unfreeradical @ unfreeradical @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Charity as a concept is only meaningful against systems that produce an original condition of deprivation.

Everyone has always cared for others, and been cared for by others, whether the name given to such practices is mutual aid, or any other.

Under late modernity, abstract systems deeply permeate and constrain every facet of our lives, our action and our agency, and in large part even our capacities for thinking. Those who are not compatible, as atomized individuals, with such systems, are labeled as problematic, and considered as the ones specifically needing care.

No society has ever comprised "individuals" who "provide for themselves".

Production, distribution, and consumption of resources and assets are social processes occurring within social systems.

I suggest you learn about a broader variety of historical societies, in order to help overcome the limitations of relying so directly on experience that is immediate and personal.

Work or die is a consequences of social systems. It is not a universal condition within human history.

A more dominant feature throughout history has been mutual protection and mutual aid, everyone in a group supporting the survival of everyone in the group.

The union already is seeking a compromise. Seeking compromise is what unions have always done.

Thirty two hours, forty hours, one wage or another wage, are all inventions, arbitrary choices, set by capital and at best also influenced by the power of labor to force some compromise.

If workers got from bosses what we really want, then bosses would not exist. They serve no function for workers. They are parasites, who deprive workers from realizing the full value of our labor.

Organize.

Full time work being thirty two hours each week would be a compromise.

The defining principle of the systems under which we live is work or die.

No conditions under such a system would be ideal, and any would be a compromise.

Considering all the years that have passed since the Haymarket massacre, and all that has been sacrificed, fighting for thirty two hours is hardly radical or outrageous.

To work 3.5 days each week is meaningless.

To work half a day is meaningless.

The length of the working day is entirely arbitrary.

Many responses seem to be targeting semantics more than intention.

Exploitation is simply a term chosen to describe a kind of relationship that has appeared on our current economic systems.

You are free to use the same word in other contexts, but your objection is not particularly meaningful in juxtaposition to your previous ones, and your complaints are obviously more directly motivated for obfuscation than by sincerity.

Socialists understand exploitation as the relationship by which one societal class, called owners, claims as profit value generated by the labor provided by another class, called workers.

Such kind of relationship is particular to historical periods, and is not universal or inevitable within any human society generally.

Socialists have found class analysis to be the most broadly useful framework to understand social systems.

Capitalism produces fragmentation and alienation that obstruct broader solidarity.

It is confusing, though, to give such an objection, because the post is not advocating against eliminating bosses.

Who would guess that by the end of the Merkel Chancellorship, unions would emerge weak?

She was always going on about the need to build strength for the working class, and to protect welfare and wages by fighting against the austerity narrative propagated by elites.

She was a true friend to workers.

The oligarchs is a common name for the exploiter class.

Exactly. The game of Monopoly was designed without anyone realizing that an actual economic system would develop that follows its rules so faithfully.

Oligarchs are the exploiters. Exploitation is the theft by oligarchs.

It's how your original comment and the clarification both read for me. Advancing past the status quo of oligarchs exploiting workers is what you have seemed to me as rejecting as impossible.

I think he may be "personally doing what he believes is right". Only, I feel doubtful that such a characterization has any significance for future events. POTUS may be more powerful than others, but his power, like all power, comes from within a system of power. Development of the broader structure with the overall system seems to me far more interesting and relevant than what Biden believes is right.

What do you think it means, though, for Biden to be genuine?

Capital consistently uses all its muscle to press political leaders to strengthen corporations and to repress workers. F. Roosevelt is often credited with building the welfare state in the US, but did so only once labor had become strong enough that he and other capitalists feared a revolution. Later, the dismantling of welfare and unions occurred in tandem. For politicians to apply their power in favor of workers, we must have the power to press them even more strongly than capital.

Is it really possible that Biden can help achieve worker objectives impelled merely by his own personal conviction?

Of course I disagree that deposing the oligarchs is impossible.

At any rate, everything ends eventually.

Some things can’t be advance beyond the status quo, for example the existence of exploitation.

You are expressing doomerism.