The labor advocate in me loves this. The historian in me hates it.
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Antiwork
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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Yes lol the people who built the pyramids were generally well paid.
The crazy thing is we still do things more or less the same way sometimes. I've lost count of the times I've helped move heavy electrical panels in through a door by rolling them along copper rods.
Well enough to save up for their own pyramid?
No, but a well paid engineer is a bit different to the whipped slaves often depicted.
Well paid enough to afford their own pyramid?
And then to get it into its final position, we use these fancy things called levers to slowly ease the panels off the rollers and precisely jimmy them till they sit within the square we marked out using chalk or sometimes a rope we dipped in ink.
Oh how far we've come since those primitive days.
So what you're saying is that with enough heavy electrical panels and tradies, that I too can own my own pyramid?
My favourite is the chalk line.
THWACK! and we have a straight line.
Sounds very satisfying. How does it work is it just a normal string you dip in chalk, does it come pre-chalked, is it reusable or do you just unroll the next bit for the next line? I have many questions..
The string is inside a case on a reel, with chalk powder inside it. As you run it out, chalk coats the string. You then pull it tight between two points, pull it back, and release it.
It leaves a dead straight line of chalk behind, you then roll it back up ready to be reused. You can also buy replacement chalk.
https://www.bunnings.co.nz/irwin-30m-strait-line-chalk-reel-and-line-level-set_p5660558?store=9526
Oh that's way more practical than anything I was coming up with! Nice.
Okay good I vaguely recall pyramid building but thought slaves had less to do with them than what culture shows
Yep! Almost everyone that worked on the pyramids were basically skilled contractors or construction workers
People are barfing that up a lot lately, but the only reliable source I've seen shows that the people who built the pyramids were being paid in bread and beer; that is, they were receiving the necessities of life, not payment.
Giving slaves the necessities of life and calling it payment to justify the slavery is as old as .. well, the pyramids at least.
But... That's... What a barter society does? Ancient Egypt didn't have currency, it was a barter-based society. You don't have a farm or land to grow your own food? You work for someone else to get food, or resources to trade for food, drinks, shelter, medicine etc. They were also given good cuts of meat and had good barracks/quarters to live in nearby villages while working there. Workers who died were even buried in well stocked tombs near the pyramids which was a place of honor, slaves would likely be put in mass graves, unmarked graves, and/or far from the pyramids.
What were non-slave workers (working on the pyramids or not) in ancient Egypt paid with if working for good food, drink, and shelter is only for slaves? A currency that didn't exist? The profound pleasure of working for the pharaoh while having a farm of their own at home for food?
They were also given good cuts of meat and had good barracks/quarters to live in nearby villages while working there.
I'd like to see a source for that.
Workers who died were even buried in well stocked tombs near the pyramids which was a place of honor
Man that's even worse than the bread and beer thing. "You're not slaves because when you die on the job we bury you in a better hole!"
I'd like to see a source for that.
Buildings, conditions, etc. Sources at bottom - https://historycollection.com/this-is-what-life-was-like-for-an-egyptian-worker-building-the-pyramids/
Man that's even worse than the bread and beer thing. "You're not slaves because when you die on the job we bury you in a better hole!"
Being buried near their pharaoh was a huge honor for them, being buried near their actual god incarnate. It would be like christians being buried near Jesus. A key part was also that they were actual tombs (not just holes, actual crafted tombs and burial chambers) plus they were stocked with things they would need in the afterlife, neither of which would be done for slaves.
Plus, many workers were farmers who would work on the pyramids during their off-season then go back to their families/farms at the end of the season (see the sources above)
Sure. It's a barter society where one class holds literally all of the power.
"It's this deal because I'm a god!" You're just not gunna argue with a god on earth.
it's a barter society where one class holds literally all the power
You're phrasing these like they're contradictory statements when they're not incompatible concepts at all.
They're morally incompatible if nothing else boss.
Not at all? Yeah one class had most of the political/legal power because they were backed by who everyone believed was the incarnation of their god so it was hard to argue. Do/can you argue with the IRS (or whatever government entity collects taxes for you)? Food/resources/labor were still collected as taxes/tithes to support that class which managed their society, which is basically the same as any society that has currency.
I both can and have argued against the IRS and won. The IRS accepts fact and objective reality, though the idea of pharoh in court trying to prove objectively they are God personified does make me giggle.
bread and beer necessity of life
Couldn't agree more.
Ancient Egyptians didn't have capitalism. At least in the dynasty where a lot of writing is from like this one scroll that was used to teach scribes writing so there is a fuckload of copies of it, they had a theocratic class system where social roles were pretty rigid. It was highly discouraged to not love your place in life. Like that writing exercise that archaeologists found is like basically copypasta about how cool it is to be a scribe, how you get to sit in the shade and not destroy your body to earn a living like the laborers must do. The cultures extant in ancient Egypt's like 3000 years of history have been studied pretty extensively and pretty much every conclusion leads to the idea that social mobility through hard work or whatever of the kind promised by the capitalist Horatio Alger story was definitely not a cultural value in ancient Egypt, at least not a cultural value held by the people with the power to decide what got written down for posterity.
It was highly discouraged to not love your place in life.
The rich are still trying to tell the rest of us that shit.
I feel like this was a thing in "Brave New World", just be happy where you are because it's right where you need to be.
At least in Brave New World you were guaranteed a job, drugs, and orgies.
Those lowercase a's are really bothering me next to all those capital letters.
Slaves didn't build the pyramids.
Workers were paid to do so.
Do you want to stay and build the pyramids (get some food and a place to sleep) or go try your luck on your own in the desert?
Slaves also didn't do sharecropping, they were "paid" to do so.
No one knows what the implications were for the Egyptian "workers"
It doesn't make sense to treat your workers bad because you get less work. They probably got a lot of food and water for energy.
But a lot of "workers" were poor when they started and were poor when they died.
Their labor did not bring wealth
I can't get past how their transportation technique requires at least 1 extra person, but it seems like just the two guys.
It's because no one is willing to work anymore.
They've got nothing but excuses. "I can't come in today, I got the plague" and "my kid got eviscerated by a hippo, I need the day off for the funeral" and "this famine is making food unaffordable, please pay us more." They're all just lazy and ungrateful for the privilege of toiling.
Fun fact, archaeologists have found what is essentially and ancient Egyptian clock in sheet, that had listed reasons why workers couldn't attend that day and it included things like their wife or daughter being on their periods so they would take time off work to care for them.
So in some ways the ancient Egyptians were more progressive than we are.
And they are pushing that stone just right next to the path, instead of on it.
i assume everyone in the old days was motivated by thinking god was keeping score? jealous tbh
Fuck
This disease that is work, many people actually enjoy building pyramids for others, so those who own them happily continue to exist.
Dont know why you're downvoted because you are pretty right.
People enjoy working it give them purpose, this is why capitalism (making more money from wealth than from work) last so long
I think didn't like that I called this reality a disease. This purpose to build a pyramid of others for non-communal purposes is a serious and very widespread disease, so many people for a purpose are willing to become slaves.
This is like saying people enjoy breathing, this is why health insurance companies exist..
Agreed, people enjoy working, if by working you mean being productive, building, creating, especially inventing something.
You can have two worlds where in one there is manipulative people holding all the wealth, doing nothing or in another where it's fair.
Sometime ago someone decided it's easier to manipulate others to do something and a snowball effect occured.
Indoctrination and the slave mindset.
Fun fact! Not many (if any) slaves were used in building the pyramids, a majority of the people were akin to skilled contractors and construction workers.
Mostly agricultural workers, who had little to do outside of harvest season, from my understanding.
We are all slaves in this capitalist system
The famous ancient Egypt capitalist system.
Capitalistic outlook.