Yet, no protective measures in the form of state interventions are seen in the story. The state does give a helping hand but it gives it to Mr. Wonka when it refuses to interfere on behalf of Grandpa Joe and Mr. Bucket. The point of view in the film takes for granted and accepts that the forces of supply and demand and the free market will rule the relationship between the employer and the employee who has become a commodity. The State by not interfering sides with the capitalists who wield the political power which is on their side against the proletariat who have become powerless isolated and without an alley.
With the help of modern technology, management systems and information control, such a state can successfully plug the escape routes that used to be available to the citizen of pre-modern or non modern societies (Nandy, 1993:271)
We hope that Charlie's family will participate in power as members of the working class rather than as industrialists. In the 2005 movie a twist is added to the plot when Charlie refuses to cooperate and thus power is transferred from the industrialist to the worker who becomes a would-be industrialist.
Capitalism produces unheard of degradation. But it is the productive capacity created by Capitalism that makes possible a new society free of exploitation. As Engels pointed out long ago, the development of human productive forces alone make possible a state of society in which there are no longer class distinctions or anxiety over the means of subsistence for the individual. (Smith, 2001: 35)
Warner Bro's movie then offers us an interesting resolution to the misery produced by the free market and capitalism. This solution is giving the workers an equal say in the process. Only when they live together with Mr. Wonka and eat on the same table and of the same food do they become happy.
The Poor Man's Burden
(After Kipling)
Pile on the Poor Man's Burden—
Drive out the beastly breed;
Go bind his sons in exile
To serve your pride and greed;
To wait in heavy harness,
Upon your rich and grand;
The common working peoples,
The serfs of every land.
Pile on the Poor Man's Burden—
His patience will abide;
He'll veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride.
By pious cant and humbug
You'll show his pathway plain,
To work for another's profit
And suffer on in pain.
Pile on the Poor Man's Burden—
Your savage wars increase,
Give him his full of Famine,
Nor bid his sickness cease.
And when your goal is nearest
Your glory's dearly bought,
For the Poor Man in his fury,
May bring your pride to naught.
Pile on the Poor Man's Burden—
Your Monopolistic rings
Shall crush the serf and sweeper
Like iron rule of kings.
Your joys he shall not enter,
Nor pleasant roads shall tread;
He'll make them with his living,
And mar them with his dead.
Pile on the Poor Man's Burden—
The day of reckoning's near—
He will call aloud on Freedom,
And Freedom's God shall hear.
He will try you in the balance;
He will deal out justice true:
For the Poor Man with his burden
Weighs more with God than you.
Lift off the Poor Man's Burden—
My Country, grand and great—
The Orient has no treasures
To buy a Christian state,
Our souls brook not oppression;
Our needs—if read aright—
Call not for wide possession.
But Freedom's sacred light.
References
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Parenti, Michael. 1997.Blackshirts and Reds, Chapters 6 & 7.
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