The bourgeoisie in my country have pushed the euphemism of “working capital” as something that needs protection from wealth tax. By inseparably connecting capital with jobs, they push the narrative that you cannot tax wealth without removing jobs and consequently hurting the working class. They paid for research groups to prove this connection, but what their research actually showed was that wealth tax creates jobs due to incentivizing keeping profits within the companies they own. The audacity to think owning the means of production is a privilege they should enjoy special treatment to keep is beyond me, but even so, this type of rhetoric keeps gaining ground.
What is the propaganda they are pushing on you, and how can socialist policies prevail if reason loses to made up words changing the narrative?
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The entire managing class peddles euphemisms for a living, and has done so for generations.
My favorite remains “Human Resources”.
Also “consumer”.
Not quite sure I understand the connotations of this one fully. Could you explain it a little for me?
I see the common reference to working people as “consumers” as emphasizing their role as passive recipients of goods and services who serve primarily to put money into the capitalist system. To call people consumers de-emphasizes and obscures these same people’s role as the producers of value, suggesting that value is produced elsewhere.
Got to love how they are abusing the power asymmetry and still make it out to be that the system is implemented to help us.
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Yes
The Swedish word for employer used to be arbetsköpare , ie work buyer
Today they rebranded it to arbetsgivare , or work giver. Fucking disgusting. And no one even think about it. Pointing it out is sometime an aha moment for some. Linguistics is a fuckin warzone.
On our side of the border “arbeidsgjevar” has been in use as far as I remember. I like “arbeidskjøpar” better too and will use it exclusively from now on. Thanks :)
Actually seems I had wrong on the history here , both have been used from the start.
“Work giver” is fucking rich. For most of my life, porky has been limiting jobs and just outright refusing to hire anyone leaving so many people in a generation locked out of living all together because porky got so arbitrarily picky one day and never stopped.
The Finnish word also translates to ”work giver”, and it’s probably a direct borrowing from Swedish.
Not as bad as the Finnish word for landlord translating to ”rent giver”, though.
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Domestic work is work on the same level as all other work. Proletariat is probably a better denomination for the class (though I personally use the terms interchangeably) since it is not so much distinguished by all the members of the class having regular jobs, but by them not being part of the class that can make capital gains by exploiting other’s work potential. I agree that class solidarity is a huge issue though and I think the idea of attributing not having a regular job to laziness is propaganda with intent of pushing this wedge further.
“Human” as a deceptive descriptor for dehumanizing concepts, practices, or framing of people. “Human resources” is the most common version of that but it doesn’t stop there. When some rich asshole talks about “human” this and “human” that or how they want “fellow humans” to “be better humans” or whatever it’s pretty much always a thin creepy mask over some surveillance state shit or social manipulation.
Reddit had that “remember the human” slogan while normalizing and making excuses for all sorts of cryptofascist shit on that site, including thinly-veiled targeted harassment campaigns trying to drive vulnerable people into self-harm, and all of that was declared to be “not against the rules” and therefore permissible.
That’s an excellent question and there are so many. The most recent and prevalent has to be “la valeur travail”, the work value or the work virtue I guess are closest -but it really is untranslatable because it is deliberately so fuzzy. The bourgeoisie is trying hard to turn it into a sort of national and personal pride, to sugarcoat labor until people are begging to be let in on it.
I think there is always something ominous about talking of grand qualities the populace should embody. Trying to spin wanting better work conditions and fair compensation to some kind of ungrateful immoral thing is equally bad.
Exactly, it is delegitimizing so people forget their worth
Here in Mexico is very common for employers to ask us to “ponernos la camiseta” (put on the team jersey). I believe this has football connotations, but I thinks it means the same as taking one for the team. It is mostly used when the employer, manager, sr manager, etc. requests us to do more than we are paid for, e.g. to work longer hours, work on weekends, take on two people jobs, etc.
Always a team/family until you ask for a raise instead of them taking out extra profit.
“Grindset”
Yeah you’re living life up with your eighty hour week at two minimum wage jobs bro
Imagine grinding anything other than the bones of billionaires.
well quiet quitting is the new hotness.
If they want me to perform above monkey level, they need to provide more than peanuts.
I hate the word “content” and the title “content creator”. It emphasizes the platform/publisher as the actual product and implies anything on it is just interchangeable, vague filling. Is Steven King a content creator for Simon & Schuste?
“Middle class” as a way to pretend that workers, petit bourgeoisie, managers and small capitalists are one homogenous group.
What do you mean by petite bourgeoisie and small capitalist? Thanks :)
From Wikipedia:
Although members of the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labor of others, they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the haute bourgeoisie.
Essentially they are small business owners who employ a few people. Although an owner of a small shop with a few employees does not exclusively sell their labor power for survival, they also do not really own the means of production. As a class they usually identify with the higher bourgeoisie class, but they are not playing on the same level field.
Very interesting, thank you :)
How about “day job”? Gotta have one or you’ll starve on the street, can’t do anything unproductive with your day!
Productivity and human worth is obviously dependent on someone being able to extract surplus value in form of a “day job”. /s
