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You did not follow my advice: rather than fixating on the violence, look at what happened before: these workers effectively lived in cities where the only jobs
by pyrale 9y ago
You did not follow my advice: rather than fixating on the violence, look at what happened before: these workers effectively lived in cities where the only jobs available were those provided by the mine owners. In the case of Ludlow, despite it being illegal, they were paid in script money. This means they could only buy from the company, and only what the company would sell to them. The pay incentive system, which only rewarded coal extracted and not, consolidation work led to deadly work operations. Curfews could be imposed in the city by the authority, which was also the landlord, employer and provider of every other service.
In that context, claiming that a choice is possible for miners is an illusion. And as many examples illustrate, physical violence is merely one more step which can not perceived as fundamentally different from the previous ones.
This is why this violence was the natural next move whenever miners tried to unionize.
- jules 9y agoWhy is that relevant when the violence was initiated by the company?
- pyrale 9y agoIt is relevant because there is more to violence than merely physically harming people. Forcing people to use script money when it's not legal is a form of violence, even if they can leave town. Forcing curfew is a form of violence. Refusing to pay workers for work that isn't related directly to profit, but to workers' safety is a form of violence and endangerment, even though it's the miner that still decides he needs that job so much it's worth taking the risk. Once you've piled up all these kinds of domination schemes, it becomes hard for the owner to actually discern the difference between all of this and physical violence ; it is also a process of dehumanization that makes it much harder to consider the workers deserve safety. Therefore, violence that goes as far as deportation, mutilation or death becomes acceptable. My point being, there is no instance of unfettered relations of power that don't end up like that. I believe there's a large corpus of work on the various areas involved here, if you want a specific precision, I can try to find relevant infos.
- jules 9y agoNone of the things you mention are violence. The miners decided that out of all the alternatives they had, that was their best alternative. At some point they decided that it was no longer, so they went on strike. If the system had worked according to the principles I outlined then the company would not have been able to open sniper fire on the workers, and the company would have had to treat its workers better if they wanted people to come back to work.
- pyrale 9y agoIn that set of hypotheses you laid out, you're right. My point is that observations tend to prove the predicates necessary for your model are not verified in reality.
- jules 9y agoThen why give this example? The whole point of what I said was that in a free market the transactions have to be voluntary. Whatever your definition of voluntary, the precise meaning of which can be debated, it does not include opening sniper fire on people in order to make them work.