where did all you western anti-work âsocialistsâ come from anyway. you want the âto each according to their needâ and forgot the âfrom each according to their abilityâ. âI do not dream of labourâ ok, but you do dream of living well. so what you really want is someone else to labour for you, which makes you indistinguishable from any bourgeois capitalist you claim to despise. the consumerist-oriented âfully automated luxury space communismâ bullshit has truly rotted peopleâs brains. you want all the trappings of excess but you want the brunt of creation of that excess to be on someone else. well congratulations, you already live in an imperialist society. you have that. someone else is already harvesting your vegetables, sewing your clothes, mining the cobalt for your electronics. all you want is more, easier access to those things.
I get it on some level, especially as someone who has worked alienating, minimum wage jobs in which I have absolutely no stake other than the necessity of getting money to pay rent. but itâs not the work. itâs the capitalism. I do not dream of labouring to the benefit of a boss who steals my own time from me, or to pay for the militarism of my government, or even to contribute to a hypothetical pension for a hypothetical retirement. but I do dream, intensely, of labour: labour that wonât kill me, and contributes meaningfully to a society I am proud of; a society not driven by profit for a few, that exists to meet the needs of everyone around me. we do not live in that society. but if we want to make it, labour will exist, and not just menial physical labour but an extraordinary amount of mental and social labour, almost none of which will ever be replaced by automation, and that is not a bad thing.
I do dream of Labour, I just donât dream of exploitation.
Well, letâs see, I have chronic mental and physical illnesses, so yeah, I do dream of not having to work, for both me and my fellow disabled people. I donât think that makes me a bourgeois capitalist, but rather someone who is forced to work more than is good for me, and Iâd like to stop doing that, please. There are always going to be people who canât work at all, and people who canât work as much as others, and people who would rather work less than what we currently consider âfull timeâ because theyâre happier and healthier when theyâre not working all the time. If your revolution doesnât include those people I want no part of it.
Oh shut the hell up.
How do you find the energy to respond like that while somehow completely missing the literal second line that states âfrom each according to their abilityâ
âŠEven beyond the fact that the OP deleted the original of this b/c it escaped its original intended limited scope and was generally intended more as a very specific vent, this response pissed me off enough that I had to reply
Like, people with easily-erased disabilities; whether it be chronic pain/fatigue to executive dysfunction; get hit with forced labor they canât handle in our current system because thereâs every incentive to pretend they donât exist.
Because any system that uses âlazinessâ/âmoochersâ as a cudgel like this (Again, admitted by the author to be hastily done, incomplete and taken out of context) post does has every incentive to leave the people whoâs problems they can sweep under the rug to rot, because it is significantly easier/less resource-intensive than actually helping them, and the doctrine of fearing the âfreeloaderâ is the perfect instrument for blaming deeper issues on personal character flaws.
Weâve seen this logic used against us before, and that says to me that the negative readings of this are less âbad faithâ and more âknowing where that shit so often leadsâ. Like, thatâs really an issue a lot of yâall mistake for âbad reading comprehensionâ in backlash to certain points (Even if said backlash is very flawed in other ways) but thatâs a wholeass different post!
Also note that the same reason applies to artistic laborers taking this badly. Cause, I have also seen some assholes using that same logic towards artists (Which I was regrettably introduced to in a post that was distressingly popular on the tunglrs) because art is difficult to fit into most economic systems and itâs easier to fuck over artists than to acknowledge that.
Like, I can get what the OP was probably venting about, which Iâm guessing is something like what this other reblogger outlines, but sweet genius read the room and realize thereâs probably a reason why disabled people get nervous about that shit.
Thatâs a lot of words saying very little.Â
Tip: donât assume that Iâm not part of the âusâ youâre referring to, buddy.
