Work Sucks!

[Havet]

Newest video by TheLeftLibertarian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ArkJmUOIqM

Talks about worker alienation in the current society and taylorism.

Discuss

[IcarusAngel]

It isn't fun to have your work and time stolen by people who have no legitimate claim to the "property" they hold. It isn't fun to be forced into certain industries, and have your wages stolen through surplus value. One of the few groups with actual control of their work are scientists, largely because it is a state supported industry. They get to research what they want. Of course this is one of the most (intellectually) difficult areas to get into for the working class, who don't have privileges. Even becoming a professor of business takes a lot of time + money. Another way to violate the principles of capitalism and free-markets is by dumpster diving, the freegan movement, maybe even Buddhist movements, but this route isn't considered "lucrative" by most of the working class.

Proudhon predicted that great collapses of civilization come from the errors of propertied men, and the working class is starting to see that incompetence from the capitalists. This has set the Libertarian movement back years, which is the only thing thing that keeps me interested in politics.

[Havet]

Nobody claimed it was fun.

Anyone else has more thoughts on this?

[IcarusAngel]

No, it could be fun though. Your ideology, free-markets and self-ownership, creates a situation in which people are only free to "sell" their labor to one company or another, without any bargining power whatsoever. The funny thing is that free-markets due also rely heavily on public decision making, since the state ultimately creates the conditions under which the market operates, except that it leaves the entrenched interests with absolute power. Thus the state will always play a role in free-market dictatorships.

There is nothing new about this analysis and it is very similar to Marx, although it borrows from a lot of modern social science theory. You'd know this if you had some knowledge of politics.

[Havet]

So, anybody else has more thoughts to add to the video or what?

[Bud Struggle]

In my daily work nothing ever is the same. No day is like another. Everyday comes with new challenges, new problems, new decisions, new people. It's extremely draining. Everytime the phone rings or I open an e-mail something new and challenging is going on. There are times I long for a simple repetitive job that I could do without thinking, without going somewhere, without meeting new people or doing new things.

I'm not saying the video is wrong, actually it is quite on target, it just would be nice to work without thinking for a while.

One of the reasons I spend so much time here is that I use it as a kind of sorbet between the courses of my daily work.

Sigh. :closedeyes:

[IcarusAngel]

No day is the same for a doctor or a programmer either, but they are still in the same "wage slavery" scenario as Marx noted. Other forces largely out of their own control direct them in their daily lives to the point where they are not practicing medicine the way they want to be, or should be. That's why doctors are one of the groups most likely to favor real reform of health care.

The point is work under capitalist systems is exploitative. The state has helped to ameliorate the problem to great degree by helping to create the middle-class, by creating the Small Business Association (keep in mind that many franchisees of large corporate entities are considered small business, which skewers statistics on this), and by funding several industries so the research is public and so there are small businesses. Sometimes patents and other laws work in favor of small business as well. And if there were more CEOs of large corporations, while that's good for the capitalist, it's bad for the worker.

Pure free-markets has created a condition like what is described in the video, during the gilded age and also in many Latin American countris. This is perhaps why they directly attack capital. The problem is that these states can also slip into fascism, which advanced social democracies do not do.

People basically want to have a regulaged free-market, or they want to eliminate it. I say it should be eliminated and we should move to communism, but I understand the arguments for keeping social democracy around, namely stability, but we are seeing the collapse of even social demcoracies due to too much in the hands of corporations even with all of the regulations.

[Bud Struggle]

No day is the same for a doctor or a programmer either, but they are still in the same "wage slavery" scenario as Marx noted.

But I "own" the place. It's my factory. In a way I'm a wage slave like anyone else. (Of course, in a very dramatic way, I'm not.)

[Dr Mindbender]

Excellent video, i'd say i agree with pretty much everything it says.

[Raúl Duke]

Sometimes work depends on where...

Right now, the job I might be getting is probably shittier then the previous one.
In my previous job my boss was a friend of my mother (and this is a reason why I got the job) and everyone was nice and in a sense the workplace had a somewhat laid-back attitude as people went about doing their tasks.

[The Red Next Door]

Do what my co-op teacher told me, choose a job that make you happy.