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AnarCapLib’s sometime guest-blogger, Sauvik Chakraverti, (when he’s not being beaten up by Kerala lovers), tells us something about the relation between labour and capital.

The hammer and the sickle feature in the party symbol of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Like all left parties, the CPI(M) believes that labour and capital are in disharmony. They tell their cadres that a “class war” must be engaged in by the proletariat to take over the “means of production”, capital.

Let us pause for a while and reflect over the fact that both the hammer and the sickle are, in truth, “capital goods” — it is merely that they are owned by the workers. The ploughman with his plough, the woodcutter with his axe, the blacksmith with his hammer and the farm worker with his sickle are all examples of the harmonious relationship between capital and labour. In each instance, the worker earns more by producing more thanks to the capital he employs.

It’s a short “middle” in the editorial page of today’s TOI. Worth reading in full. Go on, read it!