Interwar workers rejected the commodification of their labor outright.
Evidence
Workers rebuff ed the core assumptions of capitalism. As the British report put it, they were “no longer prepared to acquiesce in a system in which their labour is bought and sold as a commodity in the labour market” (Cole 1920a, Appendix 1, 250), and once put to work they demanded to be treated “not as ‘hands’ or part of the factory equipment” but “as human beings with a right to use their abilities by hand and brain in the service not of the few but of the whole community” (ibid.) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 377
Categorization
- XREF: Direct counterpoint to the commodification logic that modern austerity reimposes — useful for the reader’s modern-neoliberalism framing. — connects to: Postwar workers explicitly rejected the treatment of labor as a commodity — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185; World War I’s state interventions emboldened workers to reject a return to capitalism — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 455; Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 185 (+2 more)
- ADDENDUM: The demand to be treated as human beings rather than hands echoes the dignified-labor themes relevant to the sacrifice and grafting pieces’ treatment of human value under economic systems.
Broader Connections
- Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production
#corroborates(0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185 - World War I’s state interventions emboldened workers to reject a return to capitalism
#expands(0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 455 - World War I shattered working-class belief that capitalism was immovable.
#expands(0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 112 - Early MPS members rejected industrial peace as a wage-distorting goal
#corroborates(0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 969