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Communists/socialists projecting exploitation of workers onto capitalism

One of the main talking points of modern socialists/communists is that capitalism exploits and abuses the working class, takes advantage of it, sucks it dry, builds up riches on their work while paying them pitiable amounts of their hard-earned money. Essentially not much better than slave labor.

This is nothing but projection, pure and simple.

Consider what the situation was in the Soviet Union, which was pretty much the epitome of a Communist country, where Communism was implemented in its purest form, with pretty much no compromises.

In the Soviet Union the government assigned you a job, with you having little to no choice about the matter, and you were obliged to do that job lest you be punished. Your personal preferences, abilities, choices or even physical capabilities usually had little to no effect on where you were assigned to do work and what kind of work. (At most, if you were literally unable to do a particular kind of work, eg. because of being paralyzed from the waist down, they would assign you a job you were able to physically do, like sitting at a news stand or info kiosk.)

You had no choice. You could not refuse. If you didn't do the job assigned to you, you would be punished. When Soviet propagandists declared to the world that there was no unemployment in the Soviet Union, they weren't lying: That was actually true. What they weren't saying is how that zero unemployment rate was achieved.

It was achieved by pretty much in essence slave labor, in all but name.

And the payment for your job? Did you get rich in this zero-unemployment utopia, like the Socialists would want you to believe? Nope. You got an absolutely laughable pittance of a salary, barely enough to survive. Just enough for the bare necessities of survival, and that's it.

And, rather obviously, self-employment, private entrepreneurship, creating your own independent private company, was banned in the country. Indeed, if any private citizen managed to achieve anything even resembling economic independence by engaging in self-employment, the state police would very soon find out and put a stop to it. As an example, if someone was eg. a musician and got hired to play at events, parties etc, and was paid for that, the state police would soon find out and make it stop, such as by destroying the person's musical instruments, if not outright throwing him in jail. Many citizens of former Soviet countries will tell you stories about these.

Contrast that with capitalist countries: The key word in those is freedom.

In capitalist countries you are completely free to choose your own job. Nobody assigns you a job nor forces you to do that job. You can choose who you will work for, or even if you will work independently, creating your own business. If you work for a particular employer and you don't like that position (eg. because of the work conditions, your treatment there, the poor salary, or any other reason) you are completely free to leave and choose another employer, or even create your own business if you want.

In capitalist countries you can negotiate your salary to match your expertise and qualifications. You can sell your expertise to the highest bidder, so to speak. If you don't like what you are being offered, you have a choice: You can go somewhere else.

This is the exact opposite of worker exploitation. This is worker freedom. If you don't like your salary or working conditions, you are free to go somewhere else. You are free to create your own better company if you want. Heck, you are even completely free to create your own utopistic "socialist" company where very worker is an equal "owner" if you want: Nothing is stopping you. There's no law against it. The government will not come and destroy your musical instruments to stop you from working independently. You can create any kind of workplace you want.

That's the beauty of a capitalist free-market system: Freedom.

When socialists talk about capitalism exploiting the workers, they are just projecting.

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