when no one works, this person will not have blue jeans, shoes, socks, shampoo, toothbrush, underwear, shirt, soap, domicile, clean hygienic food, sanitary conditions, assisted travel… electricity for their internet points - just for starters.
Sure, when noone is forced into wage slavery, everyone will just waste away and do and produce nothing. That’s why we all died out before humanity discovered various forms of servitude.
‘Enslave me?’ you wonder. ‘Why, I am a free citizen!’
Are you free, really? Free to do what? To live as you please? To do what you please?
Let’s see. How do you live? What does your freedom amount to?
You depend on your employer for your wages or your salary, don’t you? And your wages determine your way of living, don’t they? The conditions of your life, even what you eat and drink, where you go and with whom you associate, — all of it depends on your wages.
No, you are not a free man. You are dependent on your employer and on your wages. You are really a wage slave.
The whole working class, under the capitalist system, is dependent on the capitalist class. The workers are wage slaves.
So, what becomes of your freedom? What can you do with it? Can you do more with it than your wages permit?
Can’t you see that your wage — your salary or income — is all the freedom that you have? Your freedom, your liberty, don’t go a step further than the wages you get.
The freedom that is given you on paper, that is written down in law books and constitutions, does not do you a bit of good. Such freedom only means that you have the right to do a certain thing. But it doesn’t mean that you can do it. To be able to do it, you must have the chance, the opportunity. You have a right to eat three fine meals a day, but if you haven’t the means, the opportunity to get those meals, then what good is that right to you?
So freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, than it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.
You see, then, that the whole situation comes to this:
Capitalism robs you and makes a wage slave of you.
The law upholds and protects that robbery.
The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free.
In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life.
But how does it happen that you didn’t think of it before? How is it that most other people don’t see it, either?
It is because you and every one else are lied to about this all the time, from your earliest childhood.
You are told to be honest, while you are being robbed all your life.
You are commanded to respect the law, while the law protects the capitalist who is robbing you.
You are taught that killing is wrong, while the government hangs and electrocutes people and slaughters them in war.
You are told to obey the law and government, though law and government stand for robbery and murder.
Thus all through life you are lied to, fooled, and deceived, so that it will be easier to make profits out of you, to exploit you.
You seem to have absolutely no idea how many people just died away in those times. You need food and health care, nobody will just give that to you. It will be survival of the fittest again, much more extreme then what we have today.
You seem to assume that everybody will have enough of everything and we all live in happyness and joy, only doing what you love.
That’s of course BS. You will be fighting for your survival and chances are you’ll lose that fight. Only thanks to our civilization it is possible at all to sustain that many people.
This is a romantic view on that. In reality, ‘old’ meant 30 years old and then people died pretty soon. There were no real old people. And the very young also died left and right, that’s why women had to throw out one child after another just so the tribe wouldn’t go extinct.
The point is people died very frequently and in no way could we sustain the current population if we went back to those practices. Even if some people got older, a tribe needs a huge surplus of young people to survive. And everyone had to pull their weight one way or another. If people stopped working today, most would absolutely die off and that’s it. It is beyond me how some seem to think it would be some kind of paradise where everyone has everything they need. Delusional.
Thank you for summarising the mentality of capitalism and why one guy has a trillion dollars, a few others have billions and the rest are fighting for their survival as you describe.
You clearly have never have touched a plant. The amount of work required to farm and feed yourself in a single year is immensely labor intensive. That’s just one person. Try doing that with a family of just 3 or 4.
Well I guess it’s good that very few people would choose to do absolutely nothing if they could literally do anything instead of settling into something they don’t like at all just to survive.
when no one works, this person will not have blue jeans, shoes, socks, shampoo, toothbrush, underwear, shirt, soap, domicile, clean hygienic food, sanitary conditions, assisted travel… electricity for their internet points - just for starters.
Sure, when noone is forced into wage slavery, everyone will just waste away and do and produce nothing. That’s why we all died out before humanity discovered various forms of servitude.
You seem to use ‘slavery’ and ‘employment’ as interchangeable. These are separate concepts.
No, they are not. Not in most countries.
from Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 3: Law and Government. Available to read for free here.
You seem to have absolutely no idea how many people just died away in those times. You need food and health care, nobody will just give that to you. It will be survival of the fittest again, much more extreme then what we have today.
You seem to assume that everybody will have enough of everything and we all live in happyness and joy, only doing what you love.
That’s of course BS. You will be fighting for your survival and chances are you’ll lose that fight. Only thanks to our civilization it is possible at all to sustain that many people.
Tribes were found to actually take care of their old, unlike us.
Can confirm.
We also sent the mentally unwell ones who hoarded all the bananas into the forest alone…
This is a romantic view on that. In reality, ‘old’ meant 30 years old and then people died pretty soon. There were no real old people. And the very young also died left and right, that’s why women had to throw out one child after another just so the tribe wouldn’t go extinct.
That’s also not very accurate. Old = 30 is why there are many ways to measure.
6 kids dying before the age of 4 and one guy living to 60 means the average age is 30.
The point is people died very frequently and in no way could we sustain the current population if we went back to those practices. Even if some people got older, a tribe needs a huge surplus of young people to survive. And everyone had to pull their weight one way or another. If people stopped working today, most would absolutely die off and that’s it. It is beyond me how some seem to think it would be some kind of paradise where everyone has everything they need. Delusional.
You trust info from the same ones that enslave you?
Your username checks out buddy. I’m not enslaved btw.
You’re saying there is a giant glowing orb in the sky watching you all day, and you’re not allowed to look at it?
Thank you for summarising the mentality of capitalism and why one guy has a trillion dollars, a few others have billions and the rest are fighting for their survival as you describe.
Yeah, thanks for even more BS. Nothing I said is linked to capitalism, at all.
Enlighten us, how would it go in your mind. Why would you not just fucking die, who will provide for you and why.
It is still possible to gather and grow food and trade with others, even create luxury goods, without having what is considered a “job”.
It’s a really odd concept that you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the world and that you would immediately die without your job.
You clearly have never have touched a plant. The amount of work required to farm and feed yourself in a single year is immensely labor intensive. That’s just one person. Try doing that with a family of just 3 or 4.
Well I guess it’s good that very few people would choose to do absolutely nothing if they could literally do anything instead of settling into something they don’t like at all just to survive.