| This question <1386|1386> overall <1404|1406> Jenna: <1314|128>. graded A |
| Question 802: What is worse: the misery of idle impoverishment or the torture of work? |
| [1405] Jenna: Desperation of idle impoverishment. It is certain that idleness and impoverishment are worse than the torture of work. |
| For the worker of the proletarian class, work means exploitation. The harder she works, the more she enriches the capitalist and decreases her own economic power. She endures a lifetime of progressively harder work at stagnant wages. |
| The disposable laborer also suffers exploitation. Capitalists use her when it benefits their accumulation of capital, then subject her to a state of desperate idleness when her labor is not required. However, this forced intermittent idleness creates an unstable and insecure existence that is far worse than the fate of the continuously employed worker. |
| For example, a low-income single mother lacks sufficient skills or experience to secure stable employment. Some may suggest she work harder to build skills she needs to join the ranks of the continuously employed laborer. If she is successful in this, she may endure long working hours at stagnant wages. But her children will be fed. They will receive adequate nutrition and health care, and grow up in a stable environment. |
| However, the odds are against this single mother. The heavy responsibility she carries in caring for her children alone, the restrictions this places on her availability for work, as well as her desperate dependence upon the meager public assistance available to her which will be cut off immediately if she should earn even a fraction of a livable wage for even a single month -- all these factors make it unreasonably difficult (if not impossible) for her to secure the opportunities necessary to build the skills she needs and to establish long-term employment. Most likely, throughout her life she will work intermittently for very low wages, no healthcare, inconsistent shift times, and no paid leave. The day her child is ill or her transportation breaks down, and she is unable to report to work, she will simply lose her job. She will be unemployed for a time, and then eventually will find another short-term job and repeat the cycle. Her children will most likely not receive adequate nutrition or healthcare. They will probably be left in child care circumstances which are sub-par. They will likely grow up in an unsafe neighborhood. |
| It is true that the exploitation of the worker may result in what can reasonably be called torturous work. Yet this is certainly preferable to the desperate misery of idle impoverishment. |
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