Wage Slavery': Piven Calls Working for 'Livelihood' Not 'Appropriate' - Better to Be 'Active' in 'Community

According To Frances Fox Piven:

• Self-service industry is bad because it kills jobs
• Wonders why people have to work for a livelihood: not "appropriate"

• Low-income jobs are "wage slavery"
• Laments jobs at Walmart
• Being a "participant in their community" is a good alternative to working
• Reagan "steamrolled" the poor by eliminating the ideals of guaranteed income, right to welfare and the right to support

Last week, The Blaze exclusively covered Penn Professor Philippe Bourgois's anti-capitalist, anti-American, pro-Marxist rant to Bryn Mawr College students. But Bourgois was not the only one in the room with alarming ideas.  Avowed socialist professor Frances Fox Piven was on the panel as well, ready to espouse her own vision for what is the matter with America.

When the question was posed from the audience "How do we get more jobs for the poor?" Piven took time to then downplay the need for jobs.

The professor began by attacking the elimination of jobs due to technology and convenience, much as President Obama had done with ATM's last summer.  She lamented people pumping their own gas and checking out their own groceries before declaring that people deserve a livelihood whether they work or not.

"Do we really think that people only deserve a livelihood if they're willing to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week for 6 or 7 or 8 dollars an hour?"

Piven declared this practice of working for an income as not "appropriate."  She went on to define her idea of a standard American low income job: A single mother, working at Walmart, on food-stamps, leaving her child with her drug-addicted brother-in-law.  After painting this demeaning picture the professor asked rhetorically, "Whats so great about that?"

Professor Piven's alternative to working? "Be an active participant in their community."

She went on to blame Ronald Reagan for "steamrolling" the poor by eliminating the Marxist ideals of guaranteed income, right to welfare and the right to support. And she closed by lamenting that Reagan forced liberals to discuss the practice of job creation, even though some of the jobs could be defined as "wage slavery."

Watch the stunning remarks Below:

 Key Piven Quotes:

"It's not exactly a mystery, why there are no jobs, why jobs are so hard to find.  We've been eliminating jobs.  We send them abroad to low wage countries; we eliminate the jobs in the gasoline station-- you pump your own gas, you pack your own groceries, check out your own stuff at K-Mart."

"I don't think we should just do the jobs mantra.  Do we really think that people only deserve a livelihood if they're willing to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week for 6 or 7 or 8 dollars an hour?  I don't think that's appropriate."

"What about all these women that were forced into the low-wage labor market?  They are working at Wal-Mart, for example, putting all the stuff back on the hangers that the customers knock off the hangers, and things like that.  And they're leaving their kids with their mother, or their drug-addicted brother-in-law, in order to go to Wal-Mart and earn minimum wage, and maybe also collect food stamps in order to survive.  What's so great about that?"

"Why can't they work in their-- you know, be an active participant in their community, take care of their own kids."

"Ronald Reagan started the steamroller, which persuaded liberals that they shouldn't talk about income maintenance, they shouldn't talk about guaranteed income, they shouldn't talk about the right to welfare, the right to support.They shouldn't only talk about jobs."

"Well, I think we should talk about income support and remember that in the 19th century the working class activists thought that a lot of these jobs were wage slavery."