Everyone in this subreddit should read this book. Long post but I felt like it should be somewhere. The book may not be 100% true anti work as it does detail the benefit and personal reward of hard labor, but its definitely anti capitalism, anti big business, and pro union dipped in red. This was written by John Steinbeck in the 30s and is as relevant today, almost 100 years later, as it was then. It was banned for a time due to its heavy communist overtones. About a tenant farm family evicted from the land during the dust bowl, their journey west, and their struggle as laborers. About inhumanity, and solidarity. These are just handful of bits that really rang true to me; quoted with some small edits for clarity:
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“Could you give me a lift mister?”
“Didn't you see the NO RIDERS sticker on the windshield?”
“Sure– I seen it. But sometimes a guy'll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.” -
[The landowners] would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold powerful masters. [A bank] dont breathe air, dont eat side meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they dont get it they die. The bank – the monster – has to have profits all the time. It cant wait. When the monster stops growing it dies. It cant just stay one size.
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“What are you doing this work for- against your own people?'
“Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner, and not getting it. I got a wife and kids. We got to eat. Three dollars a day, and it comes every day.”
“Thats right, but for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty familys cant eat at all now. Nearly one hundred people will have to go and wander the roads; is that right?”
“Cant think of that , got to think of my kids. Youll get a reputation for talking like that. And suppose you kill me- ther'll be another guy on this tractor [Im just following orders].
“Who can we shoot then? I dont aim to starve to death before I kill the man thats starving me.” -
To California, or anyplace- everyone a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they will all walk together, and there will be a dead terror from it.
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“You go steal a tire and you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a worn out tire; they call that 'business'”.
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Two men squat on their hams [together]. And here is the node for all you who hate change and fear revolotion- keep those two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. For here 'I lost my land' is changed [to] 'WE lost OUR land'. The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and as perplexed as one. This is the beginning- from “I” to “We”.
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“If you wana pull in here and camp it will cost you four bits.”
“We can sleep in the ditch right besidethe road and it wont cost us nothin.”
“Got a law against 'vagrants'. Aint ya got ahlf a buck?”
“Yeah, i got it. But Im gonna need it. I cant set it out just for sleeping”
“Well, we all have to make a living.”
“Yeah. Only I wish there was someway to make her without takin her away from somebody else.” -
“Let me tell ya what to do when you meet a fella that says hes got work [for you]. Ask him what hes gona pay. Ask him to write it down what hes gona pay. Ask him that, I tell you men youre gonna get fooled if you dont.”
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And as time went on, business men had the farms and the farms grew larger, abut there were fewer of them. Owners no longer worked on their farms. The owners hated the Okies because the owners knew that they were soft and the Okies were strong, hungry; and perhaps they had heard how easy it was to steal land from a soft man when you are fierce and hungry and armed. […] And the unused land was a crime against thin children. And guards with shotguns would patrol the perimeters so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child; oranges were to be dumped if the price was low. What is they wont scare, what if they stand up and shoot back? How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own stomach but in that of his children? You cant scare him- he has known a fear beyond any other.
And the great owners who must loose their land in an upheaval know this fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And the companion fact: when the majority of the people are hungry and cold, they will take by force what the need. And the screaming fact that sounds throughout all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. And money was spent to protect the great holdings, and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on. [All the money] spent on camp raids, on deputies swaggering through Hoovervilles, only put off that day a little, and cemented the inevitability of THE day. [Okies] praying to god some day kind people wont all be poor. Pray to god someday a kid can eat. And the owners knew that someday the praying would stop. And theres the end. -
“Suppose a dime will buy a box of mush for the kids. Suppose a nickle will buy even something. And you've got a hundred men [ready to work picking fruit] with kids starving. Just offer them a nickle- why theyll kill each other for that nickle.”
“Well suppose those men got together and said 'let [the fruit] rot'”
“Ever hear of the blacklist? Well, open your trap again about folks gettin together and youll see, Then you cant get no work nowhere. And if you got kids…” -
He'll take twenty five [cents], I'll do it for twenty. Not me, Im hungry, Ill work for fifteen. Ill work for a little piece of meat. And this was good for wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon well have serfs again. The great companies did not know the line between hunger and anger is a thin one. And the money that might have gone to wages went to blacklists. And anger began to ferment.
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Men who have created new fruits in this world, can not create a system wherby their fruits can be eaten. […] And in the eyes of the people there is the failure; ang in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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“One fella started yelling, and nothing happened. Then another fella yelled. Well sir then we all got yelling. And we all got on the same tone, and Ill tell ya, it jsut seemed like the [room] bulged adn give, and swelled up. By god, the numthing happened. They came running and gave us some other stuff to eat.”
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“Cops cause more trouble than they stop.
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[If] a fella had a team of horses, [and he] had to use 'em to plow, and cultivate, and mow, [he] wouldnt think of turning them out to starve when they wasnt working. Thems horses- were men.
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“Theres lots a things against the law that we cant help but do”.
There are so many more. Trends continuing today- Ask for the salary upfront. Get it in writing. Unionize. The worker beside you is not your enemy, the rich are. Fuck the police. Arm yourselves. Today we are the most educated, connected, up-to-date, real-time recording workforce there has ever been. Were not going away this time. Talk about your wages, support each other. Feel free to repost in other subreddits