I'm going to take a wild guess and say if you work at Coinbase—voluntarily—you're extremely well paid. You're the farthest thing from a victim. Just because you can't raise your fist and scream at your coworkers doesn't mean you're oppressed.
This is the kind of parallel argumentation that tech workers (and their managers) make against unionization ("you're too well paid to need a union").
It misses the point -- they don't need to be "oppressed" to be justified in talking about politics at work, the same way they don't need to be underpaid to be justified in unionizing. Each is a perfectly sufficient end in itself.
Capital vs. Labor is an attitude that can be completely divorced from the unit economics of how much people are paid. Capital is the owner class that calls the shots, Labor is the people who do the work.
"Shut up and do the work, or GTFO" is a statement that only Capital can make, and it's a statement that can only be directed at Labor.
When the topic being quelled is a conversation about fairness within the ranks of Labor, and between Capital and Labor, the picture is crystal clear: "Capital says no, and you (Labor) will comply."
Just because you're part of what is called "Labor aristocracy" in Marxist discourse doesn't mean you can't recognize the exploitation inherent to the system.
You don't need to be on the losing side of an unjust system to recognize the system as unjust.
I'm not allowed to reply to you directly but responding to your response to "so quit," okay, go live on a commune then. Live your values and demonstrate to the world why your way of life is better.
You're paid to do a job. Politics is for your personal time. We need to work on getting more personal time for people so people can focus on those passions instead of further blending work and personal life.
Sustained political effort - in spite of the established rules. Every one of those people risked their jobs and in many cases their health and life fighting for those rights against laws and established order. People today want their cake and to eat it to. They want the people who made an economic exchange for their labor also let them do things that work directly against their "the purchaser's" interests. How about people organize mass strikes? Scared of losing their jobs? Too busy? Not enough time? The OG labor movement had all of that and dealt with violent opposition to boot. Maybe things aren't that bad and it's a minority whining? I don't know but something isn't adding up to me.
How about people decide to take action -- regardless of the consequences to themselves instead of worrying about maintaining the scraps they're fed in the process? Why is today so much different than yesterday that people don't want to risk their standing and their lives for their principals and expect it just to happen, to be given? All the whining is just theatre as far as I'm concerned until people start actually making the hard decisions and doing something at risk to themselves for what they believe.
Why do people seem so hypocritical compared to the people during those decades you mention?
The owners of Coinbase made a stand for what they believe in, I support that. Maybe the otherside of the table needs to take that collective action they talk so much about instead of talking.
Edit: And you know I'm not sorry but I just don't feel bad for office workers bitching about their jobs. I feel bad for the front line workers, in the stores in the warehouses in logistics and shipping. They actually have real gripes to contend with being physically worn down everyday yet we lump the person sitting in their office chair reading reddit for 8 hours with these people actually killing themselves to get you a package a couple hours sooner.
Note: This isn't aimed at you directly but very much what I feel is the superficialness of many movements today.
I think most people would agree that, by virtually all material standards, workers are better treated than they were a century ago. I think most people would also agree (again in material terms) that office workers have fairly easy jobs. But I think that fundamentally misses the point: good (read: easy living) isn't the same as just, and plenty of people have legitimate reasons for wanting their workplaces to be more just.
> Maybe the otherside of the table needs to take that collective action they talk so much about instead of talking.
I don't disagree. But to be clear: collective action, broadly interpreted, is mostly illegal in the United States. You can actually be thrown in jail for it and, unlike the CEOs, you probably don't have the money to tie the courts up. The US's labor movement spent decades fighting for recognition, and it's still paltry compared to the rest of the world (and is steadily being eroded). Most workers, including office workers, have strong social and economic disincentives against anything more than talk (at-will employment, absent social services, &c).
The difference between traditional union organizing and the social justice crusaders here is that the unions were fighting management to improve the material well being of the workers. They wanted more sick leave, higher wages, etc.
The present-day crusaders are attacking their fellow employees (who disagree with them) as well as customers (trying to get customers who disagree with them dropped). They are most certainly not fighting management. Management gets involved in those cases where it tries to stop one of the crusading employees from harassing another employee or customer, at which point there are demonstrations to try to get the enemy coworker or employee dropped.
That is why this is not at all like the unionization efforts of the past.
> The present-day crusaders are attacking their fellow employees (who disagree with them) as well as customers (trying to get customers who disagree with them dropped). They are most certainly not fighting management.
"Crusaders" already belies where you stand on this, but to be clear: historical labor movements absolutely included hostility against coworkers. The coworker who didn't join you on the picket line was called a scab.
Besides, US labor law places broad restrictions on the ability of labor organizations to call for boycotts (i.e., retaliating against customers). If you take your time to read about this history of workers' rights in the US, you'll find deeper parallels to the current day than you're probably currently inclined to believe.
Edit: Here's a link[1] to a summary of the confusing rat's nest that is NLRA's rules for boycotting.
In the same light, I'm also not paid to believe in some ludicrous "mission". That's something for my personal time in GTA. Unless I have genuine equity, in which I stand to gain from the company's overall success. In that case though, I should also have some level of say in what I can talk about at work.
Work time ceases to be work time when your hours on the job take up more than a quarter of the time in a calendar day, and that's probably the maximum upper limit, in honesty. As societies we have structured our adult lives around a window from 9 to 5 in which we are supposed to work and also interface with every other adult that works.
That’s actually an insightful comment. Of course if you do sports, eat and socialize at work so that the company can keep you there for 12 hours people have no other possible outlet for their political activism.
> We need to work on getting more personal time for people
You mean controls on working hours? Four day weeks? There are those who’d say that was extremely political (and they’d be right; the two day weekend was largely invented by the labour movement, surely the epitome of politics at work, back in the day).
