So I mentioned this a bit in a previous article tonight, but this argument deserves its own space for the sake of discussion.
Basically, one of the biggest arguments against my ideas is that we can't have a society where no one works. While I would concede that, the entire purpose of my own argument is to show we don't need everyone working in the first place. It might have made sense in the days where we all had to work in the fields or starve come winter, but it doesn't make sense in modern society. Even then, looking at how the current system came to be, it might not have even been true in the past. So let's do a brief walk through of history from the state of nature to where we are now.
The state of nature
As Widerquist points out in his works, for most of history, we lived in band societies, and these societies generally had no sense of property. No one could accumulate property since everyone would steal from each other. So hunter gatherers just worked to feed their own needs and nothing more. Also, they may have given food to other members in their group even if they didn't work for it. If anything, these societies had more of a sharing ethic than a work ethic. They didn't force people to work, but if you didn't share and you had extra, it was looked down upon, and people could be kicked out of the group if they didn't share. Interesting aspect of property.
The nature of the state
Being a little cheeky with the title, but much of what we associate with human nature and history has existed under statism. And statism actually has been pretty brutal to people. States started acquiring resource surpluses, and as societies became more advanced, they started hoarding resources and income inequality started forming. Most resources were controlled by the leaders of society, and what arose out of that was a form of feudalism. As states spanned the globe, they started taking over all land and subjugating others to work for them, which increased their surplus, often at the expense of those subjugated. And this is how we got income inequality and slavery and stratified societies. Also, many early societies eventually settled into what can be called a form of feudalism, with a monarch at the top who gave land to people loyal to them (nobles) and most people just worked on the land and give them a portion of the product (taxes) in exchange for protection from the nobles.
The enlightenment, the protestant work ethic, and natural rights
Capitalism essentially emerged out of the enlightenment. The protestant work ethic that underlied it was, functionally, a solution to poverty. It originated out of religion, yes, and it kind of was based on the idea that work was to show that you were one of the elect or saved and that your work was your calling and gave you purpose. Locke basically took this and made it more progressive. He saw it as a solution of poverty. Before, most people did just enough work to sustain themselves and nothing more. This meant that those who couldnt work would end up starving. So, by introducing the protestant work ethic, people started working more, to create a surplus of resources, and then because christians were big on asceticism and charity, they were expected to live frugal lives giving their surplus to charity, so that everyone would have enough and only those too lazy to work wouldn't have anything.
In a sense, this work ethic was codified in the property rights that Locke believed in. What justified property was work. This was functional in that it incentivized work, but it also was progressive in the sense that it offered an alternative model to the feudal system in which a few people owned everything by divine right. It kind of had that populist marxist vibe of "the workers are the ones who should benefit from work." And it was originally made to make life better.
But then it got corrupted....
But as the new system came out of the old, these well meaning ideas became corrupted. Obviously the rich were never gonna actually subject themselves to their side of the agreement, but instead, the poor were subjected to this system and forced to work for the rich. And out of this, we got wage slavery. Basically, the protestant work ethic and the fixation on accumulating resources led to the rich focusing on growth at the expense of everyone else, and capitalism was devised to keep people on a cycle of having to work for them in order to survive. I mean, originally workers, when given things like fertilizer, would do things like instead of producing 4x as much stuff, they'd work 1/4 as much. This angered the capitalists, so basically they were eventually subjected to living in subsistence conditions on the brink of precarity in order to force people to work to survive. And obviously, in order to make people work, the alternative to work had to be more miserable, leading to the criminalization of homelessness, making vagrancy a crime, etc. And ultimately, they forced people into work houses to teach them the work ethic. A lack of work ethic was seen as a failing and work ethic a virtue, so basically the system beat the idea of work into people and conditioned people for wage slavery.
The original welfare systems were complicit in this, having aid based on contributions, and then a second form of inferior aid that separated the deserving from undeserving, and basically intended to work with capitalism to force people into work.
The whole point of capitalism as practiced was to force people into the work force in order to make them productive to create a surplus of resources, and then that surplus of resources went to the top while the workers were kept in precarity.
I know this analysis seems to mirror marxism, which would argue the workers deserve that surplus, but my own analysis is more in line with say, Max Weber, who focuses more on the process of forcing people to be productive by introducing them to crippling anxiety and fear of the future if they don't. Our system creates hellish conditions on people in order to force them to work for ever higher surpluses.
"A race without end"
Capitalism was seen by these pro growth guys as a race without finish. We would keep growing, endlessly, to achieve higher and higher standards of living, with no end in sight. We just keep accumulating a surplus. And because the poor would be subjected to the constant threat of crippling poverty and precarity (not to mention the fact that marx's "reserve army of labor" is an actual thing and society can't even guarantee everyone a job), really, the poor doesn't really benefit from this system. Most of the wealth goes to the rich.
And it's like the myth of sisyphus, we are to roll rocks up hills for all of eternity. Just creating endless growth, while never truly getting to enjoy it. Forever. This is life. What was hell in greek myth is now what we call 9-5. And as sisyphus, I ain't happy.
Modern society is just another iteration of this
For all of the reforms made over the ages, the unions, the regulations, the welfare state, "socialism", communism, etc. None of them ever addressed the core issue, which is forcing people to work. That's the core issue with this system, and as long as we make people miserable to force them to work, we will never have true happiness in our society.
In recent years, things have gotten worse as a lot of the new deal protections got rolled back. Unions were busted, neoliberalism destroyed well paying middle class jobs and replaced them with low class service jobs, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, the top 20% got most of the benefits, with the top 0.1% getting the overwhelming majority, the bottom 80% stagnate and suffer while are blamed for not working hard enough or not doing something to better their own condition, and not happening to be part of the society that benefits from this system.
The need for a new capitalism
We need a new capitalism with a new set of principles. It's not markets and capitalism per se it's the problem, it's the fact that the poor are subjected to a process that strips them of their humanity for the purpose of forcing them to work and create infinite sums of wealth. This system is inhuman and needs to be reformed.
The economy exists for humans, not humans for the economy.
Work exists as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
People shouldn't be forced to work, unless peoples' collective needs go unmet by their failure to do so (emphasis on NEEDS not WANTS)
We need to rethink GDP growth as the end all be all of society and balance it with other goals.
A new deal for the 21st century
In alignment with the above ends, I propose the following.
-Universal basic income
-A gradual reduction of the work week
-Medicare for all or a public option alternative
-Free college/student debt forgiveness
-Some sort of housing program
-A mini green new deal compliant with the above approaches to work
Conclusion
In short this kind of turned into a little mini manifesto. That might not be by mistake. This is a condensed version of some themes I'm working on for another project separate from this blog. But I did want to post about it and believed the topic was important enough to post on here, at least in condensed form. But yeah. We dont work because we all need to work to meet our basic needs. We work because our system is designed to enslave us to produce a surplus we never benefit from because the system operates under the basis that we all need to be forced to work to continue to maximize GDP growth. I'm not going to say that we should abolish capitalism or overthrow it, like Marx did (and I think doing so is a terrible idea), but we do need a new approach to capitalism where we keep the good parts, but do away with the bad. This is my attempt at this.
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