S01 E04: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: Workers Who Defend Their Own Exploitation
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S01 E04: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: Workers Who Defend Their Own Exploitation
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About this listen
Why do people vote against their own interests? Why do workers defend the system that keeps them poor?
In this episode, we explore Robert Tressell's 1914 novel: a story about house painters in Edwardian England who ridicule the one colleague among them who suggests they're being exploited. They call themselves philanthropists because they give the fruits of their labour to their employers willingly, even gratefully.
It's fiction, but it's also diagnosis. Tressell wasn't interested in villains. He was interested in how ordinary people come to believe that poverty is natural, that the rich deserve their wealth, and that anyone who questions this is a troublemaker.
Over a century old, and it still reads like this morning's news.
Source: "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" by Robert Tressell (1914)