Monty Python
Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ is a film about a man who is mistaken for the Messiah and is a biting social satire on religion. However, like all satire it is highly conservative. Satirists want to preserve or reclaim something that is lost; morality, manners, a way of life or the social mores of a particular ruling class.
Juvenal, the first Roman satirist looked back longingly to the mannerism of a landed Roman aristocracy. He hated the nouveau riche and the proletariat. His is the famous saying that the Roman proles were bought off with a diet of “bread and circus”. A similar jibe is thrown at the working class today, although “bread and circus” has been replaced by fast food and commercial sport.
‘Life of Brian’ was set in the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. There is scene in the film where a group of leftist rebels – the “Judean People’s Front”, a parody of left-wing politics in the UK at the time, denigrate the usefulness of the Roman way of life. They are opposed to Roman rule and are dedicated “to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman Imperialist State”, .
“Whatever have the Romans done for us?” is the sneering question from one of the leaders of the revolutionary Judah People’s Front. Then, one after another comes the reply from the assembled comrades; “sanitation”, “medicine”, “education”, “wine” “public order”, “public health” and so on.
Of course, the satirical point being made by the Monty Python set, is that the question “whatever have the Romans done for us” transposed to our time would become “Whatever have the capitalist class done for us?”.
Whatever have the capitalist class done for us?
Marx gave a positive account of what the capitalist class had achieved. In the ‘Communist Manifesto’ he wrote:
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all preceding generations together…what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces lumbered in the lap of social labour?”
And he went on to say:
“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones”.
And he continued:
“…the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere”
Despite the technology, integrated global system of production, distribution and communication the answer the Monty Python group had in mind is that capitalism has given employment to the working class. It had turned a majority of society into wage slaves much as the Roman ruling class lived off the work of chattel slavery.
Does the working class need the capitalist class?
This leads to an important political question. “Does the working class need the capitalist class?” The Socialist answer is no. Not because of a moral revulsion against employment. But on the grounds that employment is wage slavery resting on class exploitation, class privilege and the private ownership of the means of production and distribution.
Capitalism is a social system in which, except for a small minority of the world’s 8.2 billion inhabitants (worldmointors.info), each day involves a struggle to either subsist or exist. Subsist as a working class and to reproduce itself as an exploited class. To create social wealth of which only a fraction is received in the form of wages and salaries. And for millions of others, it is an existence which is usually a few hours long or fades out through lack of water, food and medicine.
According to the United Nations Food programme for 2021, “There is 400 trillion dollars of wealth on the earth today, and…9 million people die from hunger every year…In the height of COVID, billionaires’ net worth increase was $5.2 billion per day. At the same time 24,000 people die per day from hunger”. That is what capitalism does to our class on a daily basis. Death through poverty and ill heath for a large section of our class and class exploitation for the remainder.
Capitalism’s record has two sides to it. Of course, it has meant improvements in most areas of human existence for some, whether measured in comfort, education, health, productivity, or income levels. But on the other side, whose components are casually ignored or brushed aside by those who extol the “triumph of capitalism”.
Do workers need to be exploited? We do not. We can do without the capitalist class. They have long outgone their historical usefulness.
Employment and Class Exploitation
For the majority of the world’s population what capitalism has done is to turn us into wage slaves. It has imprisoned us in the wages system and shacked us with debt. It has condemned us to a life-time of schooling for employment, an adult life-time of employment, periods of unemployment and then discomfort and insecurity in old age.
Marx might have highlighted the triumphs of capitalism but he also showed that the constraints imposed on the productive forces gives us the necessity of socialism – the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society, but it all rests on class exploitation.
It was not until ‘Capital’ that Marx demonstrated, with his theory of surplus value, how the working class were exploited. Capitalists and workers meet on ‘apparent’ equal terms in the ‘free market’ and the workers sell their ability to work or ‘labour power’ to the capitalists. The capitalist pays the worker a wage or salary according to the value of labour power. The value of labour power is the amount of socially necessary labour embodied in the commodities the workers must consume to produce and reproduce themselves and their family.
The capitalists pays the workers according to the exchange value but obtains the use value of the commodity labour power. This distinction between use value and exchange value of labour power is important to an understanding of Marx’s theory of surplus value.
Workers sell their labour power to the capitalists at its value. The capitalists now have control over the workers’ labour power. The workers, in the production process, lose their freedom, they must do as the employers command. Workers cannot produce what they need nor distribute products to those who need them. Workers have to work, say, an eight-hour day. They produced the necessary value of their wage or salary in less than their contracted hours, however, workers have to work those extra hours for nothing. It is in this period of free labour that the capitalists make their surplus value and profit. The products of labour are the property of the capitalists to be sold for a profit. The needs of the working class go unmet.
Abolish class society
One of the many problems facing workers is housing provision. Throughout the 20th and now 21st centuries reformers, politicians and governments have tried to solve the housing crisis without success. They will soon be joined by the Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Who erroneously believe reforms to the planning system is the answer when the only solution, as Engels pointed out in his pamphlet ‘The Housing Crisis’ is first the abolition of capitalism. Capitalism has developed technology and social production to the point where sufficient high-quality housing can be built. This is the material basis of socialism held back by the profit motive, the wages system and private property ownership.
Most workers cannot buy a house on the wages and salaries they receive. They certainly cannot afford a house that meets the needs of their family as the grow and develop. Most workers have to live in cramped and unhealthy housing. They have to live with their parents or with friends and as they get old, often have to live in houses which they cannot afford to heat or repair. According to the 2021-2022 English housing survey, 14% of households in England (3.5 million) live in homes that fail to meet the woefully inadequate Decent Homes Standard.
The so-called housing problem is really no problem at all. There is no reason why houses cannot be built to meet the varying needs of the population. The land exists, the building materials and transportation exists and so do the builders, architects, engineers, brick layers, carpenters and electricians. What prevents good high-quality housing from being built is the class monopoly of the means of production. Land, resources, building materials, transportation and so on are privately owned and are only used if there is a profit to be had. Remove employers and employment and workers will be able to produce directly and solely to meet human need. Housing would be built that reflects how socialists want to live; built to be flexible, environmentally sound and an enjoyment for workers to design and build. Without employment there would be enjoyment in work and satisfaction in living in a socialist world where there. will be an association “In which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” (Marx ‘Communist Manifesto’)
The working class might have its modern-day bread and circus. But it is a bread and circus that comes with a price. And that price is class exploitation, class misery and class subservience.
At the end of Life of Brian, the dozens of crucified men sing out: “Look on the Bright Side of Life”. The song is apathetic resignation that there can be no change; the stiff British upper lip while all around is misery and death. An apathetic resignation that nothing changes. There is no escape from Roman occupation just as there is no escape from capitalism and wage slavery. Revolutionary socialism and the desperate need for socialist activity and growth as a democratic and political force does not get a look in. Such is the conservatism of satire.
If the working class create all the social wealth in society, why do they need the capitalist class? Why not produce and distribute without employers, labour markets, buying and selling and money? Why not produce directly to meet human need, housing food, health care, education, transport and communication. The development of the productive forces has long made socialism a feasible proposition. Socialism, a world social system just producing “from each according to ability to each according to need”. In socialism people will take part in production to the best of their abilities, and freely and directly take what they need to live worthwhile lives in a rational and balanced global social system.
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