Universal Freedom
Posted: Tuesday, 18 March 2008 by Joseph Vancell in
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Whether they worked for subsistence or in order to acquire more comforts, it was not obvious that those who sold their labour for money were necessarily much freer than those who were forced to work as slaves. Many wage-earners and salaried people continued to regard their work as inherently tedious. They engaged in it for the sake of the money with which they could enjoy their leisure or future retirement. The essential pleasures of life were to be found outside work.
Wages
The wages of work is cash.
The wages of cash is want more cash.
The wages of want more cash is vicious competition.
The wages of vicious competition is — the world we live in.
The work-cash-want circle is the viciousest circle that ever turned men into fiends.
Earning a wage is a prison occupation
and a wage-earner is a sort of gaol-bird.
Earning a salary is a prison overseer's job,
a gaoler instead of a gaol-bird.
Living on your income is strolling grandly outside the prison
in terror lest you have to go in. And since the work-prison covers
almost every scrap of the living earth, you stroll up and down
on a narrow beat, about the same as a prisoner taking his exercise.
This is called universal freedom.
Wages
The wages of work is cash.
The wages of cash is want more cash.
The wages of want more cash is vicious competition.
The wages of vicious competition is — the world we live in.
The work-cash-want circle is the viciousest circle that ever turned men into fiends.
Earning a wage is a prison occupation
and a wage-earner is a sort of gaol-bird.
Earning a salary is a prison overseer's job,
a gaoler instead of a gaol-bird.
Living on your income is strolling grandly outside the prison
in terror lest you have to go in. And since the work-prison covers
almost every scrap of the living earth, you stroll up and down
on a narrow beat, about the same as a prisoner taking his exercise.
This is called universal freedom.