Can Marx’s theory be applied in the Macau society politically?
Labor who earns their livelihood by selling their labor power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent way to survive. Differently, capitalist who gets their income not from labor as much as from the surplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers.
Why two classes stands in opposite is that the surplus value of output are appropriated by the capitalist form the labor who creates wealth. In the other words, capitalists hold a lot of materials and the means of productions.
The only way of solving the conflict between labor power and capitalist, according to Marx’s theory, is to launch a class struggle.
Although the conflict between capitalist and labor in Macau does not very serious, but it still have some insidious problems exists in this gradually oppositional society. Here is some Marx’s theory like conditions in Macau:
1. Some minor upper classes control the trade of land and property, usually the government officer. (E.g. Au Man Long, the director of the Department of Transportation And Construction, and the other estate companies which are related.)
2. A lot of political group in Macau are involved by many big syndicates. They probably consider the interest of syndicates more than the general mass.
(E.g. During the election period, above one third of elections groups was supported by casinos.)
3. Some administrators of construction companies have an underground relationship with government department; hence they can use this invisible power to prevent the charging from employ the cheap, non-local illegal worker and exploits the right of local labor.
Those above conditions are related to the authority of making decisions and the distribution of social material (a lot of the social wealth is controlled by big syndicates). Therefore, there exists the problem between the rich classes and the poor classes in Macau.
If there have a class conflict in Macau, can we launch a revolution to change those phenomenon?
Of course, applying the class struggle theory of Karl Marx, we proletarian can launch a revolution to destroy the hierarchy in economy. Because they are stand in opposite to our mass class. But what we want to mention here is that, the history background in the times of Karl Marx is early stages. On that time, poor class did not have any means and weapons such as labor law, minimum wage regulations to prevent their interests. But nowadays, we can legislate some laws to prevent our interests through Macau parliament. On the other words, we can still launch some moderate evolution with another means such as parade or charge them judiciary instead of radical action according to Marx’s theory. It possibly is a different way and other means to launch a class struggle. The critical point we want to advocate is we should understand the meaning of the term “launch a class struggle” in many ways instead of prejudice (many people misunderstand this term as revolution.)
Theoretically, because Macau have the problem of class conflict, so we can launch a class struggle to over-though the capital class in the old system and build up a new, no conflict order. So we think the Macau society can apply the Marx’s theory if they want to launch movement. But actually Macau is too small to undertake the effect when it happen a revolution (at least we doubtful about how will the Macau economy be when all big syndicates were be uprooted especially the casinos). According to our group, we prefer the moderate action more than the radical movement such as revolution. |