US Workers and Consumers and False Consciousness

One nasty thing about capitalism, especially the US variety, is how it destroys the loyalties of workers, consumers and citizens and turns them into corporate stooges. How many rightwing clowns have you met who chortle whenever you complain about how this or that corporation is reaming you?

In America, we have the bizarre spectacle of tens of millions of rightwing consumers who think that businesses royally shafting and ripping the consumer is tres cool! That means that they enjoy getting reamed as consumers by the Corporate Behemoth. That means that they are masochists, their identity as a consumer completely neutered and shot to Hell. That means that as consumers, they have false consciousness.

In America we have the even more bizarre spectacle of tens of millions of workers, usually but not always rightwingers, who think it is awesome that their boss is screwing them day and night year round. They’re getting the equivalent of employee AIDS, but they can’t dig it enough.

The truth is that the US White working class is gone, shot. Most White workers I meet anymore have no consciousness whatsoever. “I’m for the boss!” they pipe up, like someone just shoved a carrot up their rear. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt the boss-man!”

They remind me of terrified, bug-eyed Negro slaves sweating in the fields. “The boss-man is always right, sir! Yessir!”

Under capitalism, workers and owners are enemies, necessarily so. That’s one of the rules of capital.

A worker who identifies with the boss as his best buddy has lost his identity as a worker. He’s also a victim of false consciousness.

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0 thoughts on “US Workers and Consumers and False Consciousness”

  1. And you’re nuts. A “job” is nothing more than a bulk-rate, long term labor trade. When you hire a plumber, are you exploiting him? What if you hire him over a long-term period, say 8 hours a day, dedicated to your building, then it becomes exploitative?

    If you want to say that certain regulations or certain behaviors by firms are “exploitative”, then that’s a wooly and complex debate to get into. But to say that you and your plumber are necessarily enemies is… I don’t even know what it is.

    1. You’re banned, fuckface Libertarian.

      BTW idiot, I’m not the boss of the plumber who I paid to clean my toilet. You fail Economics 101. It’s not an employee – employer relationship dickwad.

      Now fuck off back to Libertarian Land.

  2. Though I find the state of employee relations, blue collar and white collar deplorable, it is ludicrous to blame the concept of ‘capitalism’.

    I’m forced to fork a solid 25% of my income before and after my check before getting to state sales taxes and gasoline and so forth. Talk about exploitation. I certainly have no incentive to do more.

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