An Italian bourgeois newspaper, La Repubblica, recently published some data about profits as a percentage of GDP of Italy. In 1983 profits were 23% of national income. In 1995 the figure had risen to 31% and it has remained stable at that level so far.
Using a surprisingly Marxist terminology, the newspaper comments: "If the relationship of forces between capital and labour were today the same as it was twenty years ago, that money would be in the workers' pockets, instead of the capitalists'."
This is not just an Italian phenomenon. Also the French and Japanese capitalists increased their share of GDP by 8% in the same period. British and US employers can't complain either, even though their profits' share of GDP was already higher than in south European countries in the Eighties. In Spain, where economic growth is sometimes described as having favoured the workers, the increased share of GDP the bourgeois took from the workers in the same span of time is an incredible 11%!
The article investigates several partial explanations for this process of redistribution, and draws the conclusion that the fundamental reason has one name: "class war" - a war the bourgeoisie has been waging very effectively over the last few decades. There is a limit to all this however, and we are confident that the workers will soon fight back, as they are already starting to do in many countries.
