One strength of the proletariat that always touted is that we're the majority. And at least among the working population, that is true, today more than ever. Wage slavery is the most common existence n the West, and probably globally.
But it seems to me this is a double edged sword, I will explain. I am a worker who earns £24,000 a year. The average exploitation rate in Britain is around 50% (certainly higher these days as this figure is from the 2000's and wages haven't risen with productivity), which means for half the 8 hour working day you are producing surplus for the capitalist.
This means that for 4 hours a day every working day, you are a slave. In the literal sense. And yet, we don't think like this and never would. And the reason is most likely because all day everyday you are surrounded by people who are also slaves. This enables this soothing ideology where you only compare yourself to the people around you, and since most people are wage workers, surely wage work isn't really all bad? It can't be so bad, what are we complaining about, you go to work, you have a chat with your fellow workmates and go home to a workmate. This isn't slavery, its just the natural way of things for the majority of people you will ever know. You have no special reason to complain nor are you specially hard done to.
And I fear this is a problem with the proletariat being the majority. As long as they are, its always going to be easy to say "well, my life isn't so bad compared to…." when you are literally a slave. You don't understand; 30,000 people in Britain literally have 60 slaves assigned to them at all times and you are one of those slaves if are a wage worker in Britain. And yet we think its so normal we don't do anything to combat it, let alone stop it.
>This enables this soothing ideology where you only compare yourself to the people around you, and since most people are wage workers, surely wage work isn't really all bad?
Deeply wrong and nonsensical take, are you living under a rock? What do you think the past decade and a half of hype surrounding the so called "gig economy", or crypto, or "financial literacy", or "passive income", or meme stocks, or "escape the matrix", or half a dozen other scams have been all about?
People are more desperate than ever, more aware than ever that the game is rigged, that their quality of life will deteriorate, and that they'll likely never retire; there's a multibillion dollar scam industry thriving on that desperation and anxiety.
The reason why people are not becoming politically aware of why their lives sucks is because the so called vanguard, the most advanced elements of the working class, are all a bunch of socially stunted retards who can't hold a normal conversation to save their lives.
>>2243606>gig economyMy parents are locksmiths, and while it barely covers the bills, barely is still successfully.
Though given how close to broke we are, probably doesn't work at scale.
>>2243567>The average exploitation rate in Britain is around 50% I really wish it was that simple. You can't really devise some "average rate of exploitation" as the amount porky takes away from you.
First of if you're using bourg economic statistics that number would certainly be lower but irrelevant.
This is because exploitation is only marginally about what the amount that is produced but more like what it produced. There's certainly a lot of production that directly wastes labor by making luxuries that only the ruling class can afford. But that's not where the most waste is either.
It's about building and maintaining the infrastructure of exploitation itself that wastes so much. The whole service economy thing is basically just that.
So if you have to put a number on it it'll be higher than 50/50 and we'll only really know how bad it was in hindsight.