What is inaccurate about the analogy? Some people are living paycheck to paycheck, with no margin for error and employers who seek to maximize control over them. They don’t have as much choice as they deserve and are at the whims of those who don’t treat them as fully human.
Isn’t fighting against this dehumanizing lack of freedom why we are (presumably) in favor of redistributive justice? Or are people just in favor of things like universal health care because you think that is in your personal best interest?
Not apologizing for white LABOR RADICALS who want to use the N Word or make other racially insensitive statements BECUZ MLK AND DOUGLASS GET TO SEZ IT isn’t exactly “least racist” material but you do you Trotsky
Capitalism at its worst relies on trapping workers in an economic situation where they lack freedoms. Slavery is an economic situation where workers have no freedom.
Is my description of capitalism or slavery wrong? If so, why? If my descriptions are accurate, then there are similarities there that allow for one to make an analogy between the two.
Here’s Bernie Sanders talking about wage slavery much more recently than 40 years ago:
Can we stop discussing this bullshit, who cares. Bernie obviously isn’t a racist and obviously is aware of the gravity of slavery. It was an ill-advised thing to say but that’s all. The left spends way too much time parsing what people say rather than what they do.
An analogy is means testing. Liberals will do anything to protect the very very very worst off so they can fuck over the broad swath of just very bad off people and feel righteous about it.
Many labor leaders in the late 19th century compared the plight of newly industrialized workers to slaves. Slavery was still in the memory of most adults at that time. So this “comparison” has been around for over a hundred years in the progressive movement in the United States. (Marx and other earlier writers compared the working class to slaves as well.)
Hopefully, this piece of rhetoric will eventually die off, although the term “wage slavery” still resonates in certain circles.
I can tell you that I’m not a bit upset that people call immigrant detention centers “concentration camps” even though there are no gas chambers and as far as we know, no lampshades made from people.
Video above