Human civilization's economic expansion has been hastened by capitalism. That is undeniable. However, for many years, the instability of this expansion, as well as its quality and the justice with which the system distributes its growing wealth, has been challenged. It's been done most lately through memes.
That is exactly what the 'General Strike' Facebook page is about. This enjoyable and thought-provoking online initiative, which addresses both capitalism's theoretical framework and how it affects people's everyday lives, has proven to be relevant to over 50,000 individuals who follow it. Let's take a closer look at what's within.
One of the key reasons why we may say capitalism is failing, as Richard V. Reeves, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, pointed out, is that it cannot pay a good wage to individuals who seek a job.
"There was work before markets, before even money," Reeves wrote. "Work was probably certainly not seen as a separate, segmented component of life by our earliest ancestors, who were hunting and gathering. However, humans have always had to work in order to survive. Even in the twenty-first century, we seek for a living income through employment, as seen by the push for a 'living wage.'"
"Industrial capitalism cut and diced human time into clearly defined 'work' and 'leisure' parts. Work was then wrapped and packaged into one of the modern era's most essential inventions: a job. From that point forward, the employees' quest was for a job that provided maximum benefits, particularly in terms of salaries, in exchange for the lowest expenses placed on them, particularly in terms of time," Reeves stated.
"The entire capitalist system, according to Karl Marx, was inextricably stacked against workers." Regardless of the trade unions' short-term triumphs, the capitalists maintained ultimate control over workers' time. And the worker would be estranged from their job for the rest of their lives.
Slavoj iek, a Slovenian philosopher and researcher, believes that western culture needs to get rid of the attitude of powerlessness. During the Occupy Wall Street protests, iek used an old Communist joke to demonstrate his argument.
The scholar began the joke by saying, "A person was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia." "Knowing that censors would read his mail, he advised his friends, 'Let's establish a code.' It is true what I say if you receive a letter from me written in blue ink. It is false if it is written in red ink.' His buddies receive the first letter after a month. Everything is in shades of blue. 'Everything is lovely here,' it states in this letter.
"We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom."
That is exactly what the 'General Strike' Facebook page is about. This enjoyable and thought-provoking online initiative, which addresses both capitalism's theoretical framework and how it affects people's everyday lives, has proven to be relevant to over 50,000 individuals who follow it. Let's take a closer look at what's within.
One of the key reasons why we may say capitalism is failing, as Richard V. Reeves, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, pointed out, is that it cannot pay a good wage to individuals who seek a job.
"There was work before markets, before even money," Reeves wrote. "Work was probably certainly not seen as a separate, segmented component of life by our earliest ancestors, who were hunting and gathering. However, humans have always had to work in order to survive. Even in the twenty-first century, we seek for a living income through employment, as seen by the push for a 'living wage.'"
"Industrial capitalism cut and diced human time into clearly defined 'work' and 'leisure' parts. Work was then wrapped and packaged into one of the modern era's most essential inventions: a job. From that point forward, the employees' quest was for a job that provided maximum benefits, particularly in terms of salaries, in exchange for the lowest expenses placed on them, particularly in terms of time," Reeves stated.
"The entire capitalist system, according to Karl Marx, was inextricably stacked against workers." Regardless of the trade unions' short-term triumphs, the capitalists maintained ultimate control over workers' time. And the worker would be estranged from their job for the rest of their lives.
Slavoj iek, a Slovenian philosopher and researcher, believes that western culture needs to get rid of the attitude of powerlessness. During the Occupy Wall Street protests, iek used an old Communist joke to demonstrate his argument.
The scholar began the joke by saying, "A person was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia." "Knowing that censors would read his mail, he advised his friends, 'Let's establish a code.' It is true what I say if you receive a letter from me written in blue ink. It is false if it is written in red ink.' His buddies receive the first letter after a month. Everything is in shades of blue. 'Everything is lovely here,' it states in this letter.
"We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom."
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