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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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No, we are workers exploited by capitalists.
Unless you are not selling your labour and instead living on the profit derived from the workers, you are not a capitalist.
It's a very simple system laid out in Das Kapital and still taught in economics today (at least in the UK):
Aristocrats - people with wealth by virtue of controlling land
Capitalists - people who have wealth by virtue of having wealth (i.e. they can invest/speculate)
Worker (or Proletariat) - people who have to sell their labour to capitalists or aristocrats to survive
Lumpenproletariat - an underclass that has fallen out of society and resort to the black or grey market to survive
To follow up, let's talk about the names of the system!
Absolute Monarchy: a system where an individual has absolute control of the means of production (often, though not always, via birth).
Feudalism: a system where the a wider, though still small, group of people, control the means of production based on land ownership (often, though not always, through an aristocratic class) (fun fact: the Magna Carta changed England from an absolute monarchy to a feudal state, it did not create any kind of democracy, as the myth often goes).
Capitalism: a system where those with money (i.e. capital) control the means of production. We are here.
Socialism: used interchangeably by both Marx and Lenin with communism (Lenin specifically states the "socialist" in USSR was aspirational, not literal). However, has now come to denote the "transition" period from Capitalism to communism where the workers control the means of production via what Lenin called a "vanguard party" or worker-controlled legislature
Communism: where the means of production are no longer controlled at all with no class divide, legislature, or private property (note: personal and private property are two different things; no one wants your toothbrush) based on the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
I just want to reach the dizzying heights of the proletariat.