Who Owns Taxpayers' Money?

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Monday June 08, 2009 15:04 by Paddy Hackett rasherrs at eircom dot net

The capitalist state and taxation.

The capitalist state forces revenue out of the workers in the form of taxation.

There is no such thing as taxpayers' money!
Paddy Hackett

We are constantly bombarded with the soundbyte --"taxpayers money".This contains the

assumption that the revenue collected by the capitalist state in the form of taxation is

taxpayers' money.This obviously implies that the taxpayer in someway owns this money.

In the first place the taxpayer is a category that can include all classes since each of

the social classes pays taxes.This constitutes an attempt to suggest that there obtains a

deep unity between the classes. Assuming that this basis exists then there is only a

short way to go to politically creating an all class alliance.

But the point is that state revenue in the form of taxation is just that --state revenue.

It is revenue that is controlled and owned by the state. It is not the revenue of the

taxpayers. This is why the expression "taxpayers' money" is so misleading in the struggle

against capitalism. It misrepresents the class interests of the working class and seeks to

subordinate those interests to that of the capitalist class in an all class alliance.

The point is that taxation is extracted from the working class by the force of the state.

The working class have no choice in the matter within the context of capitalism. The

working class have only choice within the context of an alternative --the alternative

between capitalism and communism. This means that the workers, to challenge this

imposition of tax on it, must mount an attack on the political state as part of an

integral programme to attack and destroy capitalism.