The quote from Moishe Postone ("The historical possibility of the abolition of proletarian labor, ...") in the attached image is a little to long to put in tweets but if you need it in text form, here's a link: reddit.com/r/abolishwagel… 1/few> 
To paraphrase (part 1): Capitalism, through its marvelous innovations, brings for the "historical possibility of the abolition of proletarian labor". By "proletarian labor", Postone means your right to have a job if and only if you produce surplus value. >
"Surplus value" isn't synonymous with "profit", thought the two are related. "Surplus value" means something closer to "profit that is successfully used to create more wage slavery." >
We live in a society that forces you to sell your time to survive. But selling your time isn't enough. You must sell enough of your time to produce what we need -- and then more of your time to make it possible to force others into wage slavery. Capital is "self-expanding". >
Dystopian fiction analogy: You're in a prison cell and the guards will only feed if you not only maintain your cell - but also help build new cells. Of course, if everyone was let out, we could feed ourselves with no cells at all. >
So proletarian labor is being forced into wage slavery and your having a job is contingent on your helping to force yur future self and others into wage slavery. Can we get rid of this misery? >
Capitalism itself makes it possible to get rid of that misery by, through competition, making labor more and more productive. In mature capitalism - WHERE WE ARE - only a tiny subset of workers are needed to produce everything present and future workers need! >
We know that for sure, today: Look at how easy it is to turn off vast swaths of the economy, and continue only "essential labor"! The proof is right there before our eyes that today, most work is "superfluous". It does nothing but reproduce wage slavery! >
But Postone says there is a "disastrous development" associated with reaching this stage of capitalism. What is that? Well, his words: "the growing superfluity of labor is expressed as the growing superfluity of people". >
In our analogy, since the number of jail cells for workers vastly exceeds the number needed to feed the whole prison, if there is any trouble in some wing of the prison, the guards can just casually blow it up. Who cares. THEY don't need it to remain in control. >
So that's what the Postone comment is about but with one MAJOR catch: In reality, there are no guards. Oh, sure, there are billionaires and cops and armies and so on but they are not analogous to those guards. Power flows through them but they don't possess that power. >
The power that flows through them is generated by us - by our eagerness to enthusiastically work as wage slaves. We might do that out of a false sense of practicality, or a really peculiar illusion of dignity, or for whatever reason. But we literally enslave ourselves. >
That's what surplus value is. It is not merely the excess output we don't consume. It is the social process we engage in that turns that surplus into self-enslavement. >
This is upsetting to some "marxists" who don't read Marx as carefully as Postone. Many of them believe in literal guards who must be overthrown. In their view we must political organize to elect socialists (none are running) or to fight bosses who are increasingly virtual. >
For Marx, in a mature capitalism, the problem is in a way much simpler: we simply have to recognize how much work has become superfluous, stop doing it at all, and liberate the small core of remaining enslaved workers by finding other ways to complete their essential tasks. >
As a thought experiment or real possibility: Each "essential" job - typically low wage and miserable - could be divided up among a larger number of volunteers. Giving up on the money system could do away with even more (e.g. grocery clerks). >
But there is simultaneously a threat while we *don't* end labor: that superfluity problem. If most labor is "inessential" - and today we see for sure it is - then more people are "inessential" to capitalism. So think on that as some try to rescue "the economy". />
