Selling Out: Where is the line crossed?
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Do you still have the council house? If so, how are you fucked? Secure tenancy with an affordable rent - that's not fucked.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
I've been on the dry ski slope in the midlands.
You really don't want to come off at speed on a dry ski slope.
of course now MK has an indoor ski slope, snow and everything. I'm not going, its cold and a rip off
You really don't want to come off at speed on a dry ski slope.
of course now MK has an indoor ski slope, snow and everything. I'm not going, its cold and a rip off
BigTom
Well-Known Member
already been said but joining police, bailiff, prison officer and also job centre adviser - in these roles you are, in general, on the side of capital, and will spend much or all of your time screwing over other people.
Private schools definitely. Private health care too, except where the NHS doesn't provide a service, or if the waiting lists are so long that you'd die before being seeing.
Buy to let? fuck yeah, you've definitely sold out then, whether you're a decent landlord or not, BTL is totally fucking us on housing, should never have been allowed in the first place. Letting out a room in the house you own, fine, but as soon as you start to profit from other peoples' housing needs you've stepped over the line I reckon. There's some job role for "landlords" in terms of maintaining/administering properties but as far as I'm concerned, this should be done by the state (in capitalism) or possibly housing co-operatives - no individual should be able/allowed to accrue housing as assets imo (I don't consider your home, even owned, to be an asset, I know it is, I also think you shouldn't be allowed to profit from owning the asset but can see no practical way of doing this).
Management beyond line manager probably as well, any time where your job role becomes about extracting as much work/surplus value as possible from an employee, you're on or over the line anyway.
Cleaner? nah, no problem with this in principle.
Private schools definitely. Private health care too, except where the NHS doesn't provide a service, or if the waiting lists are so long that you'd die before being seeing.
Buy to let? fuck yeah, you've definitely sold out then, whether you're a decent landlord or not, BTL is totally fucking us on housing, should never have been allowed in the first place. Letting out a room in the house you own, fine, but as soon as you start to profit from other peoples' housing needs you've stepped over the line I reckon. There's some job role for "landlords" in terms of maintaining/administering properties but as far as I'm concerned, this should be done by the state (in capitalism) or possibly housing co-operatives - no individual should be able/allowed to accrue housing as assets imo (I don't consider your home, even owned, to be an asset, I know it is, I also think you shouldn't be allowed to profit from owning the asset but can see no practical way of doing this).
Management beyond line manager probably as well, any time where your job role becomes about extracting as much work/surplus value as possible from an employee, you're on or over the line anyway.
Cleaner? nah, no problem with this in principle.
scifisam
feck! arse! girls! drink!
Screws, maybe. Unless you think we don't need prisons at all, we do need some screws. We also want said screws to be OK at their job so saying you don't want your friends to be one doesn't help - it means we're left with arseholes who are willing to be screws.
Bailiffs are an easy target and I'd agree with disliking almost all of them. They mostly act as if they were the law while not acting within the law themselves.
But then sometimes small businesses (or even individuals) have to send the bailiffs in to get their rightful money back and the alternatives without bailiffs would be Big John and his baseball bat or just going bankrupt.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Still better than having no law or " community led justice" see the catholic parts of NI how that worked out
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Agree with all of this but possibly the last sentence. I have some problems with hiring a cleaner in principle. I think its totally unproblematic if you are disabled or elderly but when you have the capacity to clean and choose to contract it out to somebody else because you don't like it and can afford to there's something that doesn't feel right about that to me, I would not do it. It's too similar to having a domestic servant for my liking. I appreciate the counter-argument that you are providing somebody else with work they might not have otherwise had, but still it jars with me.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
I just don't think anyone can do the job as well as me. Plus, I'm ashamed and don't want to be silently judged.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Sending children to private school is right out, but what about working in them? Doesn't sit at all well with me, so I wouldn't.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't judge someone for working as a cleaner or a dinner lady in a private school.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
What about as a teacher or learning support staff?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Depends, but this falls under "you'd have to be a bit sackcloth and ashes to refuse it in all situations" on my personal moral compass.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't judge someone working as learning support staff who worked at a private school.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I wouldn't want to do it myself. I wouldn't want to work in that environment.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Well sure. There are situations though when people do things that they don't want to.
I mean I can be all smug and say that I've worked full time for registered charities since 1992, but the fact is for most of that time I didn't have anyone to support and I had a (not very good) degree under my belt. So my options were far greater than someone who had the choice of a bunch of minimum wage jobs.
I've got a mate who is a Jobcentre Advisor. I've worked on switchboards and in mailrooms at Jobcentres. There are plenty of cunts but there are also a few who try to help people as much as they can. I was in there one day chatting to a mate and one of the advisors almost went for another for the shit way he treated someone.
We have a spare room and have considered letting a friend live in it. There is no way she would live there without paying rent. Pride and shit.
No, speaking as a line manager I've done a couple of things I've not liked and refused to do many things that are pretty shitty. Quite often they still happen. There are 2 possibly 3 people who still have their jobs because I fought their corner. Doesn't make me any less of a cunt but most of those likely to take the job if I left would not only do what I wouldn't but some would fuck other people over for the hell of it. Whatever it takes to sleep at night I guess.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
statist all the way i see. what about a school in which fees were charged solely to employ teachers and maintain facilities by people who didn't want statist ideology shoved down the throats of their children - perhaps an anarchist school, in which fees were charged according to parents' ability to pay?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
if you could express your objections more eloquently perhaps we could explore them.
do you object to the notion of an anarchist school? or do you think that anarchists should / would provide everything without charge? or do you think that all parents would obviously want their children to get an education whose curriculum is dictated by the state? or what? wtf doesn't make it look like you can express yourself very well.
Where they teach you the power of the full stop but don't subject you to the tyranny of the capital?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is already the case for most private schools - many even have charitable tax-status, as I'm sure you know. And schools of the kind you describe already exist. They are mostly the preserve of the children of rock stars and their chums.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i don't know, i'm not going to impose a curriculum on a hypothetical school.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Apologies. I was expressing surprise, really, that such a school could exist in the world as it currently operates. Or was it more of a general hypothetical question along the lines of "how about a school on the moon?"
Secondarily I would imagine that at schools like that there may be issues with people who are able to pay large amounts of money into the coffers dominating the agenda.
Thirdly as most kids go to state schools there seems to be an element of parental responsibility in giving your child a normal education and then perhaps supplementing or subverting that at home.
Looby
Well-Known Member
I know and have worked with a lot of DWP staff since I've been a TU rep and there are a lot of good, fair and caring staff in job centres, DWP call centres and other DWP workplaces. There are staff facing disciplinary action for failing to impose sanctions on people and for speaking out against ATOS and Universal Credit.
To tar them with the same brush as the police is disgusting.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i was thinking of the sort of anarchist school which used to exist at the london action resource centre, not some sort of eton or harrow or that summerhill thing.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yeah. Shitty pay, too.
Looby
Well-Known Member
Yep, much lower than some other civil service departments.
andysays
Love and solidarity
I was thinking about sending my kids to a school on the moon, but when we went there for a visit we found it didn't have the sort of atmosphere we wanted...
Anyone, there's a danger in all of this (and the other "can you still call yourself a socialist if..." thread) in focussing solely on prescribing what people can't/mustn't do, rather than on what we actually do or should do.
While some of these decisions are clearly significant, I think it's more important to award the definition of socialist (or whatever) based on the extent to which people actually work/fight/etc to improve our collective position in society against capitalism and the state.
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