| During the so-called War on Poverty, liberalism contended that the minimum-wage was an important step toward "the elimination of poverty." But despite periodic increases, the minimum-wage has done nothing to eliminate the blight of poverty, nor has it even prevented that blight from spreading. In fact, the history of the reform known as "the minimum wage" constitutes a case study of the false security offered to workers by all efforts to "reform" capitalism. Thus, when Bill Holmes wrote, "...the (wolves) in sheep's-clothing socialists are changing the clothing of one of their platform planks ("the minimum wage") to 'living wage'," he merely revealed his understanding of socialism to be woefully inadequate. For along with capitalism itself, socialism strives to eliminate the wages system, in its totality, and to replace it with a system in which workers would keep (all) of the wealth they produce - a socialist commonwealth in which the economy would be socially owned, democratically controlled and administered, and operated in the interest of society at large. Indeed, socialists - revolutionaries - contend that, like most other reforms such as social welfare, the mini- mum wage is but another way of protecting capitalism and of meeting certain "needs" of the capitalist class by way of perpetuating a permanent under-class. Thank you Guy Marsh med@ptw.com Member-at-large: Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) http://www.slp.org> |
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