Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production

Evidence

The “strikomania” that spread across Italy and Great Britain in 1919 drove an unusually large number of workers to put down tools and to fight for fewer working hours and higher wages. As an official British communiqué explained, workers were “no longer prepared to acquiesce in a system in which their labour is bought and sold as a commodity in the labour market,” and 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.” — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185

Categorization

• XREF: Direct supporting evidence for the reader’s stress-test of ‘democracy is anti-capitalism’ — workers’ democratic demands explicitly target wage-commodification. — connects to: Flagging growth forced all capitalist states to curb labor power — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1029; Works councils failed to dominate as workers’ representatives by the late 1950s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2072; Workers’ participation demands focused on pay and immediate job matters, not structural control. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2073 (+26 more)
• SEED: The British communiqué’s language about ‘hands’ vs whole human beings is a quotable primary source for any essay on work, dignity, and commodification.