YET ANOTHER Mayday passed. Yet another day celebrated in paeans to the working man. Yet another day of unfulfilled dreams for labor, of broken promises from capital.
Marx’s Das Kapital rings as true today – the death of Communism be damned – as it did in 1867: “Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking blood from living labor.”
Closer to the Filipino proletariat’s heart is the poignancy of the lines of poet-patriot Ka Amado V. Hernandez in his epic Bayang Malaya:
“Bisig ng nagsaka’y siyang walang palay,
Nagtayo ng templo’y siyang walang bahay,
Dumungkal ng mina
Ng bakal at ginto ay baon sa utang;
Lingcod sa pabrika
Ng damit ay hubad ang mahal sa buhay.”
The plebeian’s nothingness of being finds similar manifestation in another poet of another time and clime, closer to the very spring of its origin – the Industrial Revolution. Thus, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Song to the Men of England:
“Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, — let no impostor heap;
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear;
Forge guns, — in your defence to bear.”
Further back into history, St. Ambrose, the 4th century Bishop of Milan, took the Parable of the Dives with this censorious swing at the rich: “The earth was established to be in common for all, rich and poor; why do ye rich alone arrogate it to yourselves as your rightful property?”
“You crave possession not so much for their utility to yourself, as because you want to exclude others from them. You are more concern with despoiling the poor than with your own advantage. You think yourself injured if a poor man possesses anything which you consider a suitable belonging for a rich man; whatever belongs to others you look upon as something of which you are deprived.”
Deprivation is the eternal state of the worker. That is fated in capitalist societies, engrossed as they are in “…production not merely the production of commodities…(but) essentially the production of surplus value.”
Marx furthered: “All surplus value, whatever particular (profits, interests, rent) it may crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor.”
So at it was shall ever be: On May 1, the cry for emancipation rang anew. All media are filled with hallelujahs to the workingman from just about every political lip freed for that day, and only that day, from the lock of the capitalist kiss.
On May 2, it’s back to the salt mines for labor anew. Until the next Mayday.
Sometime, the vicious cycle comes to breaking. Labor can only take so much. Then it is the tale of the askal retold:
“Sa bawa’t latay, kahit aso’y nag-iiba.
Sa una, siya’y magtataka.
Sa ikalawa, siya’y magtatanda.
Sa ikatlo, siya’y mag-iisip.
Sa ikaapat, humanda ka!
Workingmen unite! Mabuhay ang uring anak-pawis.
Marx’s Das Kapital rings as true today – the death of Communism be damned – as it did in 1867: “Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking blood from living labor.”
Closer to the Filipino proletariat’s heart is the poignancy of the lines of poet-patriot Ka Amado V. Hernandez in his epic Bayang Malaya:
“Bisig ng nagsaka’y siyang walang palay,
Nagtayo ng templo’y siyang walang bahay,
Dumungkal ng mina
Ng bakal at ginto ay baon sa utang;
Lingcod sa pabrika
Ng damit ay hubad ang mahal sa buhay.”
The plebeian’s nothingness of being finds similar manifestation in another poet of another time and clime, closer to the very spring of its origin – the Industrial Revolution. Thus, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Song to the Men of England:
“Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, — let no impostor heap;
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear;
Forge guns, — in your defence to bear.”
Further back into history, St. Ambrose, the 4th century Bishop of Milan, took the Parable of the Dives with this censorious swing at the rich: “The earth was established to be in common for all, rich and poor; why do ye rich alone arrogate it to yourselves as your rightful property?”
“You crave possession not so much for their utility to yourself, as because you want to exclude others from them. You are more concern with despoiling the poor than with your own advantage. You think yourself injured if a poor man possesses anything which you consider a suitable belonging for a rich man; whatever belongs to others you look upon as something of which you are deprived.”
Deprivation is the eternal state of the worker. That is fated in capitalist societies, engrossed as they are in “…production not merely the production of commodities…(but) essentially the production of surplus value.”
Marx furthered: “All surplus value, whatever particular (profits, interests, rent) it may crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor.”
So at it was shall ever be: On May 1, the cry for emancipation rang anew. All media are filled with hallelujahs to the workingman from just about every political lip freed for that day, and only that day, from the lock of the capitalist kiss.
On May 2, it’s back to the salt mines for labor anew. Until the next Mayday.
Sometime, the vicious cycle comes to breaking. Labor can only take so much. Then it is the tale of the askal retold:
“Sa bawa’t latay, kahit aso’y nag-iiba.
Sa una, siya’y magtataka.
Sa ikalawa, siya’y magtatanda.
Sa ikatlo, siya’y mag-iisip.
Sa ikaapat, humanda ka!
Workingmen unite! Mabuhay ang uring anak-pawis.
