipulate them by all possible means. Countless legions of liberals shout today that "There Is No Alternative" for neo-liberalism. Poor creatures, your historical blindness is incredible! You still do not know that like all dehumanised economic organisations of society liberalism will soon face the truth about its limits. Your claims are similar to the vainglorious assertions of the pseudo-Marxists, who used to trumpet ceaselessly that Stalinised "Marxism" was the only scientific philosophy. Their "science" of communism was beyond critique at the times of totalitarian Stalinism; criticism and free thinking were totally forbidden by the regime of the dictatorial Red Bourgeoisie. The time, however, criticised them severely; it will criticise liberalism severely as well. Due to its lust for profits at all costs, capitalist society is also the most predatory and merciless with regard to nature and Man; it is based on exploitation of nature and man by man. The truth about the exploitation of man by man, i.e. the truth about the slyness of the bourgeois reason, was superbly expressed in Marx's teaching on the relation between hired labour and capital. Behind the freedom of capital shamefacedly hides the enslavement of hired labour, in other words, the freedom of capital divides the society into a class of owners, who exploits, and a class of totally deprived from property workers, who are brutally exploited. Freedom of capital means nothing else but the absolute right it gives the exploiting class to oppress the exploited class, the result being that work force – the unconditional and totally legal private property of the workers – is reduced to commodity, to the most contemptible kind of all commodities. In the era of triumphing neo-liberalism, which made every endeavour Marxism to be forgotten and successfully eliminated from the arena of public debates, it is worth presenting that part of Marx's energetic teaching, which is eternally living and will continue to explain and change the life of human generations as it expresses the rational political will of mankind for just human freedom. Temporarily, only temporarily could modern capitalism make Marxism as much forgotten and known to nobody as it had been known and applied for more than 150 years. As a matter of fact, only on the base of Marx's surplus value theory could we still understand the nature of modern capitalism better; Marx discovered the truth about the exploiting nature of capitalism and this truth is still as actual today as it used to be in his time. Marx wanted to express and superbly expressed the longings and aspirations of the truly universal humanistic will. The task of our time is not only to present conscientiously his theses in their truth – they are fated to inspire the broad masses of the people time and time again – but, first and foremost, it is our turn now to develop the ever young and great humanistic teaching in a creative spiritual will of our times and, in so doing, to make it over and over again powerful and influential with the whole power and influence of the contemporary proletariat. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Karl Marx derives the concept of capitalist type of private property from an analysis of the concept of alienated labour, alienated man and alienated life; for him private property is the consequence, the product of estranged, alienated labour, of the alienation of man from his own labour activity. Marx's critique of capitalist political economy is immortal and forever true because by its very servile nature and its infinite desire to justify capitalism it "starts out from labour as the real soul of production and yet gives nothing to labour and everything to private property. Proudhon has dealt with this contradiction by deciding for labour and against private property. But we have seen that this apparent contradiction is the contradiction of estranged labour with itself and that political economy has merely formulated laws of estranged labour."1 Appropriating the lion's share of product produced by the labourer, the capitalist expropriates the working man from his product, alienates him from it and exploits him; Marx's description of the capitalist reality of his time is utterly true. Moreover, it is still such a true description of today's reality that it is no wonder that today – as at his time – the task of the modern proletariat is to fight for a radical change of this reality. The so called original accumulation of capital was in fact original expropriation of productive labour and, in so doing, decompose the original union existing between the labouring man and his means of labour. The historical expropriation of small and independent producers took place in the XVI and XVII centuries; it laid the beginnings of the contemporary system of private-property capitalist enterprise. Deprived of means of production, they and the huge proletarian masses of all next generations were forced to sell their work force and become "free" hired workers. In practice, it was expropriation of their work force; against the payment, which they received, they were forced to accept the most cruel and manifest injustice: they and their offspring ceased to be owners of both their work force and the final product of their labour. Presenting long Marx's quotations in full in times when virtually nobody reads Marx is a must. For there is definitely no other successful way of propagating his works of genius and in, so doing, educating the modern proletariat, which have to know the whole truth about the exploitative character of private property of capitalist type. As Marks puts it: "Labour-power was not always a commodity (merchandise). Labour was not always wage-labour, i.e., free labour. The slave did not sell his labour-power to the slave-owner, any more than the ox sells his labour to the farmer. The slave, together with his labour-power, was sold to his owner once for all. He is a commodity that can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another. He himself is a commodity, but his labour-power is not his commodity. The serf sells only a portion of his labour-power. It is not he who receives wages from the owner of the land; it is rather the owner of the land who receives a tribute from him. The serf belongs to the soil, and to the lord of the soil he brings its fruit. The free labourer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions. He auctions off eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his life, one day like the next, to the highest bidder, to the owner of raw materials, tools, and the means of life – i.e., to the capitalist. The labourer belongs neither to an owner nor to the soil, but eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his daily life belong to whomsoever buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses, and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit, as soon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required use, out of him. But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labour-power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers, i.e., the capitalist class, unless he gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class; and it is for him to find his man – i.e., to find a buyer in this capitalist class."2 The ideologists of capitalism – and modern neo-liberals even more than ever before – have always claimed that the road of capitalism is the only road to freedom. Freedom! What freedom? The fact that modern technologies are far more productive than ever before does not change the fact that man is forced – as Marx himself claims – to regard "the product of his labour, his objectified labour, as an alien, hostile, and powerful object which is independent of him, then his relationship to that object is such that another man – alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him – is its master. If he relates to his own activity as unfree activity, then he relates to it as activity in the service, under the rule, coercion, and yoke of another man."3 Marks knew the truth and expressed it. The true, which he achieves, is the eternally living in his teaching, which deserves to be developed and will be developed; it is the healthy grain that has in-and-for-itself the infinite urge, the infinite volition to develop itself. That is the reason why Marx's teaching is and must be a part of the teaching of modern humanism, which wants to arm the contemporary proletariat with a powerful theoretical weapon in the fight for just humanistic order. Criticising his contemporary capitalist political economy in order to explain the fact of the exploitative character of capitalistic private property, Marx proved that the wealth of the capitalist is based on theft: theft of the unpaid part of the working force and activity of the labourer: "By buying the daily or weekly value of the labouring power of the workman, the capitalist has, therefore, acquired the right to use or make that labouring power during the whole day or week. ... The daily or weekly value of the labouring power is quite distinct from the daily or weekly exercise of that power, the same as the food a horse wants and the time it can carry the horseman are quite distinct. The quantity of labour by which the value of the workman's labouring power is limited forms by no means a limit to the quantity of labour which his labouring power is apt to perform... But by paying the daily or weekly value of the spinner's labouring power the capitalist has acquired the right of using that labouring power during the whole day or week. He will, therefore, make him work say, daily, twelve hours. Over and above the six hours required to replace his wages, or the value of his labouring power, he will, therefore, have to work six other hours, which I shall call hours of surplus labour, which surplus labour will realize itself in a surplus value and a surplus produce. If our spinner, for example, by his daily labour of six hours, added three shillings' value to the cotton, a value forming an exact equivalent to his wages, he will, in twelve hours, add six shillings' worth to the cotton, and produce a proportional surplus of yarn. As he has sold his labouring power to the capitalist, the whole value of produce created by him belongs to the capitalist, the owner pro tem of his labouring power. By advancing three shillings, the capitalist will, therefore, realize a value of six shillings, because, advancing a value in which six hours of labour are crystallized, he will receive in return a value in which twelve hours of labour are crystalized. By repeating this same process daily, the capitalist will daily advance three shillings and daily pocket six shillings, one half of which will go to pay wages anew, and the other half of which will form surplus value, for which the capitalist pays no equivalent. It is this sort of exchange between capital and labour upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded, and which must constantly result in reproducing the working man as a working man, and the capitalist as a capitalist."4 The above paragraph deserves to be quoted in full to help the modern proletariat understand the whole truth about the predatory and robbing (stealing) nature of capitalism and prepare its political will for a vigorous and decisive fight for constitutional abolition of the appropriation of the private property of the proletarians and restoration of the sovereignty of labour. Political power is always based on possession of both private and public property. Having entered in possession of the means of production and forcefully expropriating the working force of the workers and, in so doing, being in total possession of their working force, the Big Bourgeoisie constitute the capitalist form of the principle of private property as a fundamental principle of the capitalist society. The capitalist social order can only exist as long as it is based on violence; it is only possible as a kingdom of enslaved hired labour. This violence does not only "legitimise" the total commanding power of capital over labour but it also "legitimises" the will of the capitalists to be owners of the whole final product. Every bourgeois constitution is a manifestation of the victorious will of the Bourgeoisie to defend heroically its interests and forcefully make the inhumane form of the principle of private property of capitalist type the supreme principle of the bourgeois state. The capitalists have achieved their goal: only thanks to the gained by their class total political power – in other words, only due to their total possession of public property – nothing can oppose them as well as the buying power of their capital. Only thanks to their so beneficial for them political economy the capitalists can force every worker to relate to the product of his labour as to an alien object, the result being that his own labour activity is not his property, his labour does not belong to him but to the capitalist, "in labour he belongs not to himself but to another."5 Historically speaking, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen proclaimed by the revolutionary French Bourgeoisie as well as all subsequent bourgeois constitutions all over the world expressed openly the ruthless will of the dominating class to create a paradise of economic and political freedom for itself and a hell of modern slavery for the proletariat. Its infinitely greedy will for exploitation and domination could only create the capitalist inhumane, unjust and, therefore, unethical economic and political order: the sovereignty of the king (and the aristocracy) had to be replaced and was successfully replaced with the sovereignty of the Big Bourgeoisie with the sole purpose of "legitimising" its right to expropriate the product of man's labour from him and, by so doing, to exploit him as much as possible. The inhumane became legitimate; time and time again Might makes Right. Thus, from the very beginning of its existence, with the very first act of its constitutional legislation the capitalist class forcefully imposed the sovereignty of capital mercilessly "legitimising" its right to steal the private property of the workers, to rob a huge part of the product of the working force of the labourers and, thus, effectively destroyed the sovereignty of labour. In order to hide the hideous act of theft of property the capitalists accomplished a miracle: they transformed the working force into a commodity, "but yet a very peculiar commodity. It has, namely, the peculiarity of being a value-creating force, the source of value, and, moreover, when properly treated, the source of more value than it possesses itself. In the present state of production, human labour-power not only produces in a day a greater value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new scientific discovery, with each new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence there diminishes that part of the working-day in which the labourer produces the equivalent of his day's wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working-day in which he must present labour gratis to the capitalist."6 After alienating the worker from the product of his labour, after expropriating him from his property and his capital thanks to the ruthless violence and power of the capitalist state apparatus and, by so doing, after depriving him of his right of property over a due part of the final product, the bourgeoisie arrogantly and shamelessly states in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as well as all contemporary bourgeois constitutions, that private property is inalienable, sacred and inviolable. Yes indeed! Private property is really and unconditionally sacred and inviolable in the capitalist state only as long as it is a bourgeois property. The humanists vigorously and decisively declare their will: this heritage from the epoch of transition from feudalism to capitalism must be totally abolished. Even Locke, the great apologist of private property, who wholeheartedly supported capitalism, did not hesitate to revolt against the industrial practice of the capitalists of his time, who imagined themselves that they bought and paid the labour of their workers; he did not share their fancy ideas. Having a beautiful humanistic mind, he defended the humane character of private property and wanted to humanize it. Being a highly ethical man, he claims that "Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."7 This is profoundly true. Moreover, it is an idea as old as the world. It had been expressed many times and by a significant number of people before him namely because it is true. Locke also understood and superbly expressed the humanistic character of private property. His statement is definitely one of the most ethical and the most honest ones ever made by a distinguished supporter of private property. Unfortunately, this idea remains without any development in his works; he fails to develop the idea of the humane form of private property and to examine the state that can constitute and implement such an idea. As for Marks, he was the hero of the newest history, who not only understood how inhumane the principle of exploiting private property of capitalist type is but also decisively willed to refute and reject it. It is a great merit of Marx's teaching that he attained the idea of sovereignty of labour and emancipation of Man; he had the wonderful courage to raise the flag of sovereignty of labour and inspired the proletariat to fight for its liberation. He bravely declared in The Communist Manifesto: "You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes. You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible. Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations."8 Unfortunately, Marx failed to realise that the principle of private property is bad – yes, indeed! – but only in its robbing and exploiting capitalist form. Thus, – like Plato – he expels the principle of infinite subjectivity, of personality from the political economy and political actuality of the humanist state. An unimaginable mistake! Today we know that the principle of private property is absolutely necessary, that it can be humanised and, therefore, it must be developed and used in its humane form. Thus, Marx's analysis is not pedantic enough. Marxism – and all the more Stalinism, its as much corrupted as perverted experimental form in the Soviet Union – was not successful namely because it failed to attain the principle of private property in its humanistic form. Marx abides by the dominating at his time convention that the worker possesses only a working force. He achieves a countless number of foresights of genius on the theme of working force but – unfortunately! – he fails to treat the working force of the labourer as his sacred and inviolable private property; yet, revealing the cruel nature of capitalism, he points out that as a fully legitimate part of the productive capital the private property of the workers can be robbed and exploited by the capitalist class only through the use of the tremendous oppressive power and merciless violence of the bourgeois state apparatus against the proletariat. Today, it is the humanists who – far more and much more energetically than their predecessors as well as their contemporaries – proclaim themselves supporters of the principle of private property in its humanistic form and are ready to act for its constituting as the supreme principle of a new, truly humane and just social order. Let us define the principle of private property in its humanistic form. In accordance with the highest principle of the Absolute Rational Will "Rule yourself" with the very act of our birth we enter in possession of ourselves – of our bodies, intellects and free wills as well as our material goods, both the ones that we possess and those which we produce, in other words, we enter in possession of our total sovereign and inviolable property and rule ourselves. As a private property of the worker – no matter whether he is a representative of the so called blue collars or white collars – his working force is the capital, which he brings in the firm or the company as an absolutely essential element of its economic activities, whatever they are. It is absolutely unethical and inhumane the sacred and inviolable private property of the worker to be alienated and expropriated from him as hired working force on the basis of a forcefully imposed violent capitalist contract, which constitutes the inequality of the workers and the capitalists; every such contract of hiring labour is nothing else but legitimising the capitalists' theft of the private property of their workers. And this is exactly the thing that the owner of the raw materials, machines, tools and other productive factors does; he appropriates the working force of the worker, becomes its "legitimate" owner and, by so doing, he also appropriates the product which the worker produces, i.e. he expropriates the worker from both his working force and his product. It is absolutely unethical and inhumane that the capitalist constitutes himself as the sovereign and total owner of all means of production as well as the working force of the worker, the result being that he "absolutely legitimately" totally expropriates the worker from his private property and proclaims himself the only owner of the final product. There is no doubt whatsoever about it: the exploitation of man by man is only the natural result of expropriation of man by man; this is the root of all evils. Nowadays the capitalist still enters in possession of the private property of the worker, totally appropriates his personality and the product of his labour and deprives him of his economic freedom. Due to the perfidious principle of private property of exploiting capitalist type the capitalists successfully destroy the sovereignty of labour, rob the surplus part of the final product of the worker's labour and, by so doing, steal the surplus part of his working force. What Marx called surplus value and surplus product would be far better determined if it is called expropriated value and expropriated product for it would make it much easier for the modern proletariat to understand the essence of the problem. The expropriated value and the expropriated product are integrally connected with the system of hired – and, therefore, exploited – labour. The worker puts – or invests – in the industrial process the value of his private property, and chiefly its universal expression: his working force, energy, labour. And it is namely this labour which is an essential element of the process of creating material and intellectual goods; in other words, it is his capital, which is an essential part of the whole productive capital, of the value which creates value, i.e. of the money which makes money. It is namely because the worker possesses capital – a due part of the total productive capital – that he has to become a participant of equal value in the ownership of the final product. And he will become: such is the nature of private property of humanist type. Constituting their enormous and even infinitely vigorous Will for compulsory and ruthlessly greedy expropriation of the capital of the workers and, thus, being in total possession of the virtually unlimited power of their class to rule, not only can the capitalists declare themselves to be the only and unconditional owners of their capital – of the means of production, – whose "legitimate" origin is always well known (it was brilliantly examined by Marx) as well as absolute owners of the "legitimately" appropriated (i.e. stolen, robbed) capital of their workers but by virtue of their total economic and political power they are also the only and unconditional owners of the final product. Thus, thanks to the enormous power of the bourgeois state the worker is forced to give up his sacred and inalienable right to property over his capital and the final product of his economic activities. He does not obtain anything of his due part of the surplus value, of the surplus product (respectively the expropriated value, the expropriated product) because the latter is totally and unconditionally appropriated and robbed by the capitalist. Only due to the principle of private property of exploiting type can the capitalists accumulate and do actually accumulate their fabulous fortunes. The very same people, the capitalists, who shout that private property is sacred and untouchable, do not respect the sovereignty of private property of their workers. Apparent thefts of private property takes place. It is the classical case of the thief, who cries: "Catch the thief!" Once they steal all people's private property, they expropriate the people, the sovereign of public property, and take its place, which makes it easy for them to take possession of the universal sovereignty of the people and create a government of the rich for the rich by the rich. The expropriation of the expropriators is absolutely necessary once again. The Marxists did not succeed . The Humanists are bound to. We need a new humanist Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen to declare that: sovereignty of labour is inalienable and indivisible; the worker is the inalienable and indivisible owner of his working force, his private property is sacred and inviolable. It cannot be sold and cannot be an object of juridical or economic transactions on the basis of the constitution of a capitalist society, through which the capitalist class ensures the right of every its representative to be the only and total owner of the whole productive capital who "absolutely legitimately" appropriates the produced final product for he is its "only owner". The modern proletariat, the united labour must for the first time in human history gain its sovereignty with the result that nobody and in no conditions can ignore the productive capital of the worker, to buy his working force as a commodity and degrade every worker and the working class as a whole. The humanist society will totally forbid capitalist to expropriate the workers' capital - the most terrible of all inhumane "rights" of the bourgeois, in other words, it will categorically forbid the "right" of the capitalist to constitute himself as the "legitimate" owner of his workers' capital as well as the whole final industrial product. This "legitimate right" unashamedly legalises the theft of property in bourgeois states, whose constitutions always vehemently proclaim that the principle of private property is "sacred and inviolable". Theft of property is the original sin of capitalism; it is the source of the merciless capitalist exploitation of man by man. It is the source of the ABSOLUTE lack of ethics of capitalist societies as well as their infinite hypocrisy and double standards. The absolute power of the exploiting and utterly unethical principle of private property of capitalist type corrupts bourgeois societies absolutely. Only the humanist society and nothing else but it can abolish the absolute power of the capitalist class. It will definitely be the nearest form of humanism, the form of the nearest future but not its final form. For a start the humanist society will create the conditions of a mixed economy in which, however, the workers are not only a source of hired labour any more but are as free as the capitalist entrepreneurs. Thus, changing the rules of the game and making sure that their capital is a part of the whole productive capital of the enterprise (the firm, the company), all – now truly free – labourers must have and will have the right to participate totally in all decision-making processes as a guarantee of the just management of their capital and get their fair hare of all profits. There do not exist any reasons of Rational Will for the ruthless appropriation of other people's working force and the merciless expropriation of the productive capital of the contemporary proletarians with total impunity; man's inhumanity to man is the source of the absolute political necessity to expropriate the expropriators, to declare exploitation of man by man illegal and outlaw it. Every labourer's capital is and must be made completely sovereign and legitimate. In no way can it or the product of workers' labour be expropriate "legally" due to the dirty tricks of capitalist private "law", such as, contracts for hiring (buying) or selling labour; contracts, which always treat the working force of the worker as a commodity but never in it true essence as a legitimate private property and capital of the worker. The very first act of victorious humanism will be to declare the capitalist form of the principle of private property illegitimate. It will forbid the exploitation of man by man, i.e. it will forbid the expropriation of the private property of the worker and, by so doing, it will abolish the modern form of enslaving labour. It will abolish the hired society as an anachronism from the bygone era of transition from feudalism to capitalism, in other words, it will overthrow capitalism. It will declare the worker a truly free juridical subject who is the only sovereign and inviolable owner of his working – manual or intellectual – force, which is sacred, sovereign, indivisible and inviolable, as sacred, sovereign, indivisible and inviolable as his total private property is . The abolition of private property of capitalist type is absolutely necessary. The sovereignty of the working class, of the whole contemporary proletariat must be restored and will be restored. We are staunch supporters of the idea for humane market economy and private property of humanist type. Never will the humanists justify the blatant inequality and outrageous injustice of the capitalist state – it is done by the countless venal apologists of capitalism in modern Academia; poor, poor minds, cursed be the day that you began to worship Mammon and sold your souls, intellects and wills! The goal of the humanists is crystal clear: abolition of the exploiting and inhumane principle of private property of capitalist type and overthrow of capitalism. Let it be universally known that the humanists will to overthrow the capitalist state, to change it radically and humanise it creating a state in which the will of no exploiting class can subdue and oppress the will of the political community – the will of the sovereign people – alienating it from its sacred right to be in possession of its sovereignty and establish a mutually beneficial social order, the simple reason being that there are not and cannot be any exploiting classes in humanistic states. Only from the point of view of Humanism and its common to all mankind ends, can we offer a crushing critique of the contemporary unethical science of neo-liberal economy, which arrogantly claims that "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals" who are nothing more but subjects to the market forces of capitalist type. Because as Marx used to say: "An immediate consequence of man's estrangement from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confront himself, he also confronts other men... In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species-being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man's essence."9 Only a truly humanist society will declare the expropriation of the workers' capital – and, therefore, the exploitation of man by man – illegitimate whereas its constitution will proclaim the true sovereignty of labour, of every labourer, in other words, will proclaim the truly humanistic sovereignty of man and make his world alien to the social Darwinism of the capitalist state. Let us listen to Marx, the greatest humanist of all times, saying that "It further follows from the relation of estranged labour to private property that the emancipation of society from private property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the political form of the emancipation of the workers. This is not because it is only a question of their emancipation, but because in their emancipation is contained universal human emancipation. The reason for this universality is that the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all relations of servitude are nothing but modifications and consequences of this relation."10 The time for all members of the modern proletariat ti fight and liberate themselves has come! NOTES:
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