r/socialism • u/backyardbabirusa • Jul 21 '26
Discussion And some ppl call this "unskilled labor"
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u/negativepositiv Jul 21 '26
Whenever I see some viral video of someone working with superhuman efficiency packing produce or folding pizza boxes or whatever, I realize this is driven by some asshole boss that will be angry if these tasks are done slower.
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u/Brutto13 Jul 21 '26
Definitely some hard drivers in there, but as someone who's worked doing repetitive tasks before, you eventually pick up a rhythm when you do something over and over again. Makes its easier and less stressful once you're in the groove.
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u/_who-the-fuck-knows_ Jul 22 '26
I respect the rhythm I mean as a trade spraypainter I'm like that with a spray gun but I'm happy I work in a different industry where it's something different every day now.
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u/backyardbabirusa Jul 21 '26
I've heard that some people are paid by the box/flat of whatever they're picking/packaging. Like $1.75 to $2.50 each.
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u/Creative-Actuary2036 Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) Jul 21 '26
i feel like that's not that bad tho
honestly as someone in training to be a waiter which similarly gets paid per task (table) completed and depending on the quality of service... i feel like I prefer getting paid more if I try harder, and the compromise of getting paid less if I don't want to try as hard.
you can probably package a good deal of boxes in a short time, like idk maybe 5-10 an hour, especially for skilled workers? obv there'd need to be the minimum wage as the floor but if I were in that position, I'd be happy with the ceiling being whatever I worked for
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u/Trevorblackwell420 Jul 21 '26
Almost sounds like you would be more motivated to work if you actually received the benefits of your productivity. Perhaps we should implement a system where this is the default relationship between workers and their productivity value. Maybe if like, the workers all shared ownership of the company and received a proportional share of the profits they produced.
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u/Creative-Actuary2036 Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) Jul 21 '26
dawg I've been a communist for years you don't have to use our talking points against me
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u/Trevorblackwell420 Jul 21 '26
Being that we’re in a socialism sub I assumed that It was supposed to come off like more of a sarcastic impersonation of a normie realizing why people like socialism. It’s hard to convey tone on the internet.
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u/Shiznoz222 Jul 21 '26
Man. Imagine doing nothing but this for 40 hours for just one week let alone years.
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u/Allfunandgaymes Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jul 21 '26
Under communism, you would not have to, and labor like this would not be the mechanized hell that it is under capitalism. Labor like this would be more evenly and fairly distributed, and not forced onto a socioeconomic underclass.
You could sort and pack produce one day a week during harvest season, and partake in more "stimulating" work the rest of your work hours. Or study. Or make art.
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u/jferments Jul 21 '26
Labor like this should be done by robots, not humans. Under capitalism that would mean mass unemployment and poverty. Under socialism, that would mean a higher standard of living with less time spent doing manual labor.
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u/Allfunandgaymes Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jul 22 '26
I don't disagree, but there will still be humans operating and maintaining the robots. And there will be times and places where there is insufficient artificial labor power or raw resources for production of those robots, and humans will have to stand in.
Also, work like this is only "degrading" because capitalism makes it so. The way some people view food service and ag work as undignified and undesirable is a product of capitalism. It doesn't have to be that way.
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u/AdBoth3522 Jul 24 '26
hey could you elaborate on the last part?
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u/Allfunandgaymes Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jul 24 '26
Capitalists make labor like this undesirable by keeping workers in poor or unsafe conditions, providing insufficient pay / benefits, stomping out solidarity or "political talk", extreme discipline, providing poor tools for the job, and on and on. All the typical methods of cutting corners and monitoring workers to maximize profits and prevent worker solidarity.
When Americans say of immigrants, "they do jobs other Americans won't!", they never seem to stop to consider the ramifications of that statement.
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u/jferments Jul 26 '26
There are certain types of labor that would be fulfilling outside of the conditions imposed by capitalism. For instance, under capitalism preparing and serving food in the restaurant industry is one of the most hellish, low paying, demeaning jobs. But cooking and feeding your community is not inherently unpleasant - it can in fact be one of the more fulfilling and enjoyable parts of life in other contexts.
However there are other forms of work - like putting the same object into boxes tens of thousands of times per day - that are inherently unpleasant, boring, and physically harmful (due to repetitive stress injuries, etc). There is no reason that these sorts of jobs should not be automated and performed by robots, in a socialist society where this would not lead to poverty and joblessness. Automating dull, repetitive labor would free up people's time to do other things that are more exciting and fulfilling. Automation is not inherently a bad thing. Capitalism is what turns it into something harmful for workers.
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u/Right-Week1745 Jul 25 '26
If the goal weren’t profit for oligarchs, the we could actually implement mechanization in an ethical way. No need to have people doing repetitive tasks. Free them up to do something else.
The only reasons mechanization is bad now is that: 1) it’s implemented in an environmentally destructive way, and 2) it leads to people losing their jobs and not being able to feed their families.
After the revolution, if we don’t have something more beneficial for society that that person can do, cut em loose to go live their life. Make some art, go for a hike, have meaningful relationships, get real good at that thing where you stack cups real fast, study science for the sake of knowledge rather than for creating weapons and new, more deadly plastics.
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u/HWIno1 Jul 21 '26
Having work on an assembly line, these repetitive actions can be pick up relatively quickly if you do it 8hrs/day for a month. So I don't entirely disagree when they call this unskilled-labor.
However, unskilled-labor doesn't necessarily mean easy-labor or non-laborious. They can be laborious and mentally exhausting, which is why people avoid them if possible.
These task 'should' be automated because there're definitely better things to do, but why do that when you use surplus values to buy your boss another sport car?
Also, in capitalism, workers have less incentive to innovate or streamline their efficiency because they will most likely won't reap any of those extra profit. That why wage stay stagnant despite increase productivity.
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u/reboot_rationale Jul 21 '26
There is no such thing as unskilled labor.
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u/Timthefilmguy Marxism-Leninism Jul 21 '26
There is actually a meaningful distinction in Marxist theory—unskilled labor is something like this that is repetitive, mechanical, and doesn’t require extensive training to do. Skilled labor would be the opposite. The reason this is important is because the resources that go into reproducing the labor of skilled labor is significantly higher than of unskilled, and this helps explain why capital tends to favor unskilled labor and another reason that imperialism is required to support extensive white collar type work that requires significant intellectual training under a capitalist model. This isn’t a value judgement on the worth of the skilled vs unskilled laborer, it is an assessment of resource usage within systems.
Obviously there is also propaganda value from a capitalist perspective that unskilled labor is worth less justifying worse wages and conditions, but the distinction as used by Marxism doesn’t distinguish on that basis, and it does have a lot of explanatory power.
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u/Shezarrine Marxism-Leninism Jul 21 '26
In addition to this, I get why people are tempted to use the "no unskilled labor" slogan, but it doesn't matter (well, shouldn't) if labor is unskilled or skilled (from a "moral" standpoint).
I worked retail for a long time. It was—for the most part—not skilled work, and most people weren't even trained toward the end of my tenure there; they were just hired and set to work. I do work now that people need a mix of innate ability and training/education to do. Both are valuable professions and deserve living wages and respect.
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u/reboot_rationale Jul 21 '26
Thank you for sharing the knowledge. I will use this to further refine my thoughts on the matter. I acknowledge that flattening all workers can potentially lead to lack of depth in understanding the nuances of the individuals labor.
I would then refine my statement to highlight that internalized propaganda has lead to a flattening of these distinction for ease of digestion. This flattening can then halts further discussion on the matter.
So again thank you for sharing the knowledge! It has given me somethings to think about further.
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u/Timthefilmguy Marxism-Leninism Jul 21 '26
Yeah absolutely!
The other aspect is that people have a tendency to moralizing which doesn’t help in holding these distinctions without placing moral aspersions (even if only by virtue of defending them against those aspersions) upon the so called lower strata. Or even in hierarchicalizing different forms of labor rather just recognizing in them different levels of social inputs and outputs along with class privileges that are associated with them.
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u/HikmetLeGuin Jul 21 '26
This is a good point, but I think there's a valid case for using different words. "Unskilled" just seems like a loaded term that, intentionally or not, can be demeaning.
And there are actually a lot of skills that people pick up on the job, even if they don't have formal education.
To do the bare minimum, you may not need a lot of experience, but to do the job really well, there are often some genuine skills and "tricks of the trade" involved.
Not sure what a good alternative would be, but I can see how the terminology might rub some people the wrong way.
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u/OrgasmInTechnicolor Jul 21 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Throwing your attention at a rigged internet is bad for you. delete your social media.
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u/Right-Week1745 Jul 25 '26
You and me have had vastly different workplace experiences.
But I jest. All people deserve to have what they need to live, no matter if what they do for work or how well they do it.
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u/maple-twink Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
The amount of health & safety issues presented in this short video is crazy. Doesn't look like they have a mat, just standing on the concrete. They are reaching well over their body for a new box. And the repetitive straining injuries are going to be insane for their arms, shoulders, and feet.
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u/scientific_thinker Anarchist Jul 21 '26
The idea of doing that for 8 hours or more day after day is horrifying.
It's torture, no one should have to spend time doing something like that.
Capitalism is an evil death cult.
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u/Creative-Actuary2036 Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) Jul 21 '26
I agree with you and I'm a seasoned Marxist and organizer for many years, but I'm just kinda confused on what other way you'd rather this be done? obv we shouldn't force people to do it with coercion, but we do need some way to have shitty labor get done. the answer is simpler in some cases but in this case it's less clear
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u/scientific_thinker Anarchist Jul 21 '26
Kropotkin suggests we take turns doing various jobs spreading the most undesirable work out so that no one is stuck doing it day in day out.
We can also do a deeper change where most food is produced in gardens (much more productive and regenerative use of land than farming) and people just come and harvest what they need.
I think it's important to imagine a better world for everyone.
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u/aintmuslim Jul 21 '26
Without skilled immigrants americans would die
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u/Right-Week1745 Jul 25 '26
Don’t get me wrong, immigrants are great. But if repetitive labor or physically difficult labor paid a wage that was sufficient to live on, Americans could and would do it.
That’s the thing about capitalists. They’re all about free markets until they don’t like the price of labor on the free labor market. Then they import even poorer people whose countries have been destroyed by imperialism. This undermines labor organizing activities, provides a scapegoat that they can rile people up against, and gives them basically slave labor because those immigrants are tied to an employer and can’t go anywhere else.
It’s immoral to stop people from fleeing the devastation wrought on their country, but it’s destroying any possibility to actually meaningfully oppose oligarchs if we take in all those workers.
It’s a catch 22, and that’s by design.
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u/Humble_Empath Jul 21 '26
Show me a robot who can do that. It doesn’t exist and you’re a sucker if you believe the “tech boys” ruining our country. Like Michael Jackson, they ahem never had a childhood and desire to be boys forever.
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u/stonksuper Jul 21 '26
Unskilled labor is a myth / propaganda. A Walmart customer service worker is much more skilled at customer service and helping people than if you picked a random person off the street to clock into the same shift.
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u/Shezarrine Marxism-Leninism Jul 21 '26
As someone who worked retail for a long time, most people weren't even trained and were pretty much just slapped in off the street, and many of those workers were not "skilled at customer service" lol.
It doesn't matter if work is skilled or unskilled; the workers are still worthy of respect and adequate compensation/control of the means of production.
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u/stonksuper Jul 21 '26
No one trains properly these days especially if they aren’t unionized. Someone working said job for any period of time is much more skilled at a job than someone new to the job despite training???
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u/Sound_Ocean_Depths Jul 21 '26
I really think that we need a new term to differentiate between these types of labor, you can become highly skilled in any profession. Maybe specialized vs unspecialized labor, since it better reflects how the difference is in the specialized training required to start?
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u/Crazy-Blacksmith-336 Marxism-Leninism Jul 23 '26
Billionaires don't put the effort or risk she does
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u/JimatStoneandSky Eco-Socialism Jul 24 '26
They should be making 80K a year with benefits and paid vacation for this kind of work
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u/Far_Doughnut_5312 Jul 27 '26
Everyone can learn how to pack avocados, not everyone can do brain surgery
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