Only Communism Can End Exploitation and Imperialist Wars
SAN DIEGO, USA—Many workers understand that capitalism is organized crime. Workers do all the work and the capitalists pay us only a part of the value our work creates. They give the banks some and keep the rest for themselves as profit.
It is easy to lose sight of just how much the bosses rip us off. NASSCO and BAE Systems, two shipyards in San Diego, are good examples. Both are divisions of giant corporations (NASSCO is owned by General Dynamics) that do most of their business selling to the US and UK militaries and their allies, including Saudi Arabia.
General Dynamics’ figures show a profit of $4.457 billion before taxes in 2018, but that wasn’t all of it. They also paid $36.5 million to five top executives. Those payments are a share of the profits, mostly in the form of stock in the company. The rate of profit on the capital invested works out to 18%. Because of the big 2017 US corporate tax give-away, General Dynamics saved nearly half a billion dollars.
Since General Dynamics has 107,000 workers, its profit was $42,000 per worker in 2018. That means that the value that workers created that was NOT paid for by the company (surplus value) was nearly as large as the wages that many workers actually got!
BAE Systems was a little less successful in exploiting its workforce. Their profits were $2.747 billion, plus $11.5 million for the top execs. (The BAE CEO was paid 33 times as much as the average BAE worker). BAE employed 85,800 workers, for an average of $32,156 of unpaid value per worker.
The US Navy is now growing, with 14 new ships and a new aircraft carrier. Some of these ships will be built in San Diego and both NASSCO and BAE will be hiring. Workers need these jobs but like any job, signing up means being exploited, since much of our work is unpaid.
Building ships can benefit humanity, and under communism it will. Under capitalism, however, all work is organized to benefit the capitalists. All jobs, including health care or teaching, must result in profit or prepare workers to be used to make profits.
War industry workers live under an extra contradiction: most of us don’t want wars or threats of war, but that is what the bosses will use our work for. The US is building a bigger Navy to confront rising capitalist powers, especially capitalist China, which wants a bigger slice of the profits. China, India and other rising powers are building up their navies, too.
None of this military buildup aims to protect the masses anywhere, even in the country where the ships, planes or tanks are built. The US plan for a 350-ship navy is to make it easier to project its military power over the whole globe. The only reason for US Navy ships to sail the Persian Gulf or the South China Sea is to control those places (especially their oil) and protect the investments and profits of US big business.
Capitalism can’t be fixed. Capitalists exploit workers and fight to maintain profits. It is the nature of the beast. Trade unionism, elections, trade deals, peace treaties and compromises can’t change that.
Our only choice is to organize communist revolution and bring about a whole new situation. Communism is not like socialism in Russia and China that still had exploitation, inequality, money, nations and international conflict. Communism is organized around everyone working and sharing what they make to meet everyone’s needs. Join ICWP and help mobilize the masses of the whole world for a communist society.
SHIPYARD WORKERS: WHO IS TELLING YOU NOT TO READ RED FLAG?
We hear that San Diego bosses are spreading lies about this paper and telling workers not to read it. Capitalists own the media, run the schools and get religions to support them. They don’t want us to know the truth about their system. The only way to find out how to replace capitalist hell we live in with communism, the society run by workers, is in Red Flag (and on our website http://icwpredflag.org). Read Red Flag and share it with other workers! We tell the truth.