For over three centuries Kaalakiota Corporation has been the bulwark of the Caldari spirit and the bastion of the Caldari worker-soldier whose labour has outlasted their lives in the provision of a corporate monolith that stands as guardian over the might that is the Caldari State. To witness Kaalakiota Corporation is to see the foundation of millions of, “Socially necessary labour hours” (Haukkato YC32) made manifest through the Kaalakiota workforce, which the loyalist of the corporate monolith would recognise as the social and material consecration of the company but which the agitator would decry as “theft”. These agitators fuelled by the individualist and egalitarian rhetoric of the Federation argue that a Caldari worker must be an independent agent whose labour should be sold for the highest possible credit value (Tsuumaki YC75). They further argue that the Union is the necessary shield of the worker against the alienating effects of the corporate workplace (Intaro YC97). This materialist critique ignores the particular characteristics of the Caldari Megacorp and the relationship between the worker-soldier and the social identification with the Kaalakiota brand (Kaalakiota YC118). While a Labour Value Theory correctly identifies that labour is the source of all value it is only through the lens of the Bastion of Kaalakiota that the ultimate purpose of labour value is correctly applied: The preservation of the Caldari State over the transient material comforts of the individual. It is a recognition that while Kaalakiota correctly harvests surplus value the end-point of the act is not just mere profit but the construction of a financial and industrial monolith that will outlast the lives of the worker-soldier. It has been the discipline and sacrifice of the worker-soldier that has successfully leveraged “variable capital” into a corporate engine the envy of the cluster. This essay will deconstruct the Unionist delusion using the very rigor they claim to champion to prove that for a citizen of Kaalakiota the surplus value of labour extracted is the very dividend that defends the Caldari State and promotes the future of our culture and society.
The primary fault line of the Unionist agenda is the existing tension between the extractive value of labour and the social dividends of Kaalakiota. The traditional labour unionist critique of Kaalakiota corporate doctrine is that extractive value of labour constitutes a “theft” of the worker-soldier’s “life force” — that surplus value created by labour but seized by capital to expand private wealth (Haukkato YC32). For the Unionist every kredit extracted by Kaalakiota in surplus value is seizing it from the pockets of the worker-soldier. This assessment however is countermanded by the actual maxim of Kaalakiota Corporation: that every kredit extracted in surplus from labour constitutes a social dividend paid in return to the worker-soldier. This, “Total provision on the part of State companies such as Kaalakiota ensures that surplus value is not liquidated into the bank accounts of the elite finance but returned and reinvested to ensure the worker’s own survival” (Saikkaima YC54). A corporate loyalist would argue that the Unionist argument is essentially a hollow one. All the effort expended into strikes or collective bargaining is wasted when a higher wage having reclaimed their surplus results in having to navigate an ineffective and predatory market such as in the Federation for the very infrastructure, security and services that Kaalakiota already provides as a default. The social dividend of Kaalakiota Corporation ensures that worker-soldiers are not the victims of extractive surplus but the beneficiaries and stakeholders in a monolith that provides for its corporate citizenry. To bargain for a higher wage as the Unions suggest is to settle for a pittance; to work for Kaalakiota is to claim the stars in solidarity with the worker-citizens of the company.
This dichotomy between the free labour of the Unionist agenda and the Total Provision of Kaalakiota is the crux of a cultural and economic chasm that has existed between the market forces of Federation and State since prior to the secession. Under the LTV paradigm, “Free Labour” is, “that ability of the independent worker to bargain in an open market for their labour power to the highest bidder” (Poitama YC103). The Unionist would argue that such an economic situation allows for a worker to decouple their life from the forge, treating their time as a commodity they own and trade (Haukkato YC32). However, the Kaalakiota worker-soldier recognises that this “Free Labour” is a forfeiture of their rights to the material, social, and military provisions afforded to them by the company. To exist in a state of “Free Labour” is to be, “Cast to the economic anarchy of production in the free market with no protection of their life or property” (Takuveras 109). By providing the forge, the housing, and the security Kaalakiota ensures every worker-soldier participation in an economic system that maximises their potential and ameliorates the “merchant’s anxiety” of having to sell their labour in a predatory marketplace. A Kaalakiota worker-soldier would see the Unionists demands for a “living wage” as a primitive one: why ask for a “living wage” when Kaalakiota provides all the amenities for the life of the worker-soldier under its stewardship?
A Unionist such as Soven-Thould (YC110) would argue that under a capitalist Megacorporation the worker-soldier is psychologically separated and alienated from the output of their labour and their own production process due to the ownership of the means of production by capital. To a Unionist a Caldari worker-soldier is a nameless statistic, a variable whose creative output remains unrealised due to being separated from the components of material production. However, what the Unionist fails to grasp is that the Caldari worker-soldier of Kaalakiota is not separated from the particulars of production but, “Is sought be completely integrated into the workplace and industrial vanguard of the corporation” (Sakikilen YC111). What is desired is not a specious “freedom” from the corporate machine such as in the Federation where the worker is truly separated and alienated in the marketplace, a mercenary of labour shifting from contract to contract, but rather a complete identity where the worker-soldier is a patriot of Kaalakiota first in fellowship and solidarity with their fellow corporate citizens. When a worker contributes their labour to Kaalakiota as a company they are not merely receiving a wage they are, “Part of the greatness that is Kaalakiota, where every citizen is participating in the collective efforts of a communal project where their labour is immortalised by the future legacy of the company” (Kaalakiota YC118).
There has been a marked tendency of Unionists to disparage the establishment of the Caldari Megacorporation as stifling to the ability of labour to engage in collective bargaining. The operant assumption is according to the Unionists:
That without the ability of labour forces to coalesce around an industrial vanguard with sufficient impetus to curtail corporate exploitation in the interest of the worker through collective bargaining the only recourse left is violence. (Rutilkama YC112).
To such Unionists—and indeed the now defunct Caldari Providence Directorate—violence is the first recourse in bargaining with the capital owning class and Kaalakiota itself. However the true corporate loyalist of Kaalakiota can see the dangerous delusions at the crux of Unionist bargaining. Collective bargaining is not a call to arms but the addressing of fundamental insufficiencies between the requirements of labour and the capital owning bourgeoisie of the company. For a military-industrial corporation such as Kaalakiota collective bargaining is fatal—the factory floor is an extension of the frontline in defence of the State and its interests. Collective bargaining, and especially the violence inherent in strike actions is a direct affront to lives and prosperity of not just Kaalakiota but the wider State milieu. The Unionist demands for “work-life balance” is a luxury born of the laxity and complacency of a desire for peace. Kaalakiota cannot negotiate the socially required labour time to deter and repel an attack upon the State. The output of labour is the continued sovereignty and security of the State. Withholding labour is not a political statement, it is an act of desertion and violence. Value is found not in a higher wage but in survival of the State and its citizenry.
For the Unionist whom adheres to a flattened interpretation of labour value theory argues that since all labour contributes to the whole then it follows that the benefits of production must be radically redistributed in order to achieve a material parity or, “Equal outcomes for every worker” (Juvolainen YC113). They view the vertical integration of Kaalakiota Corporation as an artificial constraint upon the worker to conduct “Super extraction” of value from the proletariat to enrich the capital class (Dokura YC112). However the Kaalakiota worker-soldier realises this egalitarian goal by Unionists is nothing more than industrial equivocation of the goal of a Caldari Megacorporation—labour value is not just a function of time but that of personal refinement. Those who enter the crucible of the State meritocracy and advance up the corporate ladder become high value assets where their place in the hierarchy of the body corporate is testament to their skill and ability, justifying a greater outlay of labour surplus to lead the proletariat worker-soldier. As Uusoko (YC121, p.127) observes: “A union that defends the average worker does so only at the expense of the superlative worker, leading only to a general mediocrity in the labour force and the stagnation of the Caldari race.” Within Kaalakiota leadership is awarded with a greater share of surplus value because they represent the maximal conversion of labour into political and economic power. The Union offers only the comfort of a herd mediocrity in the pursuit of equality; Kaalakiota offers the ladder of tested leadership—a hierarchy that successfully claimed the stars for the Caldari State.
To audit the relationship between the worker-soldier and Kaalakiota one must move beyond the shallow and selfish whims of the Unionists who seek a return for their “stolen” time in the form of kredits, comfort, and idle time but the loyal worker seeks something more in return for their time and labour: a corporate monument in Kaalakiota that will outlast them and stand as testament to their efforts in the interests of the company; that time is only truly saved when invested and forged into something that will not decay. While it is correct according to the labour value theory that surplus of value is extracted from the time and labour of a worker it does not adequately account for the Caldari cultural impetus that for a citizen the surplus desired is kinetic—a contribution to Corporation and State that ensures the continued survival of our shared destiny among the stars. The Unionist may offer a bargain with the fiat of a “Free Labourer” or “Equal Outcomes” that we have deconstructed as Gallentean shadows encroaching upon the worker-soldier. What Kaalakiota offers in contrast is a future legacy, a monolith of the will forged by its citizenry. We do not work for the corporation; we are the corporation, and the corporate monolith will remain just as the mountain.
Bibliography:
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