[lbo-talk] Von Hayek was wrong

[Adam Proctor]

Calling someone who works for free a "scab" or calling for ridicule of that person in any way is nothing but a wad of ultra-leftist crap.   Look, we as workers under capitalism are all exploited.  If viewed through a logical economic (and Marxian) lens, there is little difference between those who work for a wage and those who - through economic and social coercion due to the ever precarious nature of the working class under capitalism - are forced to take on an internship-style position in hopes of securing more longterm employment.  The only immediate difference is that the rate of exploitation for the volunteer is much higher--in fact, it's absolute.  By blaming a worker who works for free in order to secure long term employment, you are making two fundamental errors: 
1. You're ignoring the fact that we all work under various rates of exploitation. For at least some of the working day, the products of our labor are being appropriated by someone else (i.e. you're working for free during a portion of your day). 
2. You blame the worker for being forced into accepting the positions that are available on the labor market.  This is a classic tail wags the dog argument, where you are blaming the worker for accepting a choice of options over which he or she has no control.  

So in the hopes of heroically standing up for the working class by calling out scabs for working for free, you have fundamentally disconnected the real conditions of the working class from the actual forces at play in capitalism.  You have created a ghost, a strawman.  In the process you have completely betrayed the only logic whereby we might ever truly understand the workings of capitalism so we might one day defeat it.

So that, my friends, is a load of ultra-leftist crap.