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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Antiwork
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
The new place for c/antiwork@lemmy.fmhy.ml
This server is no longer working, and we had to move.
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Date Created: June 21, 2023
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The Anti-Work Library 📚
Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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Personally, I'm not a big fan of the "surplus value == theft" argument. At least not in every case.
The reason is that simply by being in the context of your employment, you can work more efficiently and produce more value than you could on your own. If your wage is between your 'potential solo value' and your 'current value', then the profit comes from the fact that you're working in the context that your employer has provided.
This isn't to say I'm against workers getting the full profit, but it's not as bad as some people say it is.
That falls apart a bit when you consider that Capital, ie the tools and materials used to create Value by labor, is itself a combination of labor and natural resources. The context you speak of was not created by a Capitalist owning said tools, the act of arranging and managing labor is of course itself also labor, but that labor is not derived from Ownership, nor does said ownership provide labor nor value. It's separate.
Your employer provides nothing that isn't earned by the value of the labor of its employees
False, they front the non-labor costs.
The non-labor costs are still labor. A hammer is labor, wood, and metal, and imparts a portion of its embodied value onto that which is assists in creating.
Ownership does not provide value. Management does, it creates Value via labor, but ownership is not required for management, nor does management justify ownership.
...with capital they or their ancestors made off the backs of labor.
Great pretzel logic you've got going there.
True, but what would the employees' labour be worth without the context of employment?
As an example of what I mean, I have a hobby similar to what I do for work (hobby: game dev, work: software dev), I can say for a fact that I am more productive at work. I can specialize more at work, can get second opinions, and I get free, realistic testing.
Still not saying wage labour is always good, just that there are cases where it's not that bad. There are other things we should pick to be mad at.
All of those can exist without an employer skimming from the top, also none of it is free, as op mentioned in their previous comment - it's all been paid for with money you made for them.
Show me where that has worked?
Many places. A good, quick example is a Worker Co-op, which is more stable, with higher rates of employee satisfaction, than Capitalist businesses. FOSS is another example, the site you're using is a rejection of Capitalism, which ruined Reddit with ads and horribly unpopular yet uncontestable changes like the API bullshit.
A Worker coop is in fact a Capitalist business. They produce goods sold for a profit to return that as wages. FOSS only exists because the folks coding it are sharing what they made for their own benefit and only able to do so as they are otherwise gainfully employed. Thus Capitalism is the engine which allows FOSS to exist. Well done disproving your theory. That is indeed the first step to discovery.
This might be a bit of a shock to you, but none of what you said is correct.
The definition of Capitalism is not selling goods for profits to pay wages. Capitalism specifically requires Capitalists. If, like a Worker Co-op, the Workers equally share ownership of the Means of Production, it is not Capitalism and in fact becomes closer to Market Socialism, or even Syndicalism.
Worker Co-operatives can compete with Capitalist businesses in a market, absolutely, but that doesn't make the entity itself Capitalist.
Secondly, FOSS exists regardless of the employment status of those who contribute. FOSS can exist based on donations, a student hobbyist, someone who relies on their spouse, or so forth. To attribute FOSS to Capitalism is like attributing the Civil Rights movement to the KKK, because the KKK allowed for the horribly racist conditions that forced black Americans to March for justice.
You have done nothing to disprove anything, except perhaps the myth that you may know what you were talking about.
Sorry, been in a Farmer coop. We were 100% Capitalist and profit based. Sold our production with the intent of making a profit. You are simply ill-informed as to the definitions of the terms you toss about. I also have provided Code for FOSS projects which I only could do as a result of being gainfully employed.
Your fantasy is based upon nothing more than your naivete.
Capitalism isn't about selling for profit, precisely none of what you said contradicts it being Socialist.
Capitalism vs Socialism is about who owns the tools. If you were in a co-op with equal ownership among all of the workers, then you were in a Socialist entity, regardless of it being done for profit or otherwise.
Your contributions to a Socialist project while employed at a Capitalist institution does not make the project not Socialist.
Pray tell, what do you think Socialism and Capitalism are? You aren't using common definitions in the slightest.
Socialism is workers owning the means of production, which only exist to be owned by them if they were first built which won't happen at any scale under Socialism since it shall be a shit show of "I get mine now and you get the next one which never gets made". How many 3d printers you think are going to get made when it takes hundreds of man hours to make one and the majority of the folks working on it get nothing for their time?
And, yup, a farming coop is a Socialist structure operating a Capitalist venture. Works fine for such things at small scale manual production but instantly falls apart when you start needing to transport it. The freight company needs gasoline and doesn't have the storage for your grain you want to trade in return for them shipping it to the tractor manufacturer.
Oh, I know, next you'll say that you still have money or some other legal tender to represent the goods such that you don't have to ship them to the folks making the tractor. So you'll need to have banks to come in to handle the "trade slips" or whatever you call it to avoid calling it money. And you now have to have a Gov. to assure the banks don't cheat everyone...
Guess what? That is how we got money and Capitalism in the first place. Oops, you've simply made Capitalism with more less efficient steps. Your "common definitions"(not in use by anyone any where) leave a lot of reality and history out of the consideration.
Wow. Only the first phrase of your first sentence was correct. Why do you think people would get nothing for their time? Worker co-ops are examples of Socialism, by your very own definition.
Capitalism isn't banks and money, lmao. Capitalism is exclusively the economic model by which capital Owners pay non-owner workers wages to create commodities for sale, ie individual ownership of Capital instead of Worker Ownership.
The very fact that you have no clue what you're actually talking about and keep spouting whatever pops into your head means you should probably reevaluate your positions and familiarize yourself with leftist theory before you pretend to know what leftists actually advocate for.
Bullcrap. A worker co-op can easily exist outside a capitalist context.
Idk why but it seems devs are incapable of comprehending theory.
Employment isn't created by Capitalistic ownership, but via management of Capital and labor. Management is labor, and thus creates Value, but ownership does not.
Put another way: if you can replace a Capitalist owner with a worker-elected manager that owns the exact same amount of shares as every other worker, and is thus democratically accountable, and the value created is the same, then we can see that ownership itself does not create nor add value.
It therefore follows that you can specialize, get second opinions, and get free, realistic testing, with a worker-elected manager or a co-op structure.
Is any of this rubbing you the wrong way, or unclear?
Sooo... more value that can be stolen by capitalists?
FTFY.
Your argument against "“surplus value = theft” is about as shit as it gets.
The only reason you can pretend that certain aspects of capitalism is "not as bad as some people say it is" is because of the fact that organized labor have spilt a lot of their own blood fighting to get it to the point of being "not as bad as some people say it is."