• rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    If you’re asking about that bit of snark at the end about coerced labor, I can try to explain it.

    I consider there to be 3 loose types of labor: forced, coerced, and controlled. Forced labor is what it sounds like: incarcerated labor, slavery, etc controlled through violence and defined by the bosses total control over their labor and often their life. Coerced labor shares a bit of overlap with forced labor, but it’s primarily defined through modern capitalist work in which workers must perform waged labor due to economic pressure.

    Controlled labor would be the free association to work where the worker wished and contribute at their own pace. I consider the picturesque version of controlled labor to be a unionized worker cooperative in which all management is elected within a socialist economy. Work is still directed by management, but it’s free of coercion due to the lack of economic pressure that would require a person to be forced to work.

    There will still be coercion through other means within such a socialist society, and it will still be just as evil as economic coercion. But we should strive to eliminate it wherever possible. That’s why I believe even the co-op would need a union, to establish protections against such coercion.