The bourgeoisie in my country have pushed the euphemism of “working capital” as something that needs protection from wealth tax. By inseparably connecting capital with jobs, they push the narrative that you cannot tax wealth without removing jobs and consequently hurting the working class. They paid for research groups to prove this connection, but what their research actually showed was that wealth tax creates jobs due to incentivizing keeping profits within the companies they own. The audacity to think owning the means of production is a privilege they should enjoy special treatment to keep is beyond me, but even so, this type of rhetoric keeps gaining ground.
What is the propaganda they are pushing on you, and how can socialist policies prevail if reason loses to made up words changing the narrative?
The entire managing class peddles euphemisms for a living, and has done so for generations.
My favorite remains “Human Resources”.
Not quite sure I understand the connotations of this one fully. Could you explain it a little for me?
I see the common reference to working people as “consumers” as emphasizing their role as passive recipients of goods and services who serve primarily to put money into the capitalist system. To call people consumers de-emphasizes and obscures these same people’s role as the producers of value, suggesting that value is produced elsewhere.
Got to love how they are abusing the power asymmetry and still make it out to be that the system is implemented to help us.
The Swedish word for employer used to be arbetsköpare , ie work buyer
Today they rebranded it to arbetsgivare , or work giver. Fucking disgusting. And no one even think about it. Pointing it out is sometime an aha moment for some. Linguistics is a fuckin warzone.
On our side of the border “arbeidsgjevar” has been in use as far as I remember. I like “arbeidskjøpar” better too and will use it exclusively from now on. Thanks :)
Domestic work is work on the same level as all other work. Proletariat is probably a better denomination for the class (though I personally use the terms interchangeably) since it is not so much distinguished by all the members of the class having regular jobs, but by them not being part of the class that can make capital gains by exploiting other’s work potential. I agree that class solidarity is a huge issue though and I think the idea of attributing not having a regular job to laziness is propaganda with intent of pushing this wedge further.
That’s an excellent question and there are so many. The most recent and prevalent has to be “la valeur travail”, the work value or the work virtue I guess are closest -but it really is untranslatable because it is deliberately so fuzzy. The bourgeoisie is trying hard to turn it into a sort of national and personal pride, to sugarcoat labor until people are begging to be let in on it.
I think there is always something ominous about talking of grand qualities the populace should embody. Trying to spin wanting better work conditions and fair compensation to some kind of ungrateful immoral thing is equally bad.
Here in Mexico is very common for employers to ask us to “ponernos la camiseta” (put on the team jersey). I believe this has football connotations, but I thinks it means the same as taking one for the team. It is mostly used when the employer, manager, sr manager, etc. requests us to do more than we are paid for, e.g. to work longer hours, work on weekends, take on two people jobs, etc.
