Bulaba Jones wrote:What you're describing is not the crux of socialism (characterizing underpaid, impoverished working class people as people who whine, etc): it is that labor, itself, is exploited and stolen from the person doing the labor itself. For the record, most wealth is controlled by an extremely low count of people, a ratio that dwindles even further as time goes on.
A man has no choice but to sell his labor for a wage. The profits go to people who either do far less work than him, or to someone who does no actual work and simply lives off the work of others. The man who works quite possibly cannot afford to buy whatever product or service he made or provided with the wages he's paid. Instead of being able to profit from his own labor, that excess goes to someone else.
What I am describing is that "inequality", or pareto distribution, is not something most people really care that much about and the proof is all around but lotteries are a particularly clear example.
On the other things you mention:
Human beings have 5 millions years or more of practice at "having no choice but to do stuff to survive". More if you count our pre-human generations who face the same existential issue. If anyone is operating on the assumption that the world owes them a living then they are a rare freak and not the mainstream of people whom you call the "masses" who tend to have a firmer grip on reality.
A wage earner is a business himself, his wages are his revenue and his disposable income is his profit. Ultimately we are all selling something to gain something we want more than we are letting go. The value of products vary: David Bowie's product (mysteriously because I think his stuff is crap) turned out to be more valuable than Joe Guitar who never made it out of the pub circuit. This is where the pareto-distributions kick in that create "inequality".
There is no theft where there is an agreement which is kept. Thefts are involuntary by nature.
Bulaba Jones wrote:Capitalism is literally, and not figuratively, a system of inequality and exploitation of labor. It's how capitalism operates.
Let's go with that, but ask who cares? Let's break it down, "system of inequality" yes in a normal (capitalist) economy pareto distributions occur, they might even be common, but as shown by the lottery and many other pareto-distribution games "the masses" literally do not care a hoot about it and actively go out and create pareto distributions and call it good. "The masses" made John Lennon the richest songsmith the world has ever known and the masses, by ignoring him, made Joe Guitar a poor nobody whose only win in life will be a darwin award at the end of it.
"exploitation of labour" - this is too narrow because actually capitalism is the exploitation of anything with value. The bloke who sweeps the floor at Wall Mart is exploiting the fact that WallMart has a lot of floor space which need to be kept clean for their customers. Right now I am exploiting pofo's need to be filled up with free user contributions to rant at airhead commies and pofo is exploiting me right back. What you call "exploitation" is really just trade and it is a
bilateral exploitation meaning it goes both ways.
In contrast commies prefer slavery, conscription and rations, which is the
unilateral exploitation of non-commies. Arguably that is the real exploitation.