Tag Archives: wage labor

Karl Marx chronicled and contributed to the political economy of the working class. He did not invent, conclude or supersede it.He did not invent, conclude or supersede it. In his Inaugural Address to the International Working Men’s Association, Marx celebrated the first victory of the political economy of the working class, the passage, in 1847, of the Ten Hours' Bill: This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labor raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened...

The rules of the global economy are rigged against those who have to work to earn a living, and in favour of multinational corporations and the ultra-rich. It is no accident that, as Oxfam has revealed, the richest 1% own more wealth than the rest of humanity combined. This is inequality by design. The world is facing a huge decent work deficit, and the rules of the global economy need to change. The just-so story of economic liberalism is that economics is a natural science and economics...

"Immiseration" has a nice quality to it and is less emotionally loaded than "exploitation," which is now associated with "Marxism" in the pejorative sense in capitalist countries like the US. It’s clear that, for decades now, American workers have been falling further and further behind. And there’s simply no justification for this sorry state of affairs—nothing that can rationalize or excuse the growing gap between the majority of people who work for a living and the tiny group at the...