Union Perspectives

In the fight to defeat lifestyle and wage inequality, we must understand how we got here by understanding the history of humans and how they have been controlled. First, it was just savagery, which lasted more than a million years. Then barbarism came along and lasted five thousand years. And then it was slaves where we belonged to the master for life, followed by the feudal serfdom or tenant, who were also likely bound for life to the lord and his land. From there we went to capitalism, which is only 450 years old. In this time the industrial age was launched around the start of the 19th century, which brought large numbers of new wage slaves from the countryside to the cities and factories creating capitalist captains of industry and later masters of entire countries and their continents as their riches increased, riches that included wage slaves. Their riches also came from using our Commons to get ahead and using the wealth accumulated from our Commons and our labor swelled their r...