Debt slavery is the leitmotif running throught most of B. Traven's Mexican novels. Indian protagonists are the wage-slaves and their bosses are the Spanish patrons. When the Indio is in debt, repayment is demanded in terms of more and more unpaid labour. The more unpaid labour, the more debt is necessary to sustain the life of the Indio. The Indio is forced to borrow and the more the proletarian borrows, the more the worker is tied to the system of debt-slavery--enforced, of course, through real and promised State violence towards the debt-slave e.g. prison.
Wage-slaves now are confronted with a bewildering wave of stories coming out of the capitalist media which tell of the debt crises of the various financiers, even governments. What have the finaciers' debts got to do with wage-slaves?
Nothing really. Workers and the tiny-sized employing capitalist class have nothing in common, as far as their interests go. The problem is that the capitalist media and even members of the left are saying that they do have interests in common. "There is no alternative to saving the capitalist system." To the extent that workers buy into this notion, to that extent, workers will be made to feel guilty about having to make good on the debts of some capitalists to other capitalists and this will lead to a reduction in the standard of living of the workers as they accept the debt burdens of a class with whom they have no interests in common. Thus, the hue and cry about the 'taxpayers' having to pay for the various and sundry 'bailouts' to keep the capitalist ship of State afloat. There is no intention on the part of the capitalist polytricksters to turn the their richer members into 'tax payers' and so the message is clear and is being pounded into the heads of the working class, "You taxpayers will have to sacrifice."
Workers should have their own class agenda. The IWW has been barracking for shorter work time for years. The idea is that there are two sources of wealth in the world: Natural resources and workers' labour. Workers get paid what they can sell their labour power for in the marketplace. Their pay is called wages. Wages are the price of labour of varying sorts. Different skills are bought by the employing class for different prices. Workers wages are usually paid out of what they produce in the first hour or so of their working day. The working day is then the key to the exploitation of wage labour. If the working day is reduced, then the worker can still receive the same wage and still produce more for the employer than the cost of the wage to the employer; but just not as much as before it was shortened.
What will happen in the coming months of the current economic slump is that many, many workers will be told that they are redundant because their employers will not be able to sell the social product of their labour on the market and that will be related to the amount of debt. How?
Lots of the wealth we produce is now repurchased by us on credit. Lots of wealth which we have the potential to produce is sold amongst our masters in the ruling class to each other as credit. Banks make loans on the basis of what employers' wage-slaves may be able to produce in the future.
Workers DO have an interest in reducing the misery the capitalists put them through. They DO have an interest in lowering the unemployment rate and thus they do have an interest in barracking for shorter work time. Joining the IWW is one step towards that class approach to the crises of capitalism. The next step would be to act and to get others to barrack for shorter work time, with the important provisio of 'No Cut In Wages' for as has been indicated, the only class who suffers from a cut in working time within the capitalist system is the employing class. Workers wages can remain their market price and still generate loot for the employing class to appropriate....just not as much loot.
