Happy post Labor Day. Or maybe not so happy, at least in America this seeming to signify something like the end of summer. Happy, perhaps for parents, now that the CDC has let go of their guidance about kids staying home from school? I did not hear much talk about the significance of Labor Day, over the weekend, but then that is not surprising in America, where holidays meant to commemorate a thing often become just another day you might have off laboring for the dollar.
Labor day of course having been set to commemorate the gains of labor. One hundred and fifty years ago, early in the industrial revolution, people were pouring into the cities to work in factories, often 14hrs per day six days a week for starvation wages with a life expectancy reduced to about 45. Contrast that with the professional in his zoomer jammies, stroking a cat while he works on his computer doing busy busy when he isn’t looking at porn in one of the spare bedrooms of his mcmansion/condo. That is not most people’s gains of course, most working people regressing from the gains of about 1973, but it serves a reminder how much things have changed since the early days of industrialization, here in the core of global empire, in the industrial/technological age.
Unions had a lot to do with those gains. Without collective bargaining there was no standing up to the industrialists and their Pinkerton mercenaries. Without the ability to strike and shut down production, there was no incentive for the industrialist to negotiate. By 1960 a family with three kids, a house, a cabin, a car, vacations and a pension was the new norm for many Americans, on one income. The neoliberal revolution of the past 50 years, plus a general decadence, has weakened the unions, a mere shadow of their former promise. Now it’s two incomes and no kids in a one bedroom apartment, barely getting by.
The lot of laboring people has declined, stagnant to declining wages and benefits for decades. I made $7hr at Sams Club in 1991. Their starting wage in 2019? $9 on average. CPI inflation, $13, real inflation more like $17. The gains in wages in the immediate aftermath of lock-downs, not even what they would have been without decades of wage suppression, quasi wage-theft; these new “gains” now evaporating with inflation. There has been a mostly tepid resurgence of union interest. Biden talked a good game early but that was mere electioneering. He mentioned his support for unions yesterday, on labor day, but he couldn’t not. Democrats love unions for the money.
More than a resurgence of unions, we are seeing something called the Great Resignation. Covid lockdowns were devastating for small businesses and people at the margins globally, the full extent of the devastation (much more devastating than the virus) only now coming in to view. But tens of millions of Americans, for the better part of 18 months, 2020-21, having little to do but think about their lot in life, made for many millions of Americans a recognition, what a dead end capitalism as we have known it has become - there being no alternative was a fat load of propaganda. A statistically significant number of Americans said to hell with working for the “man”, embarking on their own with the technology available to reach a national and even global clientele. I surmise that is the real reason for those 90,000 new IRS agents, so many people now severing their ties to corporations and bureaucracies, these newly autonomous Americans have to be put back in service to corporate and gov, putting the kibosh on this new autonomy by way of being made bankrupt, or at the very least, the IRS siphoning off these new gains to transfer that wealth mainly up the social pyramid.
That Great Resignation has something of the flavor of individualist anarchism, or the search for freedom in this increasingly authoritarian, monopolist economy that also begins to look quite fragile and addicted to money printing.
Anarchism as a political theory arose out of opposition to monopolist capitalism as manifest in those early industrial days, arising first out of socialism, or communism, which preceded Marx; anarchism in a sense is older than Marxism. It manifest first as communes, communities of mutual aid breaking out of the feudalism of the Middle Ages - first articulated as a political theory out of the degradation and exploitation of 19th century industrialization. Many anarchists today, such as ANTIFA, remain socialist in their thinking, but really these are mostly quasi-marxists wanting to burn down capitalism and kill off the capitalists, unable to articulate any future that could arise outside of violent expropriation, necessitating some coercive mass force not dissimilar in the end from government, or armed gangs.
Educated mostly white woke shock troops of the possible world?
There is another strain of anarchism related to libertarianism that is comfortable with free markets, believing there is little freedom outside a free market, while recognizing what we have is more like cutthroat capitalism for the masses and socialism for corporations, banks and billionaires. Truly free markets in this strain of anarchism emphasize in the main, the right of every American to own the production of their own labor. That is to say, doing away with the wage system, which is authoritarian at it’s core and replacing it with ownership.
Have you ever wondered why wages are more highly taxed than any other thing in the economy? If econ 101 is, you tax what you want to limit or do away with, why would you want to do away with jobs, while at the same time raising the economic bar to start and maintain one’s own business while facilitating monopoly? The taxes on automation and AI are exactly zero. The wage system as we know it is actively attempting to phase out employees, while offering nothing but the false promise of free money (universal basic income) and unlimited entertainments, which is really just less expectations, fewer opportunities, more and stronger drugs and increased violence and despair. That is not empowerment, but more like a slow genocide. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed a decline in life expectancy in America, or excess mortality rates above the average since the jabs started?
What if instead of employees, we set up a system by which every working person was an owner of their own production? That is not to say everybody makes the same amount of money. If someone starts a business and needs help, they take on minor partners, not employees, the owner of the business makes more than everybody else because it is her idea and she does the bulk of the work, but giving the people she is working with a sense of ownership of the thing, making them work harder and more diligently for her in return?
Obviously that is a simplified example as a thought experiment. Taking it further, if everyone had a sense of ownership over their own labor, if they were more responsible for the outcome of that labor, if people were more engaged with the labor output of community and the nation, what is the likelihood that we would have superfund sites? What about systemic pollution contributing to skyrocketing autism and chronic illness rates? We often think that pollution and environmental destruction would be much worse without government regulation, but what if that is simply us using governement as an excuse not to take responsibility? What if government actually facilitates corporate pollution precisely because all of us have been removed from the process of decision making?
Much of the discontent and disconnect in America is the vast majority having no sense of ownership of this nation, of the work available, of the work they do. We are just cogs in a machine that is actively attempting to make us obsolete. Many young people as a consequence have embraced post-modern, marxist critical theory, aka wokeness, just to have something to believe in. The World Economic Forum, which is the hub of the 1000 most powerful corporations in the world, increasingly sees the majority of humanity as superfluous, useless eaters. I keep repeating, they imagine a hyper-centralized global governance with a social credit system and digital currency to cancel anyone for non-compliance with corporate dictates. They have made common cause with these young wokesters to lay waste to Western notions of individualism, to build back a better totalitarianism, a Great Reset for making the elite of today the untouchable elite of tomorrow.
I prefer Jordan Peterson’s designation, every individual as a divine sovereign. Jordan is something of a fan boy of the tech titans, so I don’t necessarily support all of Jordan’s thinking. But this is useful, that you are divine and sovereign, and deserve more than being an employee, of being downsized, of being replaced by machines. Rudolf Steiner believed in the divine sovereign individual too. [vid attached to image]
There are plenty of examples of successful employee owned businesses. It is not some foreign concept, but uniquely American in a way. People who have a sense of ownership over their work have a greater sense of appreciation for the work, are willing to work harder and make more sacrifices to make an endeavor work. A sense of ownership over one’s future makes for optimism, dedication and diligence. It is character building. Employment too often becomes coercive, damaging to the human spirit. Have you noticed how hardly anything works as it is supposed to anymore? Americans far and wide are sick of the work they do and it is showing in the product and the service. A lot of people are beginning to recognize, there is no getting ahead simply on merit anymore.
Ownership is a free association of equals under the law, employment is too often a grind. America was imagined as a nation of people empowered, a republic of free holders long in the making. We have barely begun that experiment in self-governance in the search for freedom. America is the search for freedom.
I hope you had a great summer. I hope you have a great fall. I hope you find freedom in this economy. Thanks for reading.
I enjoyed your article. One of the things that really resonates with me is the disparity between taxes on earned income (wages) and unearned income (capital gains, etc.). I have been railing against this for a long time. When I discuss this with people, I always point out that there is a moral dimension to how taxes are structured. Earned income should be taxed at a lower rate because you *earned* it, whereas unearned income should be taxed at a higher rate because it does not represent the fruit of anyone's labor. Now, we have the opposite where people who inherited wealth (and thus do nothing but live off the spoils of their ancestors) or get paid obscene amounts of money (via stocks) are generally taxed at a lower rate than people who are *earning* a living. The situation is opposite of how it should be. The current system incentivizes speculation and diminishes the importance of hard work to *earn* a living.
Pretty big subject.
Richard Wolff has been talking about the worker coops for a while.
All I know is there are way too many people when compared to work needed/available. Labor market is seriously broken.