Wage slavery. The US is one of the worst offenders. By binding your healthcare to your employer and having next to no worker protection laws, the loss of your job might cause homelessness or death. Is that really a choice? Work or die? And with stagnating wages who has the financial security and time to fight for their rights?
This is of course by design.
Slavery evolved and took on new names, but never disappeared.
How much do you have saved up, that you’re willing to tap into so that you can live for yourself and others, and not a paycheck? How long could you just exist before the debt becomes crushing? That’s the length of your leash.
Retired people who live comfortably are basically ‘off leash’ but still confined to the yard. Some people have a 1-2 week ‘leash’. Some may have saved up enough to have a 6-12 month 'leash The rest are the ‘i could stop working whenever I want, but refuse to’ or ‘man I’m so fucking far in debt that I’ll never be able to stop fucking working’
Most people will never be able to stop working because I’m a slave based economy, a slave must earn it’s food every day, and it’s bed every night.
“It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread.”
Asterix did a great bit on that. Slaves are freed and put to work for money, but suddenly they owe for food, housing, clothing, infrastructure etc. and are just as much slaves as before. In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don’t have to worry anymore.
In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don’t have to worry anymore.
This last bit is Neo-Confederate propaganda. The “slaves were happy to be slaves” myth is wildly apocryphal.
Far more often, the freedmen leave their plantation economies in pursuit of more lucrative work in more industrial and urban regions. Harlem, New York and Detroit, Michigan are testament to the exodus of American colored people northward following the war. Or they strike out to undeveloped territories and form their own municipalities. Large black communities popped up across the Southwest and West coast, as the post-Civil War frontier was subjected to industrial scale genocide of native peoples.
The consequence of this mass migration is a labor shortage at home. One which can only be resolved by (a) raising wages / living standards until people want to stay or (b) re-enslaving the population through other means. In the case of the US South, these “other means” were the Jim Crow laws, which transformed the private plantation economy into a publicly managed (and privately profitable) state prison economy.
Following the end of Reconstruction under Rutherford B. Hayes, southern state governments imposed a suite of laws forbidding “vagrancy” and constricting the right of colored people to travel unattended. Independent communities of black citizens were raided and demolished (The Wilmington Massacre of 1898, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 being two notable examples - really all of Red Summer being a major historical turning point for American race relations). Enormous prison compounds were constructed. And the incarceration rate among people of color skyrocketed.
The campaign to re-enslave the colored population was a central position of the “Dixiecrats” straight into the LBJ administration. And capturing these revanchists was pivotal to the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, even as the taste for segregation soured nationally on the American tongue. All of this was covered up and expunged from US History, following the 1980s Reagan Revolution and the reactionary efforts to undo the Civil Rights Movement. So it’s very easy to never know the long dark winter of civil rights in post-Civil War American history.
But “slaves were actually happier to be on the plantation” is textbook Coolidge Era white nationalist revisionism.
That’s all well and good, but Asterix is a satirical comic book making a point about wage slavery, not happy slaves. The author is French, the story in France, and the slaves are Roman.
And I might have imagined the re-enslaving, too. I can’t find it in plot summaries. Maybe it’s in the movie adaptation, but the scene of their “freeing” is pretty clear about its point.
Yeah. Marx called it formal vs. real freedom. All the people are free to sleep under the bridges or at a five star penthouse. But some are forced to sleep under the bridge and only a few have means to exercise the freedom to enter the penthouse.
Marx misses the point of equality and conflates it with equity. In the ideal u have the freedom to work hard get well educated and make a shitonne of money then have the freedom that grants. Or u can choose to be lazy and not do any of that. It’s your choice.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation.
It is entirely within your choice to live under a bridge. And if unit truly isn’t then it was ur genetics that denied you the possibility to do better at which point we have to start talking about Charles Darwin.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation
[Citation Needed]
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can’t get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn’t work hard enough.
It’s why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He’s a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn’t even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can’t be overcome by any amount of gumption. (And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?)
[Citation Needed]
My experience and all the people I’ve spoken to throughout my life. Not 1 single person in a shut scenario didn’t have options to negate or escape said scenario.
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can’t get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn’t work hard enough.
Or they weren’t smart enough. Or they where not fit (in the Darwinian sense) enough to get out of it.
It’s why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He’s a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn’t even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
That’s an excellent strawman. He went from a middle class situation (similar to thousands of people of people myself included) to the worlds richest man. He was not handed everything he has on a platter. He admittedly started with more than most but he still did infinitely better than anyone else born to similar level of advantage.
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can’t be overcome by any amount of gumption.
Their absolutely are structural obstacles just that these obstacles are infinitely less than previous. I mean by your logic we claim claim that the dictatorial control of Iran by the iatola is a structural obstacle and justify trumps actions in Iran hell we can justify the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan or go a step further and justify Hitlers actions as he confiscating property from an entire class of people and redistributed to those with less this still counts as removing structural obstacles regardless of the morality of such actions. Blind adherence to your argument takes us to a very dark place very quickly.
And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?
I want u to go to south Africa on Google street view and scroll back through time just looking at the streets and what u see. Then I want u to think about why the changes ur witnessing have happened and what changed into the period of time for which these changes happened (demographic changes might be a good indicator).
My experience and all the people I’ve spoken to throughout my life.
That only shows that SOME of the people who somehow relates to you, have options.
Have you ever wondered why they don’t take those options? You might have missed something that prevents them.
Or maybe better: Have you wondered about the people further away from you? I can guarantee you, millions of people literally don’t have any good options. If you haven’t met any, that only means you have met any.
I’ve met many people of many different nations of many different levels of wealth and success. Every single one of them in a shit scenario got their by choices they made.
Why don’t I take those options? Cos I can read the statistics on everyone before me, I paid attention in school, I realised that drugs, debt, gambling, criminal behaviour etc don’t improve my life. I chose an education path and career that make it impossible for me to end up a brokie loser
Lots of people don’t have access to any of the information sources you had, or the ability to take any of the options you did.
You had plenty of good options, and you chose from those. Some people only have bad options. They pick bad options, because that’s all they have.
Almost every single person on this planet has internet access and that can teach u literally anything. And please explain when doing crack is the best of a set of bad options?
Bro we live in the world where the 50% of the richest families gained their wealth through inheritance. They represent like .000001% of humanity and control half the world’s wealth.
There’s no working hard and getting rich. Maybe you were born rich in CA and went in college early enough to get in on the tech wave.
The Facebook dev didn’t work harder than a farm laborer. They were born into privilege and got lucky and landed in one of the few viable careers
I see ur disconnect here. Ur from the 3rd world nation known as the unites states I’m from Australia where we have actual equality. And no the Facebook dev didn’t work harder he worked smarter
The economy is designed to keep you locked into working for the rest of your life under stress. Freedom is only given to capitalists because that’s how the system is designed.
One loophole is stealing.
I sold drugs, that was real freedom.
I will also dissent on this. I’ve been homeless. I’ve lived in a rural subsistence community in West Africa where everyone lived on $1 a day. Material items and money do not define freedom.
Your premise is based on a wealthy materialist American mindset. Billions of people, every day, grind just to survive, and yet can still find joy in their lives. A lot of times that’s through basic human connection. Visit any of the poorest places on the planet, and it doesn’t take much to get people to stop and take notice and smile. To experience joy. Joy is free. Freedom is the ability to have your own emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
Before you get all up about someone keeping them down to prevent some Marxist paradise, please keep in mind that rain-fed agriculture is a gamble many people play with their lives every day. A large, large number of humans grind against the weather. Not as slaves to anyone else.
And, rest assured, there are wealthy people who are miserable and wear “golden handcuffs” because they are stuck doing something they don’t love to maintain an above-average standard of living. Fuck - how many of those stupid Housewives shows are there, filled to overflowing with wealthy people showing you in grotesque detail how money and material trap people in pain and emotional suffering, exploited like an emaciated lion in a zoo.
What can YOU do for free to enjoy your freedom? Here’s a fun one, go dumpster diving! You’ll find cool shit! Some of it you can sell - that’s free money, my guy! You can forage for herbs and food, that’s always fun once you know what to look for. Oh, you can make hooch from the stuff you find! You can plant the seeds of rotten tomatoes and start a garden. Go with a friend and you might just enjoy yourself. Or go volunteer at a place that feeds the homeless and talk to the people there and get an idea of how much freedom some of them have exactly because they have changed their mindset. Freedom doesn’t mean acceptance by society. It’s not 1:1 that you are free and loved or free and appreciated, or free and wealthy or free and even fucking smart. But you can taste freedom and realize that only you can bestow it on yourself.
You and you alone own your actions, thoughts and words. What are you doing with them?
I understand that believing these things may have helped you cope psychologically with the stress of being homeless, but that doesn’t make them any less fucking stupid
Do you need Marxism to be the only answer?
I’ve never been called stupid for being homeless as a child before.
You haven’t been called stupid for being homeless as a child yet. My previous comment called the rationalizations you used to make yourself feel better about your circumstances as a child stupid. Right now I’m calling you stupid for continuing to cling to them as an adult, and for your poor reading comprehension which is also probably to blame for your lack of enthusiasm for Marx.
It’s great that you found a way to be happy in the situation you were in. Personally, I wouldn’t have been. All the time I don’t have to spend worrying about whether I can feed my kids, or give them a roof over their heads, or worrying about them getting sick and me not being able to afford treatment, I use for things that enrich my life. I spend it with friends and family, I read books, every now and then I travel to a place I haven’t been to before.
If you consider wanting to feed your kids and spend time with family materialistic, fine. But some folks need such shallow materialistic things to be happy. I’m one of them.
That’s 100% not what anyone considers materialistic.
Obviously, feed your children. Feed yourself. That’s not materialism, that’s surviving. I’m not talking about starving as some moral high ground.
I’m talking about people who stress about not going to brunch or having the latest whatever BS phone. That is materialism.
Welcome to the resistance, comrade
Lenin/Stalin/Mao or real communism?
Try harder
What real communism would you point to? Castro? Ho? Kim?
If the only communism you believe in is imaginary, perhaps you have a problem with reality.
There has never been a successful large scale communism in history.
Maybe sweden in the seventies comes closest.
What do you mean with “try harder”?
Sweden is does not come close, no.
Try harder means do more work. What is communism?
Engels wrote:
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
In this way, Communism is the theory and the practice of bringing about conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. In this way, all communism is successful in so far as it improves the conditions of proletariat against their oppressors and fails in so far as they stop doing that.
The USSR, therefore, was wildly successful and large scale. It ended serfdom entirely. It defeated the Nazis. It ended the centuries-long 4-7 year cycle of famine. It created the second-best-fed society in the world. And then it failed. It fell to revisionism, elevating a liberal class of would be property owners. It created the conditions for the oligarchs, and then it dismantled itself in favor of liberal capitalism and private enrichment.
China, therefore, is wildly successful and large scale. It has so far lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty. Grandmothers alive today in China saw their lives go from rice farming at a dollar a month to driving electric cars that respond to hand signals. They ended the centuries-long 2-4 year famine cycle. The ended the serf system. They have developed industrial capacity to such a degree that their massive country has a domestic purchasing power for its citizens equivalent to the greatest empire in the world, with far less inequality
Vietnam, therefore, is wildly successful. It fought against its colonizers (the French) and then successfully fought off the greatest military in the history of the world. Then it rebuilt its destroyed country and fed its people.
North Korea, therefore, is wildly successful. After the world’s most powerful military destroyed everything in their country, every single structure, poisoned their land, and made them all to live in caves to avoid the constant napalm strafing, they worked together and rebuilt everything by hand without any ability to trade with the rest of the world except an impoverished China and revisionist USSR. They not only developed a modern agricultural base, electrical grid, technology sector, urban density, education system, and healthcare system, they also developed a strong enough military to deter further attacks on their people by Western oppressors.
Cuba, therefore, is wildly successful. Despite 60 years of embargo, Cuba still has higher literacy, higher life expectancy, greater democratic participation, and stronger community support than the richest empire on the planet. Cuba developed healthcare for its citizens to such a degree that they have a surplus of doctors who can help other nations. They developed a COVID vaccine on the same timeline as the US did without having to spend $4B as an incentive. They invented a vaccine for lung cancer and they give of their life saving openly and freely to liberate their people and others from the oppression of the wealthy who demand profit for health. Americans can’t even get access to the lung cancer vaccine because of the embargo. Cuba ended the racial apartheid of the capitalist regime, liberating all people to participate in their own governance.
Perhaps you’ve got another definition for communism?
Yup. I remember a friend and I discussing various forms of freedoms: Freedom of speech, religion, privacy, etc. We tried to rank them by importance, and while I cannot remember our conclusions, I remember “Economic freedom” to be among the most important ones.
A person should have disposable income and freedom to spent it how they want.
i like to think it’s not “disposable” income that is spent on things required for life, hunger, house, health. those things should be provided. and those industries not allowed to profit. and be owned by the workers.
