Why is it that so many people in this country work for nothing? That is to say for free. You may think I am talking about voluntary workers. No I am talking about the millions of people who work through their lunch breaks, start early and finish late and take work home with them.
There is a myth out there that this type of behaviour is what is called working hard.
The correct word for this is exploitation. Often the people that are being exploited are willing participants. This is because they do not understand what is happening to them and why. They are adding value to the process/job/shareholder etc without being paid for it. The company benefits economically but the worker does not.
Unfortunately there are also the people out there that work for free because they are afraid of losing their job or getting an even lower pay rise than they were expecting. The fact is that a lot of jobs give the rise at the rate of inflation or less. What we are actually talking about then are pay cuts not pay rises.
So why are so many people in favour of capitalism? After all this is the animal that snarls and claws at the ordinary worker. The burgeoise holds the leash but he occasionally loosens it so the animal can come within striking distance. This keeps everbody nicely in check.
Because people dare not face the beast and look it directly in the eye they prefer to make up a host of excuses as to why they allow themselves to be exploited. They choose to focus on the small number of false benefits but not on all of the very real downfalls.
I would suspect that many of those with thousands of pounds worth of savings in the bank would eulogize capitalsim and talk of indivdual responsibility over wine and cheese at dinner parties. These are the same people who are now flocking to put their savings in nationalised banks.
I can't think of many things as anti capitalist as a nationalised bank.
