| This article gets very close, but ultimately fails to get to the root of things. It’s like a liberal facsimile of a radical analysis. This can be seen clearly with logic like > Lousy, underpaid work is not an indispensable, if regrettable, byproduct of capitalism Actually, it is. Market competition in the search for a steady profit pressures capitalists to reduce wages as much as possible, and eliminate any human aspects from work that are not strictly necessary for production. So, definitionally lousy, poorly paid work[^0]. Workers can fight back against this pressure, but it’s a Sisyphean task. As this article explains, it’s difficult and any gains will be eroded over time and a new generation of workers will have to fight again. The real solution is to construct systems (technologies and institutions) that can perform the functions of capital (coordination of production and distribution, giving people something to do with their day), and then eliminate capital as a social process. Generating poverty (not to mention war, ecological destruction, etc.) is just an intrinsic consequence of the dynamics of capital and will be with us until we do away with it. [^0]: I didn’t say underpaid because on average all jobs in capitalism are underpaid: profit comes from paying people less than they produce… |