• Juice@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    Karl Marx talked about this extensively, and he was writing for us workers. its always breathtaking to hear “why hasn’t anyone talked about this,” when everybody knows there were people who talked about this, made it their life’s scientific work, set the intellectual foundation for those of us who figured it out to go deeper with our inquiries and understanding, but because others who control the ideas of society have so successfully stigmatized these ideas and their proponents, we workers have internalized the hate for ourselves and our ideas that the ruling classes have for us.

    First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. – Economic and Philosophic manuscripts, 1844

    And later in Capital:

    within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital. - chapter 25 sec 4

    • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.netOP
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      3 days ago

      everybody knows

      others who control the ideas of society have so successfully stigmatized these ideas and their proponents

      Resulting in everyone “knowing” that the existing system is how things are supposed to be, and thinking differently is just laziness/entitlement. Or straight up heresy.

      Marx citations

      Bingo (long version that most won’t take the time to read let alone consider)

      • Juice@midwest.social
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        3 days ago

        I’m not sure where you’re coming from here, are you saying that you think it is pointless to try and refer to Marx, because the passages are too complicated for most workers? Because I know for a fact that isn’t universal. My gripe is this very assumption. Marx may be very hard, but (I’m repeating myself) he was writing for us. not the intelligentsia, or the ruling class intellectuals, or university administrators, or any of that. Which means once you get around the difficulty of the subject you realize that actually his writing is about our lives, and what we go through, but not only what but how it functions, from whence it came and where it is headed. It isn’t difficult it’s just a lot at first. I know literally hundreds of workers from all different ages, backgrounds, languages, who all better understand their revolutionary role opposing the capitalism system because they took to studying history using Marx’s scientific methods. I myself have little formal education, yet ive become educated. It may not come natural at first, because there’s so much distraction, but over time you gain knowledge and experience and it starts to click. And once it does, you wouldn’t want to live without the works of Marx. We read them over and over, we discuss them and how it applies to our lives.

        Maybe that isn’t your experience, and that’s fine, but that isn’t universal. Maybe you aren’t convinced,and that’s fine, because maybe I don’t think I can convince you all at once, that it takes time and exposure and eventually it starts making sense.

        I have as severe ADHD as anyone I’ve ever met, I have learned this stuff and it has helped me, like I’m much better off as a person since I’ve started studying like this. I don’t believe it is unnatural for workers, in fact I think it is a sign of our unnatural, alienated conditions that we are inclined not to.

        When communist workmen gather together, their immediate aim is instruction, propaganda, etc. But at the same time, they acquire a new need – the need for society – and what appears as a means had become an end. This practical development can be most strikingly observed in the gatherings of French socialist workers. Smoking, eating, and drinking, etc., are no longer means of creating links between people. Company, association, conversation, which in turn has society as its goal, is enough for them. The brotherhood of man is not a hollow phrase, it is a reality, and the nobility of man shines forth upon us from their work-worn figures. – KM, EPM 1844

        Not trying to twist your comment into something you didn’t mean however, so if I misinterpreted your intent or meaning, please correct me :)

        • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.netOP
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          3 days ago

          I’m in agreement with you - my comment was directed at those who refuse to consider anything outside of their box. I mean… look how many people in this thread got hung up on “food is free” and couldn’t be bothered to read/think past that statement. Marx is dense, and way above the average reading level here in the US. Combine that with relentless anti-intellectualism propaganda, yeah not a lot of people are going to bother.

          • Juice@midwest.social
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            3 days ago

            It’s a process. To be honest certain parts of it are pretty darn bleak. I strongly believe Marx showed us a way through, but the bar was higher, the number of possibilities were greater, than any could imagine. I have hope, but I also might die with nothing but

            Anyway, thanks for clarifying what you meant