No sufficiently sophisticated political ideology is against labor (capitalist work is not synonymous with labor). On the contrary, most anti-capitalist ideologies are extremely pro-labor.
The question isn’t whether we need labor, that’s reductive and (currently) we obviously do. The question is how should labor be treated. Right now labor is a commodity to be bought and sold by capitalists. If we instead setup a system that decommodified labor, outlawing renting of humans (just as we have with buying humans), then even in a market-based economy you have far better compensation for labor.
Market-value for labor in a capitalist society is done as a commodity as I’ve previously said, so the goal is to reduce the price of the commodity as far as allowable for the business owners. This means a viable path towards profitability is reducing the labor force, or cutting compensation. This is why layoffs happen when companies are doing incredibly well, to increase immediate profits.
If instead there was a democratic assembly of workers that held their interests in common, there’d be no reason to just layoff a bunch of great workers during times of good business.
In short, we don’t need two different classes with two different relationships to capital. Instead of allowing one class to rent the other, compensate them as little as possible, and pocket the surplus value, outlaw that commodification of humans and allow the market to properly compensate workers.
This isn’t an end all solution, but market socialism is a massive improvement over capitalism, and once we dismantle the parasitic owner class (capitalists, landleeches, cops, etc.) we can focus on more interesting discussions about the merits of markets in certain situations (e.g they’re good at reacting to consumer desires, they’re bad at accounting for externalized costs like climate change, etc.)
With respect to climate change, it has more to do with the property relationships of the current economic system than the market itself. If natural resources were commonly owned and people had a recognized right to their value, polluters and other people harming the environment during production would have to pay citizens collectively proportional to the social costs. Then, prices would accurately represent the social cost of pollution involved in the production of the product
No sufficiently sophisticated political ideology is against labor (capitalist work is not synonymous with labor). On the contrary, most anti-capitalist ideologies are extremely pro-labor.
The question isn’t whether we need labor, that’s reductive and (currently) we obviously do. The question is how should labor be treated. Right now labor is a commodity to be bought and sold by capitalists. If we instead setup a system that decommodified labor, outlawing renting of humans (just as we have with buying humans), then even in a market-based economy you have far better compensation for labor.
Market-value for labor in a capitalist society is done as a commodity as I’ve previously said, so the goal is to reduce the price of the commodity as far as allowable for the business owners. This means a viable path towards profitability is reducing the labor force, or cutting compensation. This is why layoffs happen when companies are doing incredibly well, to increase immediate profits.
If instead there was a democratic assembly of workers that held their interests in common, there’d be no reason to just layoff a bunch of great workers during times of good business.
In short, we don’t need two different classes with two different relationships to capital. Instead of allowing one class to rent the other, compensate them as little as possible, and pocket the surplus value, outlaw that commodification of humans and allow the market to properly compensate workers.
This isn’t an end all solution, but market socialism is a massive improvement over capitalism, and once we dismantle the parasitic owner class (capitalists, landleeches, cops, etc.) we can focus on more interesting discussions about the merits of markets in certain situations (e.g they’re good at reacting to consumer desires, they’re bad at accounting for externalized costs like climate change, etc.)
With respect to climate change, it has more to do with the property relationships of the current economic system than the market itself. If natural resources were commonly owned and people had a recognized right to their value, polluters and other people harming the environment during production would have to pay citizens collectively proportional to the social costs. Then, prices would accurately represent the social cost of pollution involved in the production of the product