Friday, February 12, 2010

The Life of a Peasant

We have to oppose sweatshops! Look at the working conditions of these people. They work basically every hour that they're awake! They make meager wages! Stop buying from companies that use sweatshop labor!

Or not. This reactionary argument it nonsense. Conveniently the people who make this argument ignore the fact that people voluntarily take these jobs. That's right, people choose to work there. If you pose this response to a person who holds the anti-sweatshop position, you'll most likely get a response that they were forced to work in the sweatshop because they were forced out of their farmland. This view, though, is based on a romanticism of peasant life. Were things really much better for people who were subsistence farmers? Grow what your family needs. If it doesn't grow then you die. Is this the way that people really want to work?

If you oppose sweatshop labor, maybe you need to look at this statue of what peasants really look like. See if this is the glorious labor that you make it out to be.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Peasants_3French_Best.jpg

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