Morning Comrades and welcome back to the patreon-only series of dispatches this week and welcome to the new patreon’s here also.
The usual pitch before we get into it, the publishing schedule of this newsletter has changed to one free for all newsletter a week and two for the patreons. I have changed the monthly subscription fee to 5USD a month or 50 a year. You can get a free trial for two weeks below, which would make me very happy.
For the last few weeks I have been churning over a few thoughts in relation to labour and value - mostly due to the fact that manual, skilled and so-called unskilled labour- is vastly underpaid in our world and I have been trying to figure out, historically at the very least, why that is and who the motherfucker(s) are to blame. There are heaps of satisfying tangents and unfinished essays on my laptop that one day will surely see the light of day, but what bugged me the most was ( and is ) my constant feeling of frustration, anger, helplessness and resignation to a certain degree. Irrespective of the very valid conversations that need to be had about the value of work, and work in on itself, I kept coming back to the concept of alienation and what to do about it.
Now I am certain we have tackled the subject here in the past but one, a refresher is always good and secondly, it is time to not only explain what it is but more importantly, start a conversation about what to do about it. Be assured, this is not going to be a foray into the philosophical analysis but rather what alienation is and what to do about it. Granted, the first part today will have to be more technical as work, labour and value are technical subjects but again, I am firmly of the opinion that knowing and understanding why we all feel like shit is a superb basis for change. This is going to be a two part dispatch, and easily could occupy us all for a month, one that touches on work, and the second on Friday, on life, outside of work. This fact remains: we’re all deeply frustrated, unhappy even at the core and it’s beyond time we know why and what to do about it.
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