[lbo-talk] scab pride

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at dodo.com.au
Tue Mar 2 15:43:50 PST 2004


I see that the scab justifies his scabbing on the premise that the wages system is a "system free of coercion". The premise is only true to the extent that the wage worker is free to reject all offers of wage work, a freedom which is abhorrent to the employing class. In all capitalist societies this kind of freedom (for workers) in unspeakable, if not actually unthinkable. On the other hand, oddly enough, the reverse is true for the capitalist class, the notion that members of the capitalist class should be denied the freedom to refuse to work for anyone else, or at all, is as unspeakable as suggesting that members of the working class be entitled to that freedom.

Our friend the scab hits the nail squarely on the head when he declares that "Freedom is the right to make choices without coercion." But precisely because it is a thought-crime to believe that workers should genuinely have any such freedom, the poor fellow can't grasp that he lacks such freedom. Except in the sense that he, like the workers whose jobs he has taken, has the freedom to starve.

His choice to accept less than the non-scabs would for the same work is not free of coercion (unless starving in the streets is what you want.)

What's more, it is not even a choice, unless in the highly unlikely event that he was offered the other option, of working for the higher wages demanded by the worker whose job he took, but refused this on the principle that it was more than he thought the job was worth. Such principles are rare at the best of times, in scabs such principles are rarer than teeth in hens

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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