Wobbly Times number 7

THE BLUES

Get me hard

The urge

Pleasure overcoming reason

racing through

slow sultry chords

that familiar leitmotif

anchors me

to my soul

Wobbly Times number 6

Private Propety

We are not allowed

to watch TV at a friend's home

It's stealing

We are not allowed

to borrow a cd from a library

It's theft

We are not allowed

to borrow an idea a concept or a notion

from anyone else

It's copyright infringement

The wealth we create

lies in a heap

of commodities

waiting to be sold

The private property

of our masters

fenced off

un cordon sanitaire

We could be dying of hunger

but until we could pay

the food we produce

could never be eaten

'cause capital rules

and we must be beaten

with guilt and batons

for our affluenzia

Wobbly Times number 5

Real human beings for Marx were not people who groveled before kings or masters. Marx hated servility. Humans could only realise their full potential of freedom within classless, democratic social relationships. Nietzsche sees the repetition of social relations of dominance and submission to be a kind of eternal recurrence for humanity. Marx sees the potential to overcome social relations which degrade humanity through dictatorial government e.g. monarchies; but that potential can only be realised by human beings deliberately acting in concert for themselves.
Mike B)
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"Such expressions of relations in general, called by Hegel reflex categories, form a very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king."<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm>
Marx

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination."<http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/m/jmh403/nietzsche_genealogy_history.htm Nietzsche

"the philistine is the material of the monarchy, and the monarch always remains only the king of the philistines; he cannot turn either himself or his subjects into free, real human beings while both sides remain what they are."<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05.htm>
Marx
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An individual has no security except through working class solidarity.http://www.iww.org.au/

Wobbly Times number 4

INDIFFERENT NATURE


They can all go to hell


it doesn't matter to me


The world and all its troubles


it doesn't matter to me


It doesn't matter to them


either


It doesn't matter me


We're all no matter


no matter mate


We're all a mess here


don't you see


We don't give a flying...


about anything more


more than our immediate needs


you see


We're all a bunch of nincompoops


lying by the sea


on briney beaches


more like leeches


than whales are we


whales out in the sea


We're all sucking each other's blood


you see


it doesn't matter to me


The Earth is going belly up


but I'm all right


My MBA will soon be hatched


It doesn't matter to me


With job in hand


I'm realistic


I'll have a couple kids


or maybe even three


You see


the world may be all messed up


but it doesn't matter to me


Climate change is just word


I've got my car and wife and kids


I'll just have a cuppa tea


The leaders who are in charge


have always been in charge


I want to be one of them


but until I do


I'll be myself


cause it doesn't matter to me

Wobbly Times number 3

The fact that 10% of Australian households own 45% of Australia's wealth while 50% of Australian households own only 7% of Australia's wealth is information which is unknown to most Australian workers.

The source is this inequality lies in the wages system. Workers create the wealth in the economy. Of course they use wealth lying dormant in Nature to do it, for example in mining. Workers sell their skills for defined periods of time to employers to create the wealth of society which is then measured in the sales of goods and services, aka the GDP. The price workers get for their sale on the labour market is called wages.

More than 120 years ago, workers came out in the streets of Chicago to demand the 8 hour day. Productivity since 1886 has skyrocketed. Workers deserve more free-time. Workers have earned it. Workers today should have a four hour day with no cut in pay. Shorter work time could solve many of what seem to be today's unsolvable problems: climate change, unemployment, child care, social alienation, cultural development and the overproduction of garbage polluting the environment.

The more the productiveness of labour increases, 

the more can the working-day be shortened; and 

the more the working-day is shortened,

the more can the intensity of labour increase. 

From a social point of view,the productiveness 

increases in the same ratio as the economy of labour,

which, in its turn, includes not only economy of 

the means of production,but also the avoidance of 

all useless labour. The capitalist mode of production,

while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each 

individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its

anarchical system of competition, the most

outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social 

means of production,not to mention the creation of a 

vast number of employments, at present indispensable, 

but in themselves superfluous. The intensity and 

productiveness of labour being given, the time

which society is bound to devote to material 

production is shorter, and as a consequence, the time 

at its disposal for the free development, intellectual

and social, of the individual is greater, in proportion 

as the work is more and more evenly divided among all 

the able-bodied members of society,and as a particular 

class is more and more deprived of the power to shift

the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders to 

those of another layer of society. In this direction, 

the shortening of the working-day finds at last a limit 

in the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society

spare time is acquired for one class by converting the 

whole life-time of the masses into labour time. 

From CAPITAL, Vol. I by Karl Marx

  

The theft of alien labour time, on which the present 

wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face 

of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. 

As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be 

the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and 

must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value 

[must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus 

labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the 

development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of 

the few, for the development of the general powers of the 

human head. With that, production based on exchange value 

breaks down, and the direct, material production process 

is stripped of the form of  penury and antithesis. The 

free development of individualities, and hence not the

reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus 

labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary

labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds

to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the

individuals in the time set free, and with the

means created, for all of them. 

from the GRUNDRISSE by Karl Marx

Wobbly Times number 2

$80 billion to AIG

who does it go to

Goldman

Bank of America

Deutsche Bank

UBS

Chase

creditors all

flowing on

into the coffers

transfer of wealth

the usual game

it's the wage system

we all pay the price

well most of us anyway

for selling ourselves

into wage-slavery

and all

losing control

of the wealth we create

We sit here and wonder

what is our fate

when it's all done and dusted

by their goddam State.

Wobbly Times number 1

OUR INSTINCT FOR FREEDOM IS COMING ALIVE



Socialism ...it's on peoples' minds





Capitalists walk in fear





A crisis of overproduction is upon us





Our wages are insufficient





commodities too dear





We cannot buy





all that we've made

(or could make)





Hallelujah I'm a bum





unemployment lines grows





The wage system's





outmoded



oh what shall we do?







Most financial institutions will go bankrupt


in some awful way


I hope I'm around


when the bosses must pay

when they lose their political power

their material ability to boss us around

and that my friend is simply a matter

of us taking matters in hand

After all

we create the wealth of our masters

which gives them their political power

over us

Amen

Land and wealth should be held in common

Political power




to be done away with
by materially equalising political power between all women and men

The rest is for future humans to
imagine and

make real