Saying “If those low-wage workers want better wages they should stop being low-wage workers” is telling a man to stop drowning while you are holding him underwater by standing on his head.

Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

Came across an old Hampton Institute tweet:

“If you don’t like being exploited (employee, tenant), then become the exploiter (boss/owner, landlord)” is the capitalist mindset that has been drilled into all of us since we were kids. The real solution is to end exploitation (capitalism) altogether.

You run into this sort of argument all the time when interacting with capitalism supporters. 

If people can’t make enough money to get by then they should get better-paying jobs. 

If people don’t like getting kicked around by an abusive status quo then they should climb their way into a socioeconomic strata that isn’t getting kicked around as much. 

If someone doesn’t like being the nail then they should become the hammer. 

They deflect criticisms of the abusive system by babbling about what people can do as individuals to be less abused personally.

It’s like a horror movie villain trapping a bunch of people in a pyramid-shaped room and then filling it up with water so that only the ones who fight their way to the top can get air. He goes, “You don’t like drowning? Better not be among those who are underwater, then!”

In this horror movie, the people don’t curse the villain or swear they’ll kill him. Instead they just say “Well it’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best one possible!” If someone less fortunate manages to pop their head above water for a second and say “Please! We need air!”, they shove him back down and climb on his shoulders saying “Well you need to fight harder to get to the top then.”

Saying “Don’t like drowning? Then fight your way to the top” completely ignores the fact that the entire room is deliberately structured so that there will always necessarily be a large group of people who are drowning. Pointing out the fact that it is technically possible for someone as an individual to claw their way to the top is just a way of avoiding the need to address the abusive nature of the overall system which is premised on the permanent existence of a disadvantaged class.

Not everyone can be an employer; some people have got to be their employees, or their job doesn’t exist. Not everyone can be a landlord; landlords require rent-payers in order to exist. There can’t be a top ten percent who are living comfortably without a bottom ninety percent who aren’t.

This whole dystopia is built on top of an underclass of low-wage workers keeping the gears of industry turning; if they all quit today, the entire economy would be instantly obliterated. Saying “If those low-wage workers want better wages they should stop being low-wage workers” is telling a man to stop drowning while you are holding him underwater by standing on his head.

And what’s really crazy is that in this horror movie, the villain is entirely within reach. He’s standing there taunting everyone at the top of the room from a platform where he controls the water levels, and his legs are right there within grabbing distance. But instead of grabbing those legs and pulling him down so they can drain the room and save everyone, they’re fighting each other for air and saying anyone who drowns is to blame for their own drowning.

Craziest thing you can imagine, really. I wouldn’t even pay to watch that movie, because it’s too unbelievable.

And yet here we are.

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