Workers are the force that activates the machinery and software. We make it, they take it! Does that make sense? The capitalists sell the goods and services the workers produce, but they pay the workers only a small portion of the proceeds. Then we have to buy other commodities – the goods and services we need to live. In a developed capitalist society such as the one we live in, we spend our workdays producing commodities – that is, products made to sell in capitalism’s marketplace. With capitalism, it’s all about commodities! Today’s workers, even highly paid ones, can still be insecure, only one paycheck, one plant closing, one economic downturn away from losing their health care, their home, their retirement. Why we’re anxious and insecure: workers can only live by selling our labor powerĬapitalism by its very nature creates extreme insecurity and misery. They had no way to support their families except to sell their labor working in the new sweatshops. The former peasants had to quickly migrate to the cities. Meanwhile, new factories using new technologies arose in the cities, making textiles and machinery. Herds of animals brought in immensely more profits to the owners of the land than could be generated by the farming of individual peasants. In England, the land the peasants had farmed more or less in common was fenced in and converted by its owners to sheep grazing. From what they produced, they paid taxes and rent to the owners of the land. The majority of people at that time lived in rural areas and spent their work lives producing for the needs of their own individual family.
In the mid-1800s, giant factories and mass production, powered by steam and later electricity, were just coming into being.Ĭertainly, most people at that time worked, but most of those working people were not yet members of what Marx defined as the working class. Can we create a system that puts people before profits? Let’s look back to the origins of capitalism. People want all of humanity to share in the benefits the human race has achieved.
Today, people of every generation – especially the millennials – want to know if it’s possible to change a system that causes misery, inequality, wars and the devastation of our planet. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made this point in explaining what capitalism is really about when they wrote The Communist Manifesto. However, the fact is, capitalism is only a stage of human development – it is not an eternal system. It is natural for people to believe that the society they were born into is the only imaginable state of affairs and that it will continue forever. Human society has developed through many stages – capitalism is only one of them. This class – which makes up 90 percent of our country’s population – is the powerful force that can create a society that puts people before profits. folks – alongside factory, construction and farmworkers and incarcerated labor. The working class of the 21st century includes rideshare drivers, nursing home aides, baristas, warehouse workers, UPS package handlers, teachers, engineers, research scientists, and I.T.
0 kommentar(er)
