Capitalists have defined the world we live in. We live in the trap. The wage is there to rent us, but that's just the stupid veneer. If escape is not an option, if by all means the world resists by property, police, and propaganda the undisturbed enjoyment of your time by yourself and those you love by whatever direction and intent is unique to you, then you are a slave. We are slaves, and our wages distract us. By all means they would pay you nothing. Better yet they desire only to pay you what you need to return to work so they may extract more from you, but if you took care of your own survival they'd be even happier! It has only been through our efforts and power that we have not all fallen so far… except for unpaid internships of course, but we can't count all the “exceptions”… Outside our “exceptions” wage-less slavery happens wherever it can all around the world. The veneer peels.
Our time, our lives are warped and categorized into a finite, purchasable standard. We live in a world that has coerced us and entrapped us through generational violence and diffuse control mechanisms, and as a result offered us a single path to reconcile our angst: the wage. What did the Brookings Institute say? “Capitalism is failing. People want a job with a decent wage”… Do we? We should never view our time as exchangeable through a wage; hourly, annually, or otherwise. If we keep saying “I am owed wage x” we accept our lives are reducible to one way capitalists would prefer disputes to be handled i.e. wage negotiations. We would accept we are only ever destined to be given our lives, and from the capitalist that will only ever be a portion of the total extraction they want to take from us. The wage holds us off. We delay our upliftment by every pay stub. Every industry maximally desires the cost to reproduce your life be untied from their extraction of your labour. This is the thirst to colonize. New lands and coercible people make for healthy profits. It may just be that everyone would die that profits tarry with limitation. There is no mystery why your wages stay low. We are in part responsible for the reality of the wages all this time, and we are so stricken now in our existence because for decades there has been so little cooperation in ending this class struggle. This amounts to living in the fantastic realms of excuse and excremental language hiding how we simply tricked ourselves into believing we were not living in the rot of enslavement.
But capitalists have a solution laid out for unignorable discontent. This is where the flowers of “proper management” grow, handouts of “adequate” or “just” wages by the capitalist to workers. They seek acceptance and we go back to work. Then management changes. The business is sold or the board pivots or a competitor lowers it's prices etc. etc. and the workers are in the air once again. They fight with a union and win or they fight with a union and lose. If they win there is only another fight ahead. If they lose or if there was never a union they must hope for the sentiment of the capitalist. Then the argumentative ones are fired, the rest divided; workers turned to middle-management and offerings of wage incentives abound for inter-worker betrayal and productivity quotas. Union or not the wage has been the end achievement of struggle for decades now. Do unions know why they were militant in the first place?
You are owed for all that the capitalists have taken. You aren't owed wages. You are owed your life, for it has been in service to others at your own diminishment. They say they have paid for your life. They have given you a wage. They have given you above market rates. They exist for we accept what we are given. Something given that was stolen completes us? Soothes us? No. We do not want what was stolen from us. We do not want to give our time away anymore. They will never be able to give enough of what they have stolen to ensure their existence. They go to war to ensure their existence. They do not ask our permission. They only ask the world for war of existence, and make it so. They make the world for war. Our lives have been taken through the threat of war, and we have adjusted as we have, and to a lesser extent over the last few decades in opposition. Maybe not anymore. Anti-work for all. Anti-work to start.
Thanks if you read all of that. (No I will not be paying for your time)
haha