Sorry - genuinely don’t understand this one. What’s the connection? No kids means… no future workers?
“Slave” like any word has contextual meaning. In this context I’m using it to refer to the workers who find themselves caught in a coercive political-economic system. Other similar words are wage slave, proletariat, or just working class. The point is that there is an involuntary aspect which likens it to slavery in the more narrow sense. (The narrow meaning of slave I have in mind being “someone forced into labor without pay”.)
All that said, in the U.S. there are still slaves as defined narrowly as people who are forced to work without pay. Slavery is used in prison systems, for example, and is not uncommon among human trafficking victims and immigrants (e.g. read Tomatoland). If your children are women, indigenous, black, are born or become disabled, or belong to various other minority statuses they are at even greater risk of getting swallowed into those forms of “literal” slavery as well.
I think it’s more like, can’t take advantage of me if I’m not born. It’s a little odd to me as well.
I got more of a, “You can’t continue to take advantage of us if we don’t have anymore children and kill off your workforce through gained apathy to our future.” Kinda vibe.
It helps if you look at it from the perspective of the capitalist class. Workers are a form of free capital. Capitalists don’t have to assume any of the burdens involved in creating life, raising a child, acculturating them to social standards that make them suitable workers, etc. They don’t even have to pay for the education or training that makes them capable as human capital in various industrial contexts.
All those costs are dumped onto the working classes, not just as parents (usually the woman) who are expected to deliver a baby, nurse the baby, raise the resulting child until they are the age of the majority all without any wages, access to benefits like retirement plans or health insurance, etc. but also onto taxpayers who subsidize the rest of the costs outside of the home such as their schooling and transportation to the schools.
There is a huge leverage here that the working class does not take by organizing the production of themselves. If we all agreed to not have children and demanded fair compensation for any new production of human capital, society would be much more just and the capitalist class would have less room to exploit us.
i think this is also the reason the far right pushes so hard against contraception and abortion.
also the marxist concept of reserve army of labour: the more imporvished and desperate workers are lining up for shitty jobs to survive, the less then can get away with paying.
No future workers. No future consumers (including being bent over a barrel for essential goods). No future taxpayers. No future people to fight their wars.
You (and a great many number of people) disagree with it. I’m simply explaining the concept.
The point for people adopting this mindset isn’t to win. It’s too avoid losing. It’s a risk management strategy.
The labor market is a market - that means it is regulated by supply and demand.
Now, there’s a demand for workers.
Now, think about what happens when the supply goes down - prices go up.
In other words: If there are fewer workers on the labor market, that means the price for labor goes up, in other words: wages go up.
