Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe evidence points towards the pyramids being built by paid workers, and I think some even got to be buried in their own smaller pyramids
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Correct, except smaller pyramids, those were also for the kings only, workers building pyramids had their own cementaries iirc.
But knowledge of this fact actually makes this meme even more relatable - the people in it were closer to wage slaves like us.
Correct, conditions of the workers of the Pyramids and Temples
-8 h per day, 6 days a week
-Free housing, food and a small garden for themselves and their families
-Medical assistance and care in sick leave due to illness and accident.
-Exempt from paying taxes
-Care and assistance for the old ex-workers.
(better than today in most countries)
Slaves (mostly prisoners of war and criminals) were naturally also used, but only for basic jobs and assistance. The Pharao knew very well that if he wants a job well done, he cannot get it with slaves and in poor conditions, but with well-cared and happy professionals.
gets rewarded with more work for working so hard
Okay hate on capitalism, fair enough
But equating it to literal slavery like we've had in the past (and still have in some parts of the world) seems problematic to me
"Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other."
— Frederick Douglass
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we’ve had in the past
we definitely still have slavery in America. Like, in America. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of companies that outsource their slavery to other countries and then ship the product here so we can pretend it's not made by slaves, but plenty of companies skip the middle man and just use slaves here
The whip makes the joke that they are slaves but it's believed it was mostly wage earners build the pyramids. The joke still stands though. I mean it's a fucking mausoleum. Wasting societies resources for a vanity project. The irony of his statement holds either way, as a wage laborer or a slave.
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Interestingly, I think the current consensus is that the workers who built the pyramids were not slaves, but rather ‘volunteers’ or ‘citizens’ who worked during the farming off-season. The ancient Egyptians didn’t use coins at this point, but the workers seem to have been housed in a kind of workers settlement near the site and paid in beer, bread, and grain.
Capitalism can suck my famous balls however
I'm somewhere between the whipper and the whipee.
Average feudalist enjoyer
The communist version of this meme has someone with a whip and sword standing behind them and telling them to work for the benefit of the people or die
You know I'm a communist, and I'd actually wager we would agree on your stance here if you chose better words. What you're actually advocating against is state capitalism, and we both agree it's a horrific and unjust system.
Something I've noticed about "anti-communists" is they absolutely love taking the USSR, CCP, and DPRK at their word for what they are. When they describe themselves as communist/socialist, you take it as an undeniable fact.
Do you think the DPRK is a democratic republic? It's in the name. Of course you don't, because it'd be ridiculous to let an authoritarian regime change the definitions of words to mean whatever they want it to mean :)
There's two paths to talking with a communist. Either they're a tankie and start singing the praises of the USSR and PRC and all sorts of totalitarian hellholes, or they start talking about hypothetical economic systems and states which haven't been shown to be practically achievable. I don't say this to be a dick, man. I much prefer the utopian idealist communists over those who cheer when political dissidents are machine gunned for wanting democracy. But it still doesn't make libertarian communism a workable system, whether it's anarchic communism or democratic socialism or some other form of stateless society.
So, I am happy to be civil with you, I just fundamentally disagree about whether attempting to achieve those ideals would end well. In my opinion, it would have one of three results - anarchy and a breakdown of the economy, imposition of totalitarian rule in reaction to groups of people who don't want to give up their private property rights, or reversion to another form of economic structure, like capitalism.
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What's going on with the rope on the front of the stone block? It looks like it's going to the taskmaster's hand, but he's standing behind the block, so that makes no sense...
The artist drew this in like five minutes.
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