Tootfinder

"The Rise of the Voluntariat" by Geoff Shullenberger (found via D. Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs").
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The voluntariat performs skilled work that might still command a wage without compensation, allegedly for the sake of the public good, regardless of the fact that it also contributes directly and unambiguously to the profitability of a corporation. Like the proletariat, then, the voluntariat permits the extraction of surplus value through its labor.
But unlike the proletariat’s labor, the voluntariat’s has become untethered from wages. The voluntariat’s labor is every bit as alienable as the proletariat’s — Coursera’s Translator Contract leaves no doubt about that — but it must be experienced by the voluntariat as a spontaneous, non-alienated gift.
And the voluntariat is not, like the proletariat, the instrument of its own dispossession. Rather, its contribution of uncompensated work accelerates deskilling and undermines the livelihood of those who do not have the luxury of working for free — in this case, professional translators who cannot afford to give away their labor.
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#AntiCapitalism