work has been guttered by the capitalist system. Thought I’d explain and write down my thoughts a bit more.

Subsistence

Back in the day, the pre-industrial day, or even the pre-technological day, labour was entirely subsistence. I don’t think I need to back this up with evidence, since it’s a fairly well understood phenomenon. Something that will crop up again is the family unit. It’s not the idea of the atomic family popularised in the 1950s, but a group of people who work together and share resources.

Under pre-production subsistence, the family unit produced everything it needed to live. Food, tools, housing was all built and maintained by the family unit.

Subsistence farming during the middle ages involved people farming for themselves, with some produce being sent to the cities.

Work

Production and labour departs from subsistence by essentially letting one person specialise into a certain production, and provide that to society as a whole instead of just the family unit. One person, or a group of people in a factory, can create high quantities of goods for the whole of society in a manner much more efficient than a family only producing for itself.

This began with tools probably, it could be some other good but the point largely still stands. One person gets really good at producing tools so that they can not only make tools for their family but for their society. As a result of this one person doing tool production, their family looses a section of labour dedicated to producing food, but in return for their tool production they receive the fruits of another’s labour in pay, in the early days this would be food. And by producing tools, this person increases the efficiency of farming to the point where more people can experiment and go into other modes of production.

This is a somewhat naïve view. In the ancient times, slaves would be overworked to prop up the lives of philosophers, who would produce technological and societal innovations such as mathematics and engineering works. I’m mostly concerned with industrial and pre-industrial work.

The industrial system is the exponentiation of the above system. With an industrial machine, it takes very few people to produce a lot of goods. For example, the factory worker plays their part in producing, say, steel for society. In return, society provides them with everything they need to live.

Under capitalism and indeed feudal systems as well, this exchange happens in currency. It represents your contribution to the economy in your labour.

Under modern industrialism, we produce so much individually that our societies can hold up a massive class of philosophers. We produce a vast excess so that we can fund millions of students, who when it is their turn will increase production’s capacity even more. We produce enough to afford industries dedicated to taking care of people who cannot work, our old, ill, and disabled. We this all because we are humans who care for each other.

This exchange takes the form of currency. Our labour, and its produce, is divided to three entities and given to them through this currency. A portion is given to ourselves, because it is our labour, and we deserve the produce of society in return for contributing for it. A portion is given to our government, who is supposed to redistribute it to society’s dependents: students, parents, the sick, and the disabled. And a portion, quite a large portion under the modern disfigurement of labour, is given to some guy, the owner of the private company you’re working for, or the shareholders of the public company.

Isn’t it obvious that this third person, the private owner and public shareholder, deserves none of our labour contribution?

Many people do work, including these owners. Middle management positions exist to uphold this structure, and they are paid for their contribution to society, but their payment is excess and often gathered by the labour of their underlings. And the people at the top might do work, but their work in no way contributes enough to society to justify the exceeding excess they live their lives in.

The root of this issue is private ownership. People are allowed to take a cut of a labourer’s work, it’s justified in law. By abolishing private ownership, these people who are taking massive portions of our work are cut off. They, then, should be forced to actually produce for society, or become a dependent of it if they cannot produce. Without taking their massive cut of labour, we will be producing more than enough to uphold their lives to a high standard, and uplift everyone who suffers from them taking their cut to a comfortable life.

And we will work because it produces for society, because it is what we, as a societal unit, require.

society is a family unit, and under capitalism it is toxic.