Quote:
Originally Posted by microbet
Is it your contention that in 1867, when Das Capital was written, that labor was not in fact an oppressed class?
Absolutely utterly yes it wasn't? Not in the sense Marx intended it at all? And it wasn't a class to begin with, that's ALREADY Marxist framing (!!!!)
There is no oppression in voluntary exchanges, labor is so different within all the kinds of arrangements lumping it all togheter is absurd and loses any descriptive power, and so on.
Servants, indentured or otherwise existed, and those were oppressed to some degrees depending on details.
But the person free to choose between farm or factory, and within those two large categories between employers, oppressed? It doesn't make any sense to claim that, it's a void word without the Marxist framework.
Under the Marxist LTV framework capital is "stealing" from them so magically they become all oppressed.
That malthusian dynamics up until recently (compared to Marx times) ended up creating conditions for which the vast majority of people lived very badly, sure.
That's not "oppression", that's just a society where productivity is low, resources are scarce, and almost everyone is poor