From Owning Humans to Renting Humans to Actual Human Liberation

It seems that the right of all workers to be equally and indiscriminately exploited is the end-all-be-all for the liberal ‘left.’ Indeed, the hallmark of bourgeois social movements for the last 70 years has been the struggle against discrimination (and for equal exploitation) at the workplace and in society at large. This remains the political horizon and the limit of bourgeois liberal political imagination and necessarily leads to an agender, color-blind neoliberal approach to securing labor. The dominant narrative on the right remains “If they (or you) would just try harder, be more resilient, then…” while on the left it remains “Oppressed people have a longer race to run so they have to try even harder, be even more resilient!” Both offer impeccable logic. Try harder = do better. Oppression = less opportunity. Both fall short of a systematic analysis of labor under capital.

While the ultra-rightists seek to leave everything to the market, the center and center-leftists want the state to make amends for historic and ongoing oppression so the oppressed, too, may have their ‘fair’ shot at success, or even a decent chance of survival. Actual leftists want a society that does not force people to struggle in order to survive. Are we really free if we have to work all the time?

We want a society that guarantees all individuals a livable and even an enjoyable life. We do not agree with the capitalist logic that a human should need to be resilient in order to satisfy basic needs for their self, their loved-ones, or their community. This does not mean that we disagree with work. However, it does mean that we disagree with work as an exploitative enterprise under which a boss or master may rent a slave rather own them. Very few of us have the time to reflect on labor under capitalism much less to question its moral legitimacy and economic efficiency.

We tend to be too busy alternately working to make strangers money, worrying about making enough money for ourselves, and numbing our existential dread with overconsumption at our local “happy” hour or during an allegedly therapeutic shopping spree or by engaging in mass democracy via America’s Got Talent. We do not want to think more than our 9 to 5 forces us. Few of us want to question our marginalization under capitalism so we seek to make our voices heard through our ‘consumer power’ which neoliberalism reduces to $1 = 1 vote, rather than 1 person = 1 vote.

There is a solution to these problems, and it requires a qualitative social and economic shift of our cultures current mentalité regarding labor and democracy. Nearly all of us agree (minus Rep. Sage Dixon and Sen. Scott Grow and many others in Idaho’s legislature) that more democracy is better than less democracy. Democracies are more innovative, more efficient, and more free the conventional wisdom dictates. However, if this were true, and I generally believe that it is, then why do we go to work under miniature monarchs? Why do we usurp so much of our power for so much of our lives to a workplace where, despite the propagandist training videos shoved down Walmart employees’ throats, we simply are not heard, not respected, and not valued?

We work under people who in large part have a form of sovereign power reminiscent of kings and queens. Our bosses in no uncertain terms have the power to decide how and if we live our lives. They determine if we go homeless or hungry or if our kids go to college. They also have a power reminiscent of a dictator. They determine how we spend most of the time of our adult lives and how we behave. The model of the state as parent should be replaced with that of the patriarchal boss. Like the family, there is no vote on procedure nor what to do with the profit of the enterprise.

After all, all profit is unpaid wages. If I earn $12 in an hour but make Walmart $100 (or $1000) in that hour, what entitles them to that money? It was my labor, my time. Shouldn’t we get to decide what to do with what we produce? What entitles so many wealthy elites the right to claim they got rich off hard work? It is our hard work. The value of my labor to my employer in this scenario is $100 or $1000, or whatever I make them. Yet, the value they pay me for is $12 for that hour. How is that anything but exploitation? Where does that money go? Some goes to bureaucrats, but a lot goes to the Waltons, who make more money in a minute than a Walmart worker makes in a year.

Furthermore, most people who work today do so to survive. Sure, some people love what they do to survive, but regardless of whether you love or hate your job, you are still forced to work for the betterment of your bosses in order to survive. If you don’t, you go homeless, go hungry, and are arrested for vagrancy. This is why most wage labor is essentially wage slavery and sits on a spectrum with other forms of slavery, such as the chattel slavery. Is this really how labor looks under a supposedly ‘democratic’ society? Should the aim of the left really be to make sure women and men, whites and minorities receive the same fraction of the fortunes they make for the rich?

We disagree. We must begin to transition from this exploitative form of labor. For examples, we may look at Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party proposal to give workers “The Right of First Refusal” which states that all existing enterprises may continue to operate as they currently due, but if they attempt to close a site, relocate, or declare bankruptcy, the business must offer the workers the opportunity to buy the assets first. If 50% + 1 vote ‘yes’ then the site is theirs and the government will loan them the money to keep the site open and it will be run as a cooperative, where the workers hire and fire the managers and profits are shared. Just as Adam Smith found workers do better if they are paid, so too will workers be more productive and creative if they are empowered.

This is where the liberal left becomes the revolutionary left. This is economic democracy. And as the undue influence of the wealthy in our politics make clear, from Citizens United to payday lender Money Trees sponsored SB 1159 which would have taken away our constitutional right to ballot initiatives, it is ever more apparent that democracy is incompatible with capitalism. It is long past the time for a political revolution! It is the time for democratic socialism!

Such a policy will allow for a qualitative shift in the nature of labor in this society, it will erode poverty, and it will democratize the space where the majority of us spend most of our adult lives, thus allowing for the liberated construction by our community of actual human freedom.

This is why we have founded North Idaho Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). We believe that we can and should live in a society that cares for its members. One that, to start, provides affordable, quality education, that ensures accessible health care, and that guarantees decent paying jobs! Please find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @NorthIdahoDSA.

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Daniel Radford is the founder of North Idaho Democratic Socialists of America.