The boss needs you, you don't need them
A call to the workers of the world
Why is it that you, the worker, remains poor and struggling while your boss continues to rake in record profits? The hard work, blood, sweat, and tears you put in to create value for the corporation you work at all goes to your boss and the investors. But you’re the one putting in the actual work! While your bosses get richer, you remain a working class citizen worrying about all your bills and taxes!
Fact or fiction: the self made billionaire
With certainty I’m sure at one point or another you’ve been told that “billionaires and capitalists deserve their prosperity because they’ve worked very hard for it.” The reality is much different. Elon Musk, the “self made” billionaire media savant, actually came from a family that owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa. Jeff Bezos may have started in a garage, but the $300,000 investment his parents gave him provided him with a huge head start. The amount of billionaires and business owners that actually start from the bottom is the exception, not the rule. In reality many of them came from privilege or were lucky enough to have connections to very rich investors.
No one wants to be exploited anymore!
In the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, corporate media attempted to “empower” essential workers, who would obviously make up the overwhelming majority of deaths. But this instead empowered many workers, who saw the praise they received from the media, but not the pay raise that should have come along with it. Many workers began to quit in 2021 and 2022 in what is known as the “Great Resignation”. Instead of meeting worker’s demands for better compensation in working through a deadly pandemic, corporate media and salty capitalists shamed the general public saying “No one wants to work anymore”. But we’ve seen this rhetoric for over a hundred years now. All of this “nobody wants to work anymore” is just capitalists complaining that they aren’t able to treat their employees terribly without consequence!
Why does working suck?
If you feel as if your job is useless, you’re not alone. That feeling of emptiness and apathy for your job is called alienation. You are forced to sell half your day to work jobs that drain you mentally and physically. That feeling of being just another cog in a soulless machine is one we are all familiar with. This is because the products of our labor are alienated from us, sold as commodities with the profits going to the owners and investors. We might earn enough just to get by, but why must we scrape by when we generate the wealth that fills our bosses' pockets? The simple fact is, the work you do is important. Whether you’re a custodian, or a McDonalds cook, your work is essential to feed and maintain society, but you don’t earn the compensation that you deserve! Unskilled labor is a classist myth to justify poverty wages. Work shouldn’t be alienating. In a better world you would see the immediate benefits of serving your community and be accordingly compensated for your contribution.
“Its a big club, and you’re not in it”
We are led to believe that our nation is a democracy, and that the people we elect act in our best interests. But in reality American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, serve to preserve the status quo. Politicians are propped up and funded by the rich and powerful to enact laws that oppress the poor and marginalized, and deregulate the restrictions that keep them from oppressing and extracting from us further. Why do you think the government funds the police instead of funding infrastructure that would actually help communities like healthcare and education? The police and military only exist to serve private property and the rich!
To have even a chance at electoral politics you need money to fund your campaign, and why would your rulers ever fund a campaign that fights against their class interests? While the capitalists compete in their game to fill their individual bank accounts they leave the overexploited and downtrodden workers impoverished as collateral. Under liberal democracy your vote only serves the politician and their financial backers. We have legalized corruption, but we just call it lobbying!
Dictatorship at work
Tyranny does not only exist in our government, but the very places we work. At work you have little to no say in terms of how the business is run. But you still do all the work to maintain the business and generate its profits. At work we are under the oppressive dictatorship of an unelected boss for up to 12 hours a day! The same people who pick and pay our politicians are the people paying our paychecks, giving us the crumbs of their millions. The shareholders and CEOs come to the offices and stores every so often but have no idea how to do any of the work required to run the business. If people like Elon Musk can be the CEO of three large companies it cannot be too difficult!
But why should something as important as work be under the dictatorship of unelected individuals? Would it not make sense for the workers, the people who actually run the business, to be better compensated for their important work? You’re telling me your boss works 300x harder than you to earn 300x your paycheck? The reality is the capitalist class is not an intellectually superior group of people who clawed their way to the top! Most of them came from immense wealth and lucky encounters, and now they stand as the overlords in this capitalist dystopia. They use their immense wealth to prop up politicians who will do their bidding, they leave our planet in ruins for their cancerous desire for growth, and all while they celebrate in their ivory towers. Meanwhile those who toil and generate their wealth live under a threat. If you’re deemed useless by the capitalist class you are threatened with homelessness and violence by the state. You’re given the illusion of choice by having the ability to quit a job you hate, but to sell your labor to a capitalist is the only choice we have. There is no freedom in poverty! We are under a dictatorship, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The struggle for reform
The legacy of labor movements globally is one of tumultuous struggle. Before toilers organized we had no weekends, children labored in factories, and employees worked up to twelve hours a day. You’ll often hear that we got weekends and the eight hour workday due to the generosity of famed anti-Semite Henry Ford. But this claim is dishonest at best, and malicious propaganda at worst. It was due to the organizing of industrial workers that we were able to have at least some time away from work, so that children don’t have to sacrifice fingers to large machines, so that we could bargain for better pay. We should not attribute the concessions given to the workers to an exploiter who supported the Third Reich.
And this struggle wasn’t peaceful either. Strikers and workers were often beaten and sometimes even murdered by the police, military, and fascist street gangs who took the side of the capitalists.
The Battle of Blair Mountain, a moment in history that never appears in the textbooks, was a struggle of coal miners who wanted better conditions and fairer pay. The state responded by dropping bombs and shooting at American citizens. The struggle for work reform is one marked in blood and tears. But union organizers and regular people fought tirelessly for the rights that workers today enjoy.
Neoliberalism: Capital strikes back
It would be easy to say that workplace democracy is the final goal of union organizing. But in order to create a better world we must dismantle the capitalist system alongside our efforts to organize. In the past we only went as far as to make concessions with our oppressive bosses. But those concessions are just that, concessions, and they could always be taken back. Beginning in the Nixon-Reagan era of the 70s and 80s, a new age of capitalism began. Neoliberal policies weakened the power of labor unions and gave more power to the corporate executives. It’s no coincidence that the wealth gap began to rise significantly during this era.
The progress made by the labor unions of the 20th century began to vanish. As important as those movements were, they did not go far enough. We must learn from the errors of our predecessors and realize that bargaining with our oppressors can only go so far, and that the progress we made can be taken back when they feel like it.
Power lies in solidarity!
Make no mistake, we the workers are not powerless. The power we have is within our fellow workers. Without us there would be no capitalist class, no profits to be made. Us who work the heavy machinery, who interact with customers, who cleans the casinos, are all important in generating the wealth that lines your bosses pockets. Agitate, organize, educate. Talk with your coworkers, build class solidarity. Unionize and give the workers a voice. Together we can secure benefits, fair wages, reasonable work hours, workplace democracy, and eventually worker ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property. It is not enough to just compromise. True democracy, in society and at work, will only come about with the common control of the means of production. To cut out the capitalist entirely and hold the business in common with the workers and your community. To remove the profit incentive and instead distribute services and essential products based on the values of community and cooperation. We must change the world so that all people, regardless of race, age, sexuality, gender, ability, and religion have access to the essentials of life and more. But this change is a revolutionary one. You can start by organizing today!
For tips and tricks regarding organizing go to: https://www.iww.org/organize/learn-more/