Increase Investments in Seniors' Care and Other Social Programs! Increase the Value of the Capacity to Work of the Working Class!
- K.C. Adams -
The crisis in long-term care homes has exposed the lack
of investment in social programs for the elderly necessary to
guarantee their well-being. The dire situation demands increased
investments in social programs directed at seniors but also in
health care and education generally. The aim is to guarantee the
right of all to the care and social programs the people require
in all phases of life, including in childhood before
entering the workforce and in old age.
The investment in care for the elderly is connected with the
value of the capacity to work under imperialism and the claim of
the working class on the value it produces, specifically social
reproduced-value. The imperialist oligarchy deprives the working
class of its rightful claim for social reproduced-value as the
claim exists in contradiction with the expropriation of new value
as private profit.
 Improving the lives of the retired means the economic value of
the capacity to work of the working class as a whole becomes
greater. The improvement in the quality of life when retired
increases the claim of the working class on the value it produces
thus reducing the amount of new value the imperialist oligarchy
can expropriate.
The imperialist oligarchy stands opposed to any improvement in
the economic value of the capacity to work of the working class
that is not necessary within the imperialist economy. The
oligarchs seek to cheapen all social programs that do not improve
the employability of the working class while finding ways to
organize those that do, such as education, in a way that does not
reduce their expropriation of added-value for private profit or
damage their war economy.
The imperialists face a dilemma. They need educated and
healthy workers but any improvement means an increase in the
value of workers' capacity to work. How to solve the dilemma has
been an aspect of why public and semi-public social programs came
into being.
The imperialist oligarchs have created semi-public education
and health care as means to lessen the burden of paying for them
on the oligarchs as a whole yet make educated and healthy workers
available for employment. This does not mean that those who work
in public and semi-public education and health care do not
produce as much new value as if they were working in completely
privatized enterprises of the same level. The public and
semi-public social programs hold two advantages for the oligarchs
as a whole: the full price of production to educate and look
after the health of workers is not paid by the oligarchs as the
funding comes from taxes of which the biggest companies pay very
little, and the oligarchs do not have to realize (buy) directly
the higher value of the capacity to work as it is reduced by the
amount of added-value the public social programs do not
expropriate.
Public workers in most social programs in public and
semi-public enterprises produce enormous new value of which they
claim a portion as reproduced-value. Wages are the individual
portion of the reproduced-value and social programs are the
social portion. The working class claims the individual and
social reproduced-value as its portion of the new value it
produces while those who buy their capacity to work expropriate
the rest as added-value or profit. The trick with public social
programs is that the added-value or profit is not directly
expropriated but transferred indirectly to the imperialists who
buy the capacity to work of educated and healthy workers, at
least part of it.
Public and Semi-Public Enterprises
The imperialist oligarchy as a whole does not pay the full
price of production for what workers produce in public and
semi-public enterprises. They skirt this economic responsibility
by hiding behind general taxes as the form of revenue needed to
fund most social programs. Working people and small and
medium-sized businesses pay the vast majority of taxes to realize
the value from public and semi-public enterprises while big
business mostly avoids paying anything.
By not paying directly the full price of production for what
public workers produce and mostly avoiding taxes, the ruling
imperialist elite and their global private enterprises
expropriate indirectly the added-value portion of the new value
public workers produce through social programs and the public and
semi-public enterprises.
This added-value exists as the capacity to work of educated
and healthy workers or as cheap fixed infrastructure such as
bridges, roads, mass transit etc and socially produced
circulating value such as electricity or postal services, which
the oligarchs buy at "preferred industrial rates."
The imperialist oligarchs receive the full value from publicly
produced infrastructure and social programs and the increased
value of the capacity to work of the workers they employ but do
not fully pay the price of production for the infrastructure or
the socially produced portion of the capacity to work of the
working class. The difference between the price of production and
what the imperialists and their enterprises pay and what they
should pay is expropriated as indirect private profit.
Expropriation of Added-Value from Programs to Care for the
Elderly
Workers in public social programs to care for the elderly
produce new value, which includes the reproduced-value they claim
as wages, benefits and social programs, and the added-value the
oligarchs expropriate indirectly as profit. The public and
not-for-profit long-term care homes pass on much of the
added-value workers produce to the general economy where both
public and private enterprises expropriate it as indirect profit.
This occurs indirectly because the public and private enterprises
in the economy do not directly pay the price of production
arising from the work-time involved in caring for the elderly.
The social reproduced-value of seniors' care forms part of the
aggregate value of the capacity to work of the working class.
Within the social relation between the working class and the
not-working class that buys its capacity to work, the working
class is available to work and the not-working class is supposed
to pay the full individual and social value of workers' capacity
to work, which includes seniors' care.
Privatization of Social Programs
When a social program is privatized, which is the case with
the numerous privately owned long-term care homes and home care,
the individual owner of the privatized service expropriates as
added-value or private profit a portion of the new value workers
produce. This means the full price of production for the
privatized social program must be realized. The government
generally pays the majority of the price of production while the
elderly and their families pay the rest as user fees.
Privatization of social programs has the effect of indirectly
reducing the amount of added-value or profit the imperialist
oligarchy as a whole expropriates from social programs at least
those that do not directly profit from privatized social
programs. It also increases the price of production if the level
of the social programs is maintained as before the government did
not pay for the added-value, which is now expropriated by the
private owner. The full amount of the price of production must be
directly paid to the owners of the privatized social programs,
which the government pays. The fact that the full price of
production for the privatized social programs must be paid has
the effect of concentrating the expropriated added-value in a few
hands while depriving the rest of the imperialist oligarchs from
indirectly receiving any of the value.
 The oligarchs in control, which do not profit directly from
privatized social programs accept the privatized situation
because the imperialists that have intruded on social programs
are extremely powerful but also they can force a reduction in the
value of the privatized social programs to reduce the amount of
social reproduced-value the working class can claim. According to
the many recent reports of how bad the situation has become in
many long-term care homes and in home care, the level of care has
been drastically reduced. A similar situation exists in public
education, which is facing a lowering of quality such as
increased class sizes and other issues.
Faced with the situation, the imperialist oligarchy can and
does call for the elimination of privatization as an option and
to revert to public or semi-public delivery of social programs. Up
to this point in the imperialist world, including Canada, the
working class has not intervened forcefully with its own view and
outlook but has been led to discuss only the options the ruling
oligarchs have presented regarding the direction of social
programs. This is a situation the organized working class must
change.
In BC, almost all the money to pay for privatized long-term
care homes and home care comes from the government. The
individual owners of the privatized service, through their private
enterprises, directly expropriate added-value from the new value
their workers produce. In this situation of privatized long-term
care homes and home care, in contrast with the previous situation
of public enterprise, either the level of service must go down or
the government must now pay more for the service as the
individual owners expropriate the added-value directly. If the
service is kept at the same level and the individual owners
directly expropriate added-value as private profit, this means the
price of production of the service is fully paid mostly by the
government and none of the added-value workers produce flows to
those imperialist oligarchs not directly involved in delivering
the privatized social programs.
The privatized social program at the same level of service
means the government pays more, as the full price of production
is required because the individual owner of the privatized
service expropriates profit. This in fact leaves less public
money available for other programs while putting pressure on the
government to increase taxes.
In contrast, a publicly-owned long-term care home or home care
does not directly expropriate the added-value. At the same level
of service, the price paid by the government is lower and the
added-value from the service flows into the general economy
mainly as part of the value of the capacity to work of the
working class that is not paid. This phenomenon explains in part
why the imperialist oligarchs created public and semi-public
education, health care and other social programs in the first
place. They needed more educated and healthy workers and public
social programs appeared as the best option on a mass scale.
However, productive forces develop and change, for example the
introduction of computers and the Internet, and the tendency of
parasitism and decay is ever-present, seizing greater parts of the
imperialist economy. Powerful new imperialist cartels, which
appear as global funds, roam the world seeking out places to
invest, such as social programs and public infrastructure. In
addition, new global cartels of immense social wealth -- such as
Microsoft, Sodexo, Aramark and Compass Group -- have
directly invaded public and semi-public enterprises, even prisons in
the United States. Waste Management and other green imperialist
monopolies have grown to challenge public delivery of social
programs, such as city waste removal, and want to expropriate as
their own the added-value that workers in the social service
sector produce. They do not want to have it flow to the collective of
imperialists and their enterprises, which have hitherto
indirectly profited from social programs and their production of
the capacity to work of the working class for which they have not
paid. The imperialists privatizing social programs and
infrastructure want governments to pay the full price of
production to them for the privatized social programs, even if
this means higher taxes or less public money for other programs --
unless investments in social programs are lowered, which in fact
has occurred. However, the privatized services face pushback from
others in the imperialist oligarchy who want to organize social
programs differently so that they can expropriate the social
product indirectly and also quell any uproar from the working
class.
The Office of the Seniors' Advocate in BC, in a report dealing
with the operations of long-term care homes entitled A Billion
Reasons to Care, found that usually the level of care goes
down when privatized, if funding is kept the same as before. To
bring the level of privatized service up to where it was before
privatization requires more government funding. The increased
money must come from the aggregate new value the working class
produces, usually as new taxes on them or on small and medium-sized companies or from government borrowing from private
lenders, which has become a lucrative source of guaranteed
profit.
However, increased funding for privatized social programs
usually means more added-value as expropriated private profit by
the enterprises involved, and does not allow any added-value to
flow indirectly to the imperialist oligarchy as a whole, and can
also mean a degrading of the overall health and education of the
working class and its employability. In Canada and the U.S., this
has been papered over with large numbers of educated immigrants
coming into the workforce, stolen for nothing from developing
countries.
At any rate, a dispute exists within the ruling elite over
privatization of public services, with many opposing such a move
as it means profit from the social programs goes to particular
owners of the service rather than to the imperialist oligarchy as
a whole. Generally, the working class is a spectator to this
debate, either for or against privatization of public services, and
does not forcefully present its own views or an alternative that
favours working people.
Within the dispute whether to have social programs delivered
as fully public enterprises, not-for-profit charity enterprises,
or private enterprises, the subject is rarely broached as one of
guaranteeing the rights of all to health care, education and a
cultured standard of living and care for the elderly at the
highest level the productive forces can deliver. The dispute
generally circulates around the issue of "cost" to the
imperialist oligarchy and who profits and how best to keep
spending on the working class as low as possible so that the
price of their capacity to work is likewise as low as possible,
expropriated private profit remains as high as possible, and yet the
working class and its capacity to work remains available at an
appropriate level.
How to Pay for Social Programs
To function, a modern economy and society need a high level of
social programs. It is important to discuss the issue of realizing (paying for) the value
workers produce in those programs and to
formulate a pro-social alternative that favours the people.
The working class has to break out of the anti-social
discussion of the ruling oligarchs. It must force through its view for
increased investments in social programs and that the socialized
economy as a whole, which includes all its individual
enterprises, must pay the full price of production for the
capacity to work of the aggregate healthy and educated working
class and its reproduction and existence from birth to passing
away at the highest possible level given the existing productive
forces. The working class as a whole is always available to work
so its reproduction and existence and rights from birth to
passing away must be guaranteed.
 History has shown that the right to health care and education
and care for the elderly cannot be guaranteed outside of public
enterprises and with the economy and its enterprises directly
paying for the produced value of social programs. Using public
enterprises to solve the problem cannot be separated from the
issue of increasing investments in social programs to bring them
up to a cultured and sustainable standard for all and forcing the
other parts of the economy and enterprises to pay the full price
of production of the capacity to work of the working class. This
would increase the aggregate value of the capacity to work of the
working class and the amount it can claim on the value it
produces, the reproduced-value.
The mechanics of how to pay for the full value of the social
programs that increase the value of the capacity to work of the
working class from the value workers produce in the economy can
be worked out on a prorated basis for each enterprise; that is
not a problem. The problem is how to organize this and enforce
it. What new alternative forms and mechanisms are necessary for
the working class to realize its rights and to decide these
matters, such as the standard of living of workers generally, and
to enforce compliance with them? Forcing the imperialist
oligarchy to agree to such a necessity to guarantee the rights of
all working people is the order of the day and task of the
organized working class. This requires a broad front of struggle
to increase investments in social programs and raise the quality
of life of the working class and guarantee the rights of all,
including importantly the rights of seniors and children. How to
accomplish this in practice with new forms needs to be discussed
and concretized. It can be done!
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 19 - May 30, 2020
Article Link:
Increase Investments in Seniors' Care and Other Social Programs! Increase the Value of the Capacity to Work of the Working Class! - K.C. Adams
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
