As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for corporations but scraps for employees and the working class.
“It’s time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay,” Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed as he cited a 480% increase in worker productivity since the 40-hour workweek was first established in 1940.
“It’s time,” he continued, “that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities—and less stress.”
Concessions are given, the radicalization stops as the standards of living improve. People are satisfied and don’t pursue the deeper systemic issues. Once the radicalism has died down, efforts are made to remove those concessions. Sometimes it does not work, a lot of the times it does. The rise of neoliberalism was one of these efforts, the most succesful so far.
They don’t evaporate, they get repealed. Tons of things do. Roe v Wade, police defunding, literal underage labour laws got repealed this year. The Paris Agreement almost worked, but thankfully protesting brought it back.
I’m not talking about slavery. Every fundamental working right we have comes from fighting. The 40-hour work week and 8-hour work day, the abolition of child labour, the minimum wage, pensions, sick leave, paid overtime, the right to strike… even weekends are thanks to fighting. Look it up if you don’t believe me.
You may notice some of these things have been dissapearing recently, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. They were concessions given to us so we stopped being a threat. They don’t perceive us as one anymore, and so they’re trying to gain more power for themselves by stripping us of the things we earned. And part of this threat reduction is precisely the insisting on working within this “democratic” system, which will never meaningfully challenge them, because it is for them, by them, and controlled by them.
Will change is a constant, and there’s always going to be some people who want to gain power for themselves for their own sakes to the detriment of others, and you have to fight back against that.
It sounds like you’re so cynical about things that you’re saying it’s not even trying, not worth fighting for. Sincerely if you’re not just someone trying to reshape the narrative away from activism, I would suggest, as the Internet likes to say, to go outside and ‘touch grass’.
For the record I’m not saying you get to utopia and then you stop, the job is done. You got to fight for what you have to keep it.
But to not fight that’s just defeatist, and not something I’ll never do, and no one else should either.
I’m not being defeatist at all. Quite on the contrary, I’m telling you to fight.
My point is that fighting within the system never works. Everything we achieve that way eventually gets taken away from us. As long as the ruling class is still in power, they simply benefit the most from granting us as little as possible, and so they will always search for ways to do just that, and to take away things they previously granted us if they think we wont be threatening enough to take them back.
That’s why I am saying, do not hire lobbyists or email politicians or something. Or if you do, make sure it’s not the only thing you do. Join an org. Join an union, a party, a syndicate, organize. That is what has brought, brings and will bring real change. Fight against the system.
You know, there is a range of options available, between doing nothing, and full out anarchy/war.
And I’ve given you a real example of when it has worked. You’ve just ignored it, twice.
Louis Rossman on YouTube, go look him up, and watch his videos about helping farmers with the right to repair by hiring a lobbyist.
I didn’t ignore it. I said what we achieve working within the system is a temporal concession and thus it’s not actually a reliable and deep change. It’s good, but it shouldn’t be the only thing we do.
But don’t you think that’s the first step, to start in the system? To not ignore that option?
We have proof that it works (nothing is forever), that it’s doable, so wouldn’t that be the first step, instead of outside of the system extremism?
I’ve seen countless times of things we need being completely ignored by the system. When it’s inconvenient enough it will simply never get passed. We can fight for it, and win, but if the same system remains in place, once again, what we won was a concession that can and will be taken away at the nearest chance. You showing me an example of a rich youtuber followed by millions of people being able to do it doesn’t change what the situation is like for regular people like you and me. You can do both if you want to, just don’t think emailing a bunch of rich aristocrats is going to ever have a reasonable chance of being meaningful. Seriously, if you want to make real change, join an org.
Also, “extremism” just means things that go against the status quo. It’s not a synonym for “bad”.