I am a first year university student taking intro to philosophy. Every single thing we learn I end up contextualizing in my head in terms of capitalism (it’s hard not to when that’s the world we live in today).
The other day we were learning about Locke’s stance on private property, which he states is a necessary human right. His argument I could go on a whole other tangent about, but one section of it is this:
P1: one has ownership within oneself.
P2: one has ownership over their labour.
Therefore: one has ownership over the fruits of their labour.
We also learned about this other old philosopher dude (Kant possibly?) who believed it was morally wrong to treat humans as if they were a “thing” or to treat them subhumanley (plays in with sexism and racism).
Now here you see my dilemma. I want my TA to have as little bias as possible over me and my grade. Yet a dark force is possessing me to shout out that Kant, by his own rules, should have been a Marxist or anti-capitalist or at the very least anti-work. I refrained, because the previous week I had said something every so slightly anarchist about authority and borders and was shot down immediately by my TA. But I did ask, “so do you think Kant would say it is morally wrong to sell your labour, as you are essentially treating yourself as a thing or commodity which he deems to be wrong?”
My TA said no, he would not think that (he totally would, imo).
TLDR; old philosopher dudes would toooootally have been anti-work if they existed within late stage capitalism.