Good Enough for the Lumpen, not Good Enough for CA C.O.s

Recently the Governor of California lowered the excessive and unnecessary amount of money that federal capitalist workers received. I don’t know the intimate details, I just know that instead of being payed $20 and $35 an hour, they were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Outrage and hiss fits all around. You can’t do that Governador, how will we overeat, overspend and hoard. Now there’s a problem.

I remember a few years back an uneducated, because I’m a guard and you’re a prisoner, bourgeois pig was debating me over how he should treat prisoners. His main argument is what they all believe, “you did what you did to get yourself in prison.” I wouldn’t be in prison if I and people similarly situated like me had opportunities to strive to be my best, instead of being oppressed and repressed and suppressed at every turn and door I (we) enter. The so-called crime or activity which got me in prison, would not be a crime in a socialist society because I would not have to seek other alternatives of financial gain to survive. That would be my counterargument.

Then this defender of capitalist mentality, “dog eat dog,” comes with “you should get a job, even if it’s at a fast food restaurant.” They only pay minimum wage. That’s not enough to survive on, to educate myself, to save for my future children’s survival. I’m only working to get up to work all over, with nothing to show for what I’ve done. It’s like an artist selling his paintings, her art, her time, skill and energy, his life sweat and blood, just to be able to pay for the supplies that was used to produce the painting, the art. “Working for minimum wage is better than nothing” was his curtain call.

Now a few years later when the shoe is on the other foot, now minimum wage is not better than nothing. Now it’s a slap in their face. It’s alright for the lower working class, it’s enough for the proletariat to be paid and have to survive off of minimum wage, but not the middle class. It’s too small, not enough for the bourgeois. That’s one of the many faces of capitalism. Rise, rebel, revolt, revolution. All power to the people.

MIM(Prisons) responds:
This article correctly points out the dual standards of the petty-bourgeoisie but we do not agree with the author that workers earning minimum wage in Amerika are part of the proletariat. Even minimum wage is more than the value of the labor Amerikan workers expend. We will not deny that jobs like those in fast food restaurants are alienating and they do not provide opportunities to advance. And in a consumerist economy where what you own is who you are, they also make it very hard for Amerikans to compete with the wealthier petty bourgeoisie.

The proposal by Schwarzenegger (which surprise, surprise, never happened) would have taken the average California state worker from the top 0.88% richest people in the world to the top 12.23% richest (ignoring that they would actually be reimbursed the difference later under the proposal). As MIM demonstrated with extensive research and publications like MIM Theory 1 and 10, Amerikan citizens are part of the global petty bourgeoisie and so do not have an economic interest in ending imperialism. Even those working minimum wage jobs might protest and demand more money, but that’s because they see that they can expect more because most of their peers in Amerika are getting it.