Comment Re:It's a status thing (Score 3, Interesting) 717
There's an Swedish radical socialist song about this from 1972, by a band called Blå Tåget: "Each hand knows what the other does" (which of course, is a clever title in Swedish). Below is a somewhat crappy translation (the original fits a rhyme scheme, and a metre).
"The capital raises the rents, and the state the rent benefits
In this way one fiddle with the Iron Law of Wages
and even pay less wages than the price of food and rent,
for the state merrily pitches in should the living expenses grow to great".
They then go on to give further examples of how a welfare society merely masks fundamental injustices in capitalism and how it is something which alleviates symptoms instead of going for democratic control of the means of production. I've long wanted to translate this song into English properly, because it's insightful and the ideas in it are somewhat foreign to most English speakers.
"The capital raises the rents, and the state the rent benefits
In this way one fiddle with the Iron Law of Wages
and even pay less wages than the price of food and rent,
for the state merrily pitches in should the living expenses grow to great".
They then go on to give further examples of how a welfare society merely masks fundamental injustices in capitalism and how it is something which alleviates symptoms instead of going for democratic control of the means of production. I've long wanted to translate this song into English properly, because it's insightful and the ideas in it are somewhat foreign to most English speakers.