Remember that capitalism is designed to force you to work under threat of death by starvation. You never had freedom to choose what to do with your lives it was chosen for you.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
553 points (99.3% liked)
Political Memes
11597 readers
795 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I guess that's just life, isn't it? I mean people in stone age also lived under the threat of starvation if they just hang out in their caves. Of course, capitalism is the industrialized professional version of this, but I don't think this is inherently capitalistic.
The difference is that we have all the tools and resources to not live like caveman nowadays. We could feed everyone if we wanted to, but the government would rather fire another barrage of missiles at impoverished people
load more comments
(5 replies)
Hunter/gatherer and early farming societies typically had a lot more leisure time than we do today. Some researchers estimated they only 'worked' 15-30 hours a week, and a lot of that was dependent on seasons. In addition, their egalitarian structure and lack of pursuit for excess material goods meant no pressure for long work hours.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Plenty of other economic systems also made people to work under threat of starvation.
Unless the Romans and Greeks were capitalists, too.
Not like capitalism. It has a marketing scheme where it gives you the illusion of free will and choices.
that’s cool. we live under none of those systems. focus on the one we are beholden to and don’t distract as if there is some sort of contest.
load more comments
(11 replies)
It's not just economic systems. Every animal works under the threat of starvation.
Just watch a nature documentary. Grazing animals have to eat for hours a day just to eat enough to avoid starvation, and they have to constantly be on the lookout for predators. Predators need to take down one of those grazing animals on a regular basis or they starve.
There has never been a way of living that didn't involve working to avoid starving. When humans developed agriculture, it finally meant that when things were going well starvation was something that might be months away instead of weeks away.
There has never been an economic system where everybody could just be creative and rest all day and not work. That may be true of some elites at the top, but it will always be a small minority of people while everyone else works.
You can always hope that that work will become more pleasant, or that there will be less of it. Work used to be sun-up to sun-down, 6 days a week. Our ancestors fought and died for laws that reduced this to only 8 hours a day and only 5 days a week. Work these days is mostly done indoors, mostly in heated or air-conditioned spaces. It doesn't tend to maim you, or require repetitive movements that eventually cripple you.
People should definitely keep fighting for more. They should join unions so they're not having to fight on their own. But, nobody should be deluded into think it's abnormal to have to work to live.
Unless the Romans and Greeks were capitalists, too.
Nope, just slavers, not wage slavers. The dynamics of power are eternal, merely the forms change. One hopes at some point we evolve.
“Nooo!! We need hierarchy!!! If there’s no one to tell me what to do I won’t know what to do!” - everybody every time I bring up hierarchy.
load more comments
(4 replies)
ITT: tons of people defending capitalism by forswearing the last 200,000 years of social progress.
To quote Bernie, who might have been quoting someone else: poverty isn't an inevitability. It's a policy choice.
load more comments
(1 replies)
What we've been trained to identify as "work" under this power hierarchy is more definitively "toil". The definition has been overridden so that we cannot differentiate the bait and switch.
Work is labor that benefits the person doing it, is self-actualizing, is voluntary, and is an overall positive experience.
Toil is labor without clear benefit. It is not fun. It is repetitive and draining. It is often involuntary or coerced.
For most who labor under capitalism, the labor they perform is not actually work, but toil.
When I was like 13, 14 when my parents were really pushing me to get a job, I already didn't want to work. Decades later, I still don't want to work, and I like what I do. There's a reason I play the lotto, it's the only way I'm getting out of this shit-cycle. I'd like to spend more time hanging out with my nieces and nephews, who are growing up so fast. My grandparents only have a few years left at best, I've already missed out on spending the best years I could with them. Saw my dad last year, probably the first in nearly a decade in of itself. I want to spend time just sitting at a beach watching the waves come in. Or seeing a mountain for the first time.
I don't want to work. I've never wanted to work. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't do nothing, I don't want to be lazy. Like, my ideal "job" is working in engineering on the Enterprise with Geordi. But that can't happen. So really I just want enough money so if I do work, I have enough money to tell upper management their plans "aka shit they saw on LinkedIn" is fucking stupid. What you going to do fire me, I'd be rich, that's not a threat! Eat shit you overpaid worthless peices of shit... (I might have some things to work on...,)
More like society has some things to work on.
Honest work is just fine. What I don’t like is high pay for bullshit work and bullshit pay for honest work.
I have several hobbies that could make bank if I wanted to put in time and effort.
That requires treating executive dysfunction, which can't happen unless I have money. In order to get money I have to work jobs I absolutely hate, and that suck all energy and will to live out of me, and I don't want to do anything with my hobbies.
If I didn't have to worry about food, housing, and whether I have electricity or not, I could sell a handful of things a month and be just fine on utilities and a luxury purchase every so often.
Out of curiosity, Source 2, pls. Thx.
...
Thanks for the Source of this Image!
If we wanted to perform labor, we wouldn't have invented machines or fantasize about robot butlers.
I just want the freedom to eat cheese in foreign places, without the need to pay thugs at borders to get to the next place with cheese.
People do want to work! Loads of people build all sorts of things for the joy and satisfaction of the craft. Plenty of people volunteer to help people - literally the definition of doing something you don't have to do! Anyone that says that isn't work is delusional.
We need a new word for what we call "work". No one wants to be exploited for their effort, but most people have always had the desire to do some sort of work.
load more comments
(1 replies)
am unemployed and volunteer my time to help the community, have never been so busy. will have more time to rest once I get a job
I have some bad news for you
I was less busy when I did a postdoc.
People want to be useful. What people don't want is to have the surplus value of their labor stolen from them. People are cool with working and helping out others as long as they actually get to reap what they sow and not have it stolen from them.
Does my desire to rot mean nothing to you, ma’am? (Rest is different than that, for those who don’t understand and are haters)
No i think that some people do want to work. I actually use it for my definition of what being "politically right" means. How else do you prove that you're superior to other people if not through your hard work? At least that's the mindset there.
Consider as an example the Nazis in germany. They waged war against their neighbors to prove to the world that they were better soldiers, more industrious, more hard-working, and therefore deserve to live more than their neighbors. That was literally the whole point. Showing that you can build more machines, more guns, more engines, ...
view more: next ›