This is true, but that good standard of living should come along with an obligation to work, if you are an able-bodied adult. Parasitism has always been a crime in socialist countries. The problem with the “no work, no food” mechanism under capitalism is that it makes unemployment the norm, and employment the exception; i.e., the number of jobs available is always less than the labor pool, and if you don’t happen to get one of those jobs – well, tough kidney beans, citizen, and welcome to the streets. Socialism by contrast makes employment the normal state, and unemployment the exception. You might not have your apartment taken away for not working, but you will certainly be considered lax in fulfilling your official duties, and disciplinary action will be taken.
I completely agree, I just find it a bit uneasy when the line of questioning starts to veer into the gray area of what could be considered “valid employment”. For example, the arts or intellectual pursuits; is being a musician a valid form of employment? What about a freelance artist? Or a writer? Do they provide a necessary service to their country and deserve to be respected and treated the same as a teacher, doctor, or postman? Or are they hedonistic leeches that do nothing all day while pursuing their “hobby” and feeding off of the work of their fellow countryman?
Its these gray areas where the question of “leeches” become tenuous and subjective, and is very easily influenced by reactionary, anti-intellectual, and capitalist mindsets and institutional frameworks. We must strive to avoid these pitfalls with a materialist worldview.
Fair enough. We should remember, though, that most actually existing socialist countries have promoted artists and intellectuals in a big way; the USSR in particular was a cultural titan. I think that in many ways, the cult of “productivity” one sees in capitalist society is a form of propaganda and overcompensation, a way in which we convince ourselves that our basically inefficient and unproductive mode of social organization is in fact on the cutting edge of economic progress.
Even if this actually the thought process of these people, which I think are in an extremely marginal minority, such thinking can only be the product of their material conditions, namely the necessity to adjust to exploitative and wasteful nature of capitalism. Since the eight-hour day was established in Germany in 1918, there have been groundbreaking advances in technology and specifically automation, filtering through every field of business, which mean that there simply is not enough demand for work within the private sector for everyone to take up full-time jobs. But instead of splitting the work up so that everybody would work for, say, 5 hours a week, or take up investments so that some of their workers can pursue nobler callings, it is much more profitable for the capitalists to simply lay off large parts of the workforce instead, which then have to join the “army of unemployed”, to use a well-known metaphor. Because destitution begets rebellion, however, the welfare state then has to provide them with amenities such as government money to keep the system in place. Like libertarian societies, social democracies are also ultimately fashioned for the benefit of the capitalists, with the difference that cash must accomplish in the latter what ideological delusion does in the former.
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People should be able to have a good standard of living for free.
This is true, but that good standard of living should come along with an obligation to work, if you are an able-bodied adult. Parasitism has always been a crime in socialist countries. The problem with the “no work, no food” mechanism under capitalism is that it makes unemployment the norm, and employment the exception; i.e., the number of jobs available is always less than the labor pool, and if you don’t happen to get one of those jobs – well, tough kidney beans, citizen, and welcome to the streets. Socialism by contrast makes employment the normal state, and unemployment the exception. You might not have your apartment taken away for not working, but you will certainly be considered lax in fulfilling your official duties, and disciplinary action will be taken.
I completely agree, I just find it a bit uneasy when the line of questioning starts to veer into the gray area of what could be considered “valid employment”. For example, the arts or intellectual pursuits; is being a musician a valid form of employment? What about a freelance artist? Or a writer? Do they provide a necessary service to their country and deserve to be respected and treated the same as a teacher, doctor, or postman? Or are they hedonistic leeches that do nothing all day while pursuing their “hobby” and feeding off of the work of their fellow countryman?
Its these gray areas where the question of “leeches” become tenuous and subjective, and is very easily influenced by reactionary, anti-intellectual, and capitalist mindsets and institutional frameworks. We must strive to avoid these pitfalls with a materialist worldview.
Fair enough. We should remember, though, that most actually existing socialist countries have promoted artists and intellectuals in a big way; the USSR in particular was a cultural titan. I think that in many ways, the cult of “productivity” one sees in capitalist society is a form of propaganda and overcompensation, a way in which we convince ourselves that our basically inefficient and unproductive mode of social organization is in fact on the cutting edge of economic progress.
Not if it’s on the backs of the imperial perifery
Not if it’s on the backs of the imperial periphery
Even if this actually the thought process of these people, which I think are in an extremely marginal minority, such thinking can only be the product of their material conditions, namely the necessity to adjust to exploitative and wasteful nature of capitalism. Since the eight-hour day was established in Germany in 1918, there have been groundbreaking advances in technology and specifically automation, filtering through every field of business, which mean that there simply is not enough demand for work within the private sector for everyone to take up full-time jobs. But instead of splitting the work up so that everybody would work for, say, 5 hours a week, or take up investments so that some of their workers can pursue nobler callings, it is much more profitable for the capitalists to simply lay off large parts of the workforce instead, which then have to join the “army of unemployed”, to use a well-known metaphor. Because destitution begets rebellion, however, the welfare state then has to provide them with amenities such as government money to keep the system in place. Like libertarian societies, social democracies are also ultimately fashioned for the benefit of the capitalists, with the difference that cash must accomplish in the latter what ideological delusion does in the former.