Pyramid of the Capitalist System
Pyramid of the Capitalist System
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1083018/pyramid-of-capitalist-system
In 1911, the image of enslaved laborers raising monumental pyramids for their ruling pharaohs was repurposed to visualize the stratification of the capitalist system. Published in Industrial Worker — a newspaper out of Cleveland, Ohio, that was funded by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — the image is a layer cake of oppression. At the top sits the system itself, capitalism, a giant sack embroidered with $$$. Below are the politicians and monarchs (“we rule you”), standing on the shoulders of the priestly caste, who ideologically uphold the status quo (“we fool you”). And below the priests is the repressive apparatus of the state — military and police — who discipline bodies (“we shoot at you”) the way that religion indentures the spirit and mind. And below them are the rich, drunkenly dining on the surplus value stolen from workers by the capitalist system (“we eat for you”). And finally, the lynchpin of the system itself, the class upon whom the whole pyramid depends (“we work for all”, “we feed all”). Some workers take the forms of telemons, bearing the weight of the economic world on their shoulders like Atlas. Others have begun to free themselves from this crushing exploitation, waving the red flag of socialism and communism, protesting with shovels and hammers in hand.