Irregular Prose 10.. nirmal bhattacharya

 

I have come to see numerous examples of foolish insolence in life. But what Jeff Bezos has done simply does not compare with anything else. Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, whose assets are stated to be worth 214 billion US dollars in 2021, recently had a 4-minute tour in space for at the alleged cost of 5.5 billion U S dollars. This itself would not have been a news worth a spittle ball if this man  had not done something else which is rotten like anything. After his return from that 4-minute sojourn in space, he said flaunting that the workers and the buyers of Amazon had made this space-sojourn of his possible. A few journalists bound by the self-same interests are out on the streets to shout to us that it's like Bezos that a real rich man should be.

But a different story ( there may be hundreds of such stories ) exposes this Bezos' duplicity. In one of Amazon's godowns in the U.S.A ----- and this particular story owes its existence to a godown in California ---- Patte Hernandez, a woman worker in that godown, worked in the packing section for the last 23 years before she was sacked by the management of the company. Now she became pregnant and her doctor advised her to be careful enough not to carry an weight over 20 pounds and not to work standing more than half of her working hours. Pattey applied for the relaxations as medically prescribed to the management, and Bezos' man there rejected the prayer forthwith. After some days, true to the fears and warnings of the doctor, Pattey suffered a miscarriage and applied for leave on medical grounds. That too got rejected on the ground that Pattey was supposed to work for 1250 hours in the previous year but she did only 841.57 hours. Pattey ended up being forced to resign. Facts show that during the period from 2011 to 2019, according to Mother Board in the U S A, Amazon workers have sued more than 7 court cases against the Bezos' company for gross injustices done by his company to pregnant women workers. And this man on his return from the space visit as a civilian thanks the workers of his company for bearing the cost of his this space-jaunt. What an irony! Isn't it?

But the insolent Bezos is right in one sense. Not Bezos alone, all the capitalists everywhere have been doing this since the first days of the arrival of capitalism. As far as Capitalism goes, a simple fact is out there and it is this that no exploitation of surplus labour of workers, no pleasure, no enjoyment of life for Bezos and his ilk. The world is far more shameless now. So Bezos could easily be this shameless.

From time to time attempts are made to make us  believe that Capitalism has many negative things but without Capitalism there can exist neither democracy nor democratic values. This is not only strange but a great motivated lie. In the ancient world there existed no capitalist system of production but there were countries that had democracy as a political system and in which democratic values played a crucial role in political and social life. In Pericles' Athens, democratic attitude to life used to be the norm in political institutions and social ones also. But no historian has shown yet that Athens had capitalism as its production system. Similar instances of this are perhaps available in other ancient countries also. In ancient India, in a few states in her eastern flank election of kings by democratic means had been a vibrant practice, though the scope of people's participation was much limited compared to the one in Pericles' Greece. The point is that democracy does not owe its existence to Capitalism. Rather Capitalism  has, in its course, hijacked the idea of democracy in its interest to exploit the surplus labour of workers. However, any elaborate discussion about this demands a critical looking into the difference between the Greek democracy and the modern democracy.

Let's leave it now. Rather, we steer our attention to finding out ways to hit back Bezos in ways suitable for him to learn a little humanity.
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