Waged labour obedience rests on workers having no exit option

Evidence

Peel’s undoing came when something unexpected happened: his workers abandoned him en masse, an Antipodean nineteenth-century version of the Great Resignation. They simply moved on, got themselves plots of land in the surrounding area, and went into business for themselves. It was a disaster Peel was ill-prepared for by his English background. Lulled into a false sense of control by the situation in the British Isles, he assumed that the capital he had brought along from Mother England vested in him all the power he needed over his English employees. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 254 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These austerity maneuvers are not merely technical decisions; they are profoundly political choices. Austerity achieves a crucial goal: it increases workers’ dependence on the market. As the state dismantles health care, education, social housing, transportation, and public services, we must worry about having money in our pockets to meet our basic needs. If we want to secure a good education for our children, adequate medical treatment, a roof to live under, and the right to transportation, we are increasingly tied to the need to have sufficient money, which most of us can obtain in only one way: by selling our capacity to work in exchange for a wage. If we barely have the energy to make it to the end of the month, how can we find the strength to participate in any collective initiative toward alternative economic structures or even just protect our rights? — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Capital confers power over workers only when workers lack land alternatives — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 254; Unprotected individual workers are powerless to refuse; Workers’ basic insecurity stems from enslavement of labor and person — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 463 (+3 more)

Related

• Capital confers power over workers only when workers lack land alternatives (similarity 0.86)
• Capital’s command power rests on workers lacking land alternatives. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Unprotected individual workers are powerless to refuse #corroborates (0.85)
• Capital confers power over workers only when workers lack land alternatives #corroborates (0.82) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 254
• Defunding public services structurally forces wage-dependence and demobilizes workers #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145
• Workers’ basic insecurity stems from enslavement of labor and person #expands (0.78) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 463