[lbo-talk] Agency and Capitalism

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Fri Dec 31 10:14:13 PST 2010


On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 10:53 AM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> I understand. But it seems strange to say that a worker chooses to work.
>
> Can we say that one chooses to work or to starve?

It's not about choice; it's about force.

Only Carrol and Angelus seem to get the non-autonomy of labor (and though they may dispute it, in the process they repudiate, or at least critically complicate, marxist writ about capitalism being the struggle between two classes). Saying that workers' working makes capitalism work seems controversial only if you take it as a moral statement. But it's not. We all, even the non-laborers, reproduce capitalism every day. So what? It's not a failure of will or consciousness. It's how capitalism works.



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