#labor in capitalism

[horizon-verizon]

You should ABSOLUTELY read Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay on anti-fantasy, “Why are Americans afraid of dragons ?”. It is such a brilliant and insightful piece.

https://w3.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/temp/waaaod.pdf

“They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.”

I remember reading this some time ago, maybe in a college class? Reread it, and yeah in the U.S., with capitalism but not only here, people (mostly & often men) derive their sense of being from their ability to make a profit from something and deny the fantastical, and it doesn't have to even be an activity to be worth something that will give you identity. Houses, stocks, other properties, anything you can objectify and sell, or make an object and sell. Let me say patriarchal capitalism, in fact.

And yeah, it has its roots in Puritanism, which while that religious group developed as an offshoot response to the Catholic Church's spiritual hegemony--and got their idea of "pleasure=sin" because it does not have a purpose (any sex that wasn't performed for reproduction was "sodomy")--did not even try to reincorporate pre-Catholic English rituals or fairytale creatures for fear of oneself showing that you were not part of the pre-birth assignments of salvation or damnation. The fear of showing that you were damned and for the Devil instead of losing oneself to being aware of their connection to God even in the moments of prayer themselves. Thus the perpetual searching for signs of God's favor or anger.

The Following is a Long Diatribe about American Masculinity (But Honestly, A Lot will cover Men of Various Patriarchies) So if You don't Care or Want to See This, OK

(And Before it's "Not All Men!", this is about the Nature of the Practicing Man and his Masculinity; if none of this has ever determined a man's psyche and sense of self, it should be no bother)

Even though this essay was written in 1974, much of it rings true, especially after thinking/watching others talk about that recent Twitter post about men resenting their girlfriends for not breaking up with them after they purposely try to get them to break up with them with emotionally abusive behavior AND discussing mental load in domestic labor. Basically, men do that to their partners because they:

do not want to be accountable for "ruining" a relationship and being the "bad" guy (feels very fundamentalist Christian and no-fault divorcy...Joe Jonas?)

and if they could "allow" a woman to lead forward & dictate their domestic actions they themselves would not have to engage in that labor while profiting off of that labor -> low effort, high reward

To be a man is to make money, or to control money, yes?

All the while, they will never be okay with actually being alone with their own thoughts because they cannot bash their partners or anyone who offers them affection and care to assuage the pain they are not able to nor willing to try to express to those around them...even other men for fear of being humiliated for showing "useless" and "girly" emotions because they cannot "control" and "use" said emotions or compulsions to propel them into an ideal state of "focus" (NoNut November) and stability that never lasts long and is thus frustrating. There is a compulsion to get into a vague mind-state of "stability", almost as if putting a halt to the busy-busy of necessary life, but simultaneously holding life by the reins and directing it to their own desires...which they ignore once they seem too "much", or complicated.

Instead of developing better critical thinking skills or how to empathize with others and communicate apart from how to dictate and dominate for the sake of "taking" rewards for little-as-possible labor, they may fantasize about mimicking some male celeb or embodying the image of this hypermasculine "winner" at capitalism, signaled through wealth. When together, they either ignore or scoff at thoughts that were not told to them (from childhood) on "how to be a man", which they take as the official moral and phenomenological guidebook on how to perform or think of certain tasks and how to perceive certain things. And in those same get-togethers, many just go along with what their male peers say about the world around them and parrot it more often than the reverse so they can reaffirm those things and that they are performing stoic masculinity well.

Add in family trauma from fathers themselves experiencing this and alienating themselves from families (abuse and neglect as in domestic violence or never coming around to see them and pick them up for visitation) and you have a very resentful man-child who wants to be an ideal and to finally justify his own reckless pursuit of being an ideal/ideal man. The recipe for that, to them, is also, to have a penis, and then bring others "in" sexually.

This goes into another reason why men get very resentful of their partners and women in general: in lieu of what they think is "doing a lot" of mental and physical labor, they believe all a woman needs to do to be financially or emotionally set is to get someone, i.e. a man, to take care of them financially. So to see women they call "golddiggers" receive gifts and money and things they actually want to have without having a job or having that as their main source of income (impossible for most of the population) is indicative of the monolithic Woman--all women. AND because men race to reserve women or their domestic, reproductive, and sexual activities for themselves so they can prove their superiority and successful masculinity, women are more in--excuse my French--"high demand" within the patriarchal sexual dynamics. It does not matter to them that women experience a lot of sexual violence and reject or try to divert them because of the fear and/or true threat of violence and they do not link that violence to the man's need to own women. Because to deny is to justify objectifying the woman/target. So men, by default, have very low standards for a potential female "partner's" personality, as her role is economic and male-group validating above everything else.

If women could have this and I can't, all women must be "luckier" than me, so I hate her. And why should I have to provide for a woman to have sexual control over her or get her interested in me when any other guy could do better than me?

Meanwhile, they don't even get how:

anger is an emotion, and it just builds until it lashes out at the right conceived inconvenience

their preoccupancy with work-work-rewardness "proving" their masculinity directly contradicts its own purpose when they wax remorse over "all" women having the ability to gain rewards without "work" (which is it, you want eternal "rest" or eternal work? AND it is men with accumulated generational wealth or men who have no business willingly spending money they do not have)

And finally, because they perceive that they are close to that stoic-everyman-topman-ideal, that their manhood grants them proximity to it--and thus superiority over women to it--they can always replace their current partner once they do not "love" them anymore OR they look to the "upgraded" trophy woman who makes them look better to other men...until they get intimidated or resentful of that woman's success, wealth which he covets.

Man is inherently self-sabotaging and justifying it.

#u.s. society #not asoiaf #patriarchy #fiction vs reality #fantasy fiction #mini rant #capitalism #consumerism #labor in capitalism #male consumers

[thoughtportal]

Gentrified food snacks

#tiktok #comedy #stand up comedy #comedians #stand up #jokes #coca cola #snack food #funny #capital vs labor #history

[rednblacksalamander]

I'm not anti-technology, I just think there's something deeply sick about a society where robots make art and children work in factories.

#child labor #robotics #capitalism #meat industry #political cartoon

[mynameinyamouth]

Stuff like this radicalizes me. How is this the best system we have?

#anti capitalist #socialism #late stage capitalism #labor

[starblaster]

"but if you're pro-union, why are you anti-cop-union?" because cops are not laborers. what cops do is not labor. they are enforcers of the laws that oppress laborers and exist solely to protect capital. don't bother me with stupid questions.

🛑 STOP asking me to make the post rebloggable. i refuse to let a bunch of anticommunists, libertarian anarchists, neoliberal spooks, and other pro-cop fascists pass around their bad-faith additions on a post if i can help it (which i can, by disabling reblogs) while others of you are saying some really misguided, off-topic shit, and it’s pissing me off.

please get your facts straight before embarrassing yourselves on the internet. for fucking ONCE in your lives.

i am not “redefining labor” i SAID that cops are not LABORERS (EXPLOITED WORKERS) unionizing to receive better working conditions for the betterment of their fellow workers. they actually DO participate in collective bargaining, and OTHER, ACTUAL LABOR UNIONS also use collective bargaining power to protect their members! if you argue otherwise, i’m sorry but that is a lie. and also NOT what i was FUCKING SAYING! that's not the point of this!! the derailing and misunderstandings of what a LABOR UNION IS that occurred in the short time this post was rebloggable was too insane not to shut off reblogs!

COP unions, LIKE I SAID IN THE ORIGINAL/ABOVE POST, ARE UNIFIED IN DIAMETRIC OPPOSITION TO THE LIBERATION OF WORKERS, AS IN PEOPLE WHO DO LABOR (WHICH DOES NOT INCLUDE THE LITERAL ARMED PROTECTORS OF CAPITAL)

NO OTHER UNION BASHES, KILLS, OR ARRESTS STRIKING WORKERS LIKE COP (OR PRISON GUARD) UNIONS DO.

if you agree with the post so much that you NEED it on your blog or whatever, post a screenshot of the original post with this part cropped out and leave me the fuck alone! THANK YOUUU!!!!!!!

and to the wiseasses saying screenwriters and actors "aren't laborers, either," are you just fucking stupid actually?

#some of you need to pick up a fucking book once in a while. my god. #labor unions organize and collectively bargain in opposition to capital and the ruling class #police are the tools of that ruling class #they are the guardians of capitalism itself #they are the weapons of the state

[mysharona1987]

#News #politics #arkansas #gop #liberals #child labor #sarah sanders huckabee #republicans #gun control #Capitalism

[politijohn]

Source

Let’s go

#unions #unionize #labor #workers #workers rights #solidarity #capitalism #California #government #the left #progressive #current events #news

[hyperlexichypatia]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”

#mad pride #neurodiversity #ableism #ageism #youth rights #liberation #disability rights #classism #capitalism #mental health culture #pop psychology #feminism #emotional labor

[animentality]

#twitter #labor rights #union #pro union #union strong #union solidarity #pensions #anti capitalism

[catgirl-kaiju]

workplaces should have to legally provide unlimited paid sick leave available immediately upon hire. the limits that companies that even provide paid sick leave put on it is so fucked up. no one can control when they get sick, how often they get sick, or how long they are sick for, and they shouldn't have to suffer for the transgression of being ill.

"oh, but some people might take advantage of that and just stay home all the time and get paid for it!" if there is really a statistically relevant amount of people you have hired staying home on paid sick leave for months or years on end, perhaps your workplace sucks to be at, and you need to change.

give them reasons to come in to work. make it safer and easier to do their jobs. give them work that they can get invested in and talk to them about what that looks like. make sure you aren't overloading them with too much work or making unreasonable demands. pay them an amount that makes the work worth doing to them. actually form a working relationship with your employees instead of treating them like infinitely exploitable wage slaves.

only allowing your workers to accrew "2 hours a week of sick time starting after 6 weeks of employment" or some shit just doesn't match the reality of how sickness or human health works

#rant #healthcare #anti capitalism #workers rights #labor rights #socialist #communist #us politics #political commentary

[f-identity]

[Image description: A series of posts from Jason Lefkowitz @[email protected] dated Dec 08, 2022, 04:33, reading:

It's good that our finest minds have focused on automating writing and making art, two things human beings do simply because it brings them joy. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people risk their lives every day breaking down ships, a task that nobody is in a particular hurry to automate because those lives are considered cheap https://www.dw.com/en/shipbreaking-recycling-a-ship-is-always-dangerous/a-18155491 (Headline: 'Recycling a ship is always dangerous.' on Deutsche Welle) A world where computers write and make art while human beings break their backs cleaning up toxic messes is the exact opposite of the world I thought I was signing up for when I got into programming

/end image description]

#artificial intelligence #computers #programming #technology #Jason Lefkowitz #Mastodon #labor #transcription #capitalism #corporations #exploitation #class struggle #creativity #humans #safety #survival #vehicles #recycling #generative images #machine learning

[callese]

#life under capitalism #child labor #this is amerikkka #hold companies responsible #Nebraska #Minnesota

[thoughtportal]

join a union

the power of collection action

#tiktok #Adam Conover #collective action #union workers #labor unions #unions #protest #labor vs capital #labor rights #capital vs labor #labor movements #labor movement #workers rights #workers vs capital #workers #writers strike

[berniesrevolution]

You’re Lucky You Have a House, Peasant!

A history of company towns

by Joyce Rice and Kevin Moore

(Continue Reading)

TheNib.com

@thenib​

#politics #the left #the nib #comic #webcomic #labor #Labor Unions #organized labor #history #capitalism #economic inequality #oppression #poverty #working class #long post #long reads

[crying-over-really-dumb-things]

Labor Day is a federal holiday meant to celebrate the American worker! So to show our appreciation, all retail workers will be required to come in to work and possibly work extra hours because we’re having a Big Sale! Don’t you feel celebrated?

#it does not make sense to me #Labor Day #capitalism #america #usa

[reasonsforhope]

"For the first time in almost 60 years, a state has formally overturned a so-called “right to work” law, clearing the way for workers to organize new union locals, collectively bargain, and make their voices heard at election time.

This week, Michigan finalized the process of eliminating a decade-old “right to work” law, which began with the shift in control of the state legislature from anti-union Republicans to pro-union Democrats following the 2022 election. “This moment has been decades in the making,” declared Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber. “By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement.”

[Note: The article doesn't actually explain it, so anyway, "right to work" laws are powerful and deceptively named pieces of anti-union legislation. What right to work laws do is ban "union shops," or companies where every worker that benefits from a union is required to pay dues to the union. Right-to-work laws really undermine the leverage and especially the funding of unions, by letting non-union members receive most of the benefits of a union without helping sustain them. Sources: x, x, x, x]

In addition to formally scrapping the anti-labor law on Tuesday [February 13, 2024], Michigan also restored prevailing-wage protections for construction workers, expanded collective bargaining rights for public school employees, and restored organizing rights for graduate student research assistants at the state’s public colleges and universities. But even amid all of these wins for labor, it was the overturning of the “right to work” law that caught the attention of unions nationwide...

Now, the tide has begun to turn—beginning in a state with a rich labor history. And that’s got the attention of union activists and working-class people nationwide...

At a time when the labor movement is showing renewed vigor—and notching a string of high-profile victories, including last year’s successful strike by the United Auto Workers union against the Big Three carmakers, the historic UPS contract victory by the Teamsters, the SAG-AFTRA strike win in a struggle over abuses of AI technology in particular and the future of work in general, and the explosion of grassroots union organizing at workplaces across the country—the overturning of Michigan’s “right to work” law and the implementation of a sweeping pro-union agenda provides tangible evidence of how much has changed in recent years for workers and their unions...

By the mid-2010s, 27 states had “right to work” laws on the books.

But then, as a new generation of workers embraced “Fight for 15” organizing to raise wages, and campaigns to sign up workers at Starbucks and Amazon began to take off, the corporate-sponsored crusade to enact “right to work” measures stalled. New Hampshire’s legislature blocked a proposed “right to work” law in 2017 (and again in 2021), despite the fact that the measure was promoted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu. And in 2018, Missouri voters rejected a “right to work” referendum by a 67-33 margin.

Preventing anti-union legislation from being enacted and implemented is one thing, however. Actually overturning an existing law is something else altogether.

But that’s what happened in Michigan after 2022 voting saw the reelection of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a labor ally, and—thanks to the overturning of gerrymandered legislative district maps that had favored the GOP—the election of Democratic majorities in the state House and state Senate. For the first time in four decades, the Democrats controlled all the major levers of power in Michigan, and they used them to implement a sweeping pro-labor agenda. That was a significant shift for Michigan, to be sure. But it was also an indication of what could be done in other states across the Great Lakes region, and nationwide.

“Michigan Democrats took full control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. They used that power to repeal the state’s ‘right to work’ law,” explained a delighted former US secretary of labor Robert Reich, who added, “This is why we have to show up for our state and local elections.”"

-via The Nation, February 16, 2024

#michigan #united states #us politics #labor #labor rights #labor unions #capitalism #unions #unionize #gretchen whitmer #democrats #voting matters #right to work #pro union #workers #workers rights #good news #hope