In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best-paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours daily toil? - Peter Kropotkin (1892)

  • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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    8 days ago

    I think it’s important to frame this kind of argument very carefully. There is a misconception that communists and socialists just don’t want to work and want a free ride.

    Communists, socialists, and anarchists are fine with work. They are not fine with exploitation. Work is not necessarily exploitive. Work should be rewarded and incentivized.

    But, in a civilized society, your ability to merely survive should not be dependent on your ability or willingness to work. That doesn’t mean that the quality of life of someone who chooses not to work should be the same as someone who chooses to work. It only means that choosing not to work should not be a death sentence.

    How any particular society may choose to implement such a system of non-exploitative, minimally coercive work may vary. But the main point is giving people more control over their work, their working conditions, and their lives generally.

    “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” still applies. You’re just more likely to also get the things you want if you do valuable labor.

    Edit: another point. I’d argue that leftists are MORE okay with work than capitalism enjoyers because they do not want people to be paid for simply owning things and not doing labor. The goal of capitalism - how to win capitalism - is to just own things and exploit others’ labor, not to work. How to win Socialism is doing the job you enjoy/are best at/are most willing to do for the reward offered - that’s it. Simple as.

    • Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip
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      8 days ago

      Shit if I could not work and live in a barely kept together apartment or trailer home eating only bread and drinking tap water, I’d be happy af. Work does nothing but depress me and my therapist hasn’t been able to help with that.

      • Juice@midwest.social
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        7 days ago

        First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.

        – Marx

        The thing is, you do work at home. You spend time maintaining your life, buying groceries, you spend time thinking thoughts that turn into actions, you make things, you learn, you educate. But that stuff isn’t defined as work. The only thing capitalist defines as work is working for the capitalist. But even then much work that you do so you can make profit for them, like commuting, buying work clothes, fixing your car, is also working for the capitalist. But its unpaid.

        Additionally, your working day then has a dual character also. Part of your day, usually the smaller part, you work to regenerate the money that the capitalist pays you, but the rest of the day you are working solely for the capitalists profit. It appears as if you’re paid for every hour, but you actually make your wages back in only the first couple hours of your work.

        You are alienated from your work, from the value of it, and from the excess. So may not be that you don’t like work, you may just see that there’s no actual point to it, you’re naturally in tune with the facts of your exploitation, and your spirit resists it. You’re not wrong for hating your own exploitation, in fact, the historical movements that created wage labor brutally destroyed all other forms of self sustainance.

        Another thing about our system, is that a certain percentage of the population has to be unemployed in order to keep wages low, and we produce about 3x more than what we need to sustain everyone on the planet with a high cost of living. Socialism would abolish the 40 hour work week. You could work part time for the benefit of society and the rest of that time would be yours to pursue your own happiness and self actualization rather than just recharging your battery just enough to be exploited for the next day.

        I like in the Marx passage how he calls it the labor of mortification. In Marx’s roundabout way of writing, he’s saying that wage labor is death

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        7 days ago

        You wouldn’t be happy as fuck for long. Eventually you’d get bored enough that you’d start doing something. Doing something is work.

        • That’s kind of the point though, when left go their own devices people generally choose to work, its just that when their base needs are met they will tend to work that brings them joy first instead of pay.

          • Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            Yeah I’d most likely engage more with my hobbies, but nobody is paying me to go on walks or write some awful reviews of movies and videogames. They instead pay me to pump air into cow carcaases for 8.5 hours in a 30-35 degree room. Something that leaves me exhausted and basically no time to do things that make me not want to blow my brains out unless my epileptic ass wants to start depriving myself of sleep.

        • Juice@midwest.social
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          7 days ago

          Our system is so wasteful that we pproduce about 3x more than what we would need in order for every person on earth to have a “middle class” first world lifestyle. The system is even incredibly wasteful beyond that and throws away most produce, because it isn’t profitable to sell, it ends up in a landfill.

          Check out this blog by anthropologist and degrowth luminary, Jackson Hickel https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/27/degrowth-a-call-for-radical-abundance

        • Zombie@feddit.uk
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          7 days ago

          That “lifestyle” of near poverty.

          I think you’re missing OP’s point. Those basics of shelter and food can easily be covered by society, in the modern age, with our understanding of science allowing agriculture to be a piece of piss now-a-days compared with how it used to be. We have machines that can do the labour of hundreds, thousands, of people. We have computers that allow for the tracking of a million and one data points.

          Yes, people would have to work to provide someone with bread and water. But it’s such a minimal amount of work in the grand scheme of things, that why should we really care? Those that work will live better lifestyles, will reap greater rewards. But why should those that don’t work be left to starve and die when for such a tiny percentage of society’s expenditure they can have their basic needs covered?

          Perhaps, after a year of not working and recovering from the rat race, they may even see the value in working again. If it benefits their community, instead of having to work 40+ hours a week just to cover their basic requirements. Work can, and should, be far more flexible than it currently is. If our basic necessities are met then that allows for flexibility, it allows for labour to adapt as society’s needs change over time.

          It prevents exploitation, as you no longer need to work but want to work to improve your situation or that of your community.

          • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            But the neccecities of life, the work of doctors, farmers, electricians is all work. Things people have to dedicate their lives to. To recieve the fruits of that work, the common person needs to work in their own way. Doctors dont want to work every day of their carreer. Plently of neccecary jobs are worked by people who never would want to do it, even once. To ask for their time and effort while giving nothing of your own is entitled.

            • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              Lol. Patient variant: once again, yes, all of it is also work. No, to do that one does not have to dedicate their whole lives to it. No, asking a miniscule of collective time and effort is not entitled

              Normal variant: dude(ss), you seriously gonna complain about minimally covering survival of some folk while having families with wealth enough for several generations to live fucking awesome without any need to work a second in their life? Are you nuts or something?

              • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                Im not saying its perfect. But all people that can work should work, without exception and it should be a requirement for housing, food and medical care.

                • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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                  7 days ago

                  Bullshit. If I can provide for someone without them needing to do a thing, I am fine with it. If I ever get a say in how things are done, never will I agree to what you propose

                • Zombie@feddit.uk
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                  7 days ago

                  So you wish for indentured servitude? Sisyphean toil? Slavery? For the masses. What a prick.

    • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      IMO this is giving too much credit to the bad faith argument. Anyone saying “oh you lazy socialist you just don’t want to work” is either incredibly ignorant, or more likely deliberately trolling.

      • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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        8 days ago

        It isn’t usually bad faith imo. They just genuinely can’t conceive of a world with a less coercive system of work. I’d say it is incredibly ignorant. It’s hard even for leftists to envision the specifics of such a system - why would it be any easier for people who’ve never even considered an alternative? So they just think, naively, that without the threat of systemic violence jobs wouldn’t get done