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What violence is used to keep workers laboring in their factories? Your position seems to hang on that point. I don't think refusing to intervene and letting someone starve to death is a violent act. To claim otherwise redefines violence as any actor action which does not meet your personal wants.


Try to imagine yourself as a worker with little to no asset ownership. One day you decide voluntarily to cut yourself off from your job. You no longer are able to pay rent/mortgage, and you are on the streets. You're hungry but have no money. You think of the best place to get some money for food.. Maybe that rich neighborhood would be generous to you. You start panhandling, but 5 minutes into it, some local rent-a-cop starts harassing you to get off the sidewalk that's "reserved for the business in front of it". You refuse, stating that the sidewalk is public property. A few minutes later, the police come over and force you to relocate. Where to? You pick another spot, and the cycle repeats until you pick a spot far enough away from everyone. Still no food though.

Now you want to sleep.. need I continue?

In short, the violence is not in "letting someone starve". Most people aren't out there trying to starve themselves. The violence is in preventing someone from saving themselves. Being homeless/penniless is an eyesore for those that aren't. The actions taken to fix the eyesore are the source of violence. What happens to a panhandler if they refuse to comply with police's arbitrarily justified order to "relocate"?


If workers were to seize the full value of their labour, or seize the means of production, capital armies (like the police) would attack them. Even when workers merely strike they commonly get attacked by police.

The laws (and even the liberal ideology you adhere to) exist to favour the ruling class. Why would the ruling class do anything else? When the ruling class are the owners of capital, the laws and culture disfavour workers.

Ultimately it’s not worth discussing this to death yet again, it has been done countless times in the last couple hundred years.


Nobody is using violence to stop workers from buying, renting, or building means of production. Buy your own example, violence only comes into play when they try to steal.

The only real violence you mentioned is if police attack striking workers, which is exceedingly rare in most developed countries with the rule of law. What percentage of striking workers do you think are physically harmed by police in the us? If you think that is a likely or common outcome, we are probably living in different realities. You say that laws just favor the workers, but I wouldn't want to be a worker in a society without property rights. There is no point in working if any value you create can be stolen with impunity.




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