cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3934309

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I've been thinking about how marxism might be a reasonable guide for how to make some pretty big life choices lately, and thought I'd share.

There are three broad categories I'm placing work into at the moment: capital intensive, non-capital controlled capital intensive, and labour intensive. I'll explain each below, but the basic idea is that this is about capital accumulation and management. Most of it is intuitive, but I've found it interesting to frame it in a marxist way.

Capital intensive jobs are fairly straightforward: we know that most big companies, be they banks, tech, large manufacturers etc, are both capital intensive, and capital controlled. By that, I mean they embody large amounts of human skill in their accrued capital, and that they are managed by the capitalist class. A car manufacturer, for instance, is an example of this, insofar as they'll have de-skilled their workforce to some extent by applying Taylorist principles and embodying some skills into equipment, to automate difficult or expensive tasks.

Non-capital controlled capital intensive jobs are similar, requiring generally a larger organisation which has fixed assets or complicated enough operations that is controlled either by the state or a co-operative. It requires roughly the same skills to survive and isn't terribly interesting in and of itself, usually. Examples might be civil service departments.

The last group is fairly interesting to me at the moment, and prompted this thought. The labour intensive group is things where there isn't really capital accumulation at all, and skilled labour is the main source of "value add". Skilled builders, craftspeople, anyone who can add value to a material or process simply because they're good at something, with only very simple tools. These kinds of jobs are comparatively rare, and probably the kind of thing luddites wanted to preserve. There is an accrual of skill and experience, but not capital. I've found this group interesting because some jobs that fit this description don't have to interact with accrued capital at all.

That last part is interesting because it begs the question of whether or not there is any mileage in seeking to "decapitalise" certain kinds of work. That's to say, successfully navigating life in a capitalist economy, while eschewing the use and accrual of capital at work.

The way I'm thinking about the above, it feels like we (as marxists) can choose to either invest ourselves in capital-adjacent work that might or might not be controlled by capitalists, or we can aim to work in decapitalised industries. The requirements are, I suspect, very different, and I wonder if the embedded values might be as well.

Just a thought: I'd be keen to know what people think. It is a fresh thought, to me at least, that skilled decapitalised work might be a reasonable starting point in movement building. I suspect it is tacitly what Green minded people are up to, and although it does have a whiff of luddism, I wonder if there's a place for it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1485181

bourgeoisie don't care that poor people die...who would have thought?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3749617

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People’s ideas are intimately linked to the sort of lives they are able to live. Take, for instance, ‘selfishness’. Present day capitalist society breeds selfishness – even in people who continually try to put other people first. A worker who wants to do their best for their children, or to give their parents something on top of their pension, finds the only way is to struggle continually against other people – to get a better job, more overtime, to be first in the queue for redundancy. In such a society you cannot get rid of ‘selfishness’ or ‘greediness’ merely by changing the minds of individuals.

edit: read theory, comrades, it is worth it.

While the communist party of India (marxist) , is not in power as of now , they have had history of winning elections, however there is a fatal flaw in their ideology , when it comes to fighting against opperession , while they agree upon existence of class disparity and want to work on the goal of removing it , the oldschool communists do not recognise caste system. For those who are not aware , caste system is a problem specific to indian subcontinent , it is like a dominant class of people who are called the upper castes ( tho in minority) , had deprived the lower castes , into not allowing them to get educated or get any other work that they were assigned at birth , by the family name they were born in . That kept the lower castes poor and deprived for ages. The CPI(M) is mostly flooded with the upper caste and do not recognise this systemetic opperssion that has been in place since ages !