"This might at least help to pose the problem, which is not so much that workers as a whole are turning to the right as that the class is fundamentally fractured by the material interests deriving from the market position of its component parts as Weber noted long ago. Framed in this way, the necessary strategy would seem to be not to accommodate the rightward drift to little avail, but to find a basis on which to suture that divide, one that speaks both to highly specific, culturally inflected market interests as well as class-wide interests rooted in the common experience of wage labour.

This politics must start from the observation that the economic interests of wage earners under capitalism are highly differentiated and can point in different, even contradictory political directions. Class interests and economic interests are by no means identical. It is not a matter of appealing to ‘economic’ interests over ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ interests (misleadingly termed ‘identity’ politics). Rather, it is a matter of developing a materialist politics that is at once specific and general, and which addresses workers’ lives in the experientially accessible realm of market relations, and their potential in the experientially distant structure of ownership."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/first-principles

#Politics #Left #LeftWing #Capitalism #ClassWarfare #PoliticalEconomy #WageSlavery #IdentityPolitics

"This might at least help to pose the problem, which is not so much that workers as a whole are turning to the right as that the class is fundamentally fractured by the material interests deriving from the market position of its component parts as Weber noted long ago. Framed in this way, the necessary strategy would seem to be not to accommodate the rightward drift to little avail, but to find a basis on which to suture that divide, one that speaks both to highly specific, culturally inflected market interests as well as class-wide interests rooted in the common experience of wage labour.

This politics must start from the observation that the economic interests of wage earners under capitalism are highly differentiated and can point in different, even contradictory political directions. Class interests and economic interests are by no means identical. It is not a matter of appealing to ‘economic’ interests over ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ interests (misleadingly termed ‘identity’ politics). Rather, it is a matter of developing a materialist politics that is at once specific and general, and which addresses workers’ lives in the experientially accessible realm of market relations, and their potential in the experientially distant structure of ownership."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/first-principles

#Politics #Left #LeftWing #Capitalism #ClassWarfare #PoliticalEconomy #WageSlavery #IdentityPolitics

"Prisoners in Minnesota are earning less than a dollar an hour making products for Disney. That’s according to organizers and former inmates who gathered at a press conference in December to share what they’ve learned — or experienced firsthand — about the exploitative prison labor system in Minnesota.

Organizers with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee called the press conference last month to update the public about their campaign to end what they call prison slavery.

The Minnesota constitution allows for exactly that – slavery as part of a punishment for a crime. Under article one, section two of the state’s constitution, involuntary servitude is barred unless someone has been convicted of a crime. Under the statute, prisoners can be subjected to unpaid and grossly underpaid work.

Through a subcontractor, Anagram International LLC, Disney has taken advantage of this law to extract nearly-free labor from the state’s inmates, paying them $0.90 an hour to fold large Mylar balloons, according to organizers of the event and two inmates who shared their firsthand experience."

https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/slavery-is-legal-in-minnesota-these-groups-are-working-to-change-that/

#USA #Minnesota #Minneapolis #SlaveLabor #PrisonLabor #WageSlavery

"Prisoners in Minnesota are earning less than a dollar an hour making products for Disney. That’s according to organizers and former inmates who gathered at a press conference in December to share what they’ve learned — or experienced firsthand — about the exploitative prison labor system in Minnesota.

Organizers with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee called the press conference last month to update the public about their campaign to end what they call prison slavery.

The Minnesota constitution allows for exactly that – slavery as part of a punishment for a crime. Under article one, section two of the state’s constitution, involuntary servitude is barred unless someone has been convicted of a crime. Under the statute, prisoners can be subjected to unpaid and grossly underpaid work.

Through a subcontractor, Anagram International LLC, Disney has taken advantage of this law to extract nearly-free labor from the state’s inmates, paying them $0.90 an hour to fold large Mylar balloons, according to organizers of the event and two inmates who shared their firsthand experience."

https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/slavery-is-legal-in-minnesota-these-groups-are-working-to-change-that/

#USA #Minnesota #Minneapolis #SlaveLabor #PrisonLabor #WageSlavery

#ausgov #politas #classwar #slavery #wageslavery #wageslave #slave #slaves #fact #facts #humanrights #antiwork #antislavery #fuckwork #eattherich

#ausgov #politas #classwar #slavery #wageslavery #wageslave #slave #slaves #fact #facts #humanrights #antiwork #antislavery #fuckwork #eattherich

👉 "When capitalism first showed up it delivered plenty of new things which people had a need and a desire for that weren’t available under previous systems like feudalism. The greatly increased material abundance and explosions of scientific and technological innovation ushered in with the dawn of capitalism caused human quality of life to improve by leaps and bounds.

But now we’re at a point where that just isn’t happening anymore. Things have stagnated, and we’re starting to backslide. People are getting dumber, sicker, lonelier, and more and more miserable. And the profit-driven systems we live under have no answers, besides throwing increasingly shitbrained technology at us so we can distract ourselves from how fucked up everything has gotten.

We are being driven into dystopia and annihilation by systems of our own making. We’re meant to be the smartest species on earth, but we locked ourselves in our invention — a self-reinforcing labor camp that makes us miserable — and then we get all huffy when people dare to question if it’s the only way of doing things. Literally every other species is smarter than us. Amoebas are having a better time of it.

This will change when humanity replaces capitalism with something better, in the same way we replaced feudalism with the superior system of capitalism. I don’t know what that system is going to look like, but it’s going to have to involve a move from a model that is driven by competition to one that is driven by collaboration." 👈

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/capitalism-is-shoving-ai-down-our

#Capitalism #Feudalism #Alienation #WageSlavery #Collaboration

👉 "When capitalism first showed up it delivered plenty of new things which people had a need and a desire for that weren’t available under previous systems like feudalism. The greatly increased material abundance and explosions of scientific and technological innovation ushered in with the dawn of capitalism caused human quality of life to improve by leaps and bounds.

But now we’re at a point where that just isn’t happening anymore. Things have stagnated, and we’re starting to backslide. People are getting dumber, sicker, lonelier, and more and more miserable. And the profit-driven systems we live under have no answers, besides throwing increasingly shitbrained technology at us so we can distract ourselves from how fucked up everything has gotten.

We are being driven into dystopia and annihilation by systems of our own making. We’re meant to be the smartest species on earth, but we locked ourselves in our invention — a self-reinforcing labor camp that makes us miserable — and then we get all huffy when people dare to question if it’s the only way of doing things. Literally every other species is smarter than us. Amoebas are having a better time of it.

This will change when humanity replaces capitalism with something better, in the same way we replaced feudalism with the superior system of capitalism. I don’t know what that system is going to look like, but it’s going to have to involve a move from a model that is driven by competition to one that is driven by collaboration." 👈

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/capitalism-is-shoving-ai-down-our

#Capitalism #Feudalism #Alienation #WageSlavery #Collaboration