Thesis Paper: Introduction to the Critique of Capitalism

https://dersperling.noblogs.org/post/2023/03/03/thesis-paper-introduction-to-the-critique-of-capitalism/

#Capitalism #Property #Exchange #Money #Capital #Labor #Wage #WageLabor #Competition #Market

The idea that contemporary American lawn-care standards are the result of brainwashing is politically naive. There's nothing voluntary about lawns. Lawns are an essential tool in contemporary capital's violent urban labor control strategy.

Most American cities have mandatory lawn-care standards in their muni codes. Such laws allow cities to unilaterally bring yards up to code and bill residents for the work. Whatever the purposes behind such laws in the past, now one function is to force people into the cash economy. (1) There are dozens of laws like this, requiring residents to clear sidewalks, paint fences, shovel snow, plant specific trees, and so on.

Anyone who has enough money can pay other people to do this work, but people living on the financial edge either do it themselves in addition to job, self, and family care responsibilites or else the City does the work, bills the resident,(2) adds interest, and so on. This is too much of a loss for many people, so they make sure the damn work gets done.

If they don't, the unpaid bills pile up and the City will confiscate the property to pay them. If the residents won't leave the cops will make them leave. At this stage of American capitalism lawn care standards are enforced at gunpoint except, of course, for rich people.

QED

-------------------------

(1) I believe this is akin to what @HeavenlyPossum calls a "tollbooth", but I won't speak for them.

(2) Or possibly the landlord. I feel like this is variable across cities and also probably subject to modification in lease terms.

#DownWithLawns #ClimateChange #Environment #Anarchism #Capitalism #Lawns #BillHeavey #Tollbooths #WageLabor #LaborControl

The US Civil War can be fruitfully seen as a dispute between capitalists over which was the more sustainable system of labor control. Northern capitalists won, which proves they were right about the nonsustainability of slavery.

Slavery isn't sustainable compared to coerced wage labor, but while it works it's way more profitable. Which doesn't mean they wouldn't chain you up in their fields and factories tomorrow morning if they could pull it off. They can't, but that's the only reason they don't.

#Slavery #WageLabor #WageLabour #Capitalism #Labor #LaborControl #CivilWar #USCivilWar #NineteenthCentury #Abolition

I have ZERO FUCKING DOLLARS on my last check before Christmas because my hours have been cut to nothing, and my job speaks to us like they're REWARDING us with time off, instead of starving us.

#antiwork #anticapitalism #wagelabor #mutualaid #crowdfund #workerrights

Let’s imagine some feudal serfs.

They’re told by their lord to pay him a share of their crops each year as rents in exchange for permission to live on and farm his estate—his “property.”

The serfs sustain both their lord and themselves by their own labor, living off whatever product is left over after they paid their rents.

Now let’s imagine feudalism is suddenly abolished and the lord’s manor is converted from feudal to private property. The serfs are suddenly free to do as they please!

But the freed serfs find themselves in a pickle: all of the nearby productive land they could farm is owned by the ex-lord and his ex-lord buddies. “Get off my private property,” he tells the ex-serfs. They are, after all, trespassing on his private property.

1/4

#capitalism #anticapitalism #wages #rents #wagelabor #feudalism #capitalistcritique #property #privateproperty #theviolenceinherentinthesystem