Under capitalism, most people spend their days working for corporations, hunched over tables in garment factories or lugging boxes in warehouses, standing at drive-thru windows or packed like sardines in call centers. Most of their time is spent at the complete mercy of managers, who are themselves following direct orders from CEOs, who are making millions or sometimes billions in profits and living in luxury.

People spend their one-of-a-kind, non-renewable lives this way because if they don’t, they won’t be able to afford what they need to survive. They relinquish their autonomy for most of their waking hours in exchange for the ability to continue to exist. And even when they make the trade, there’s no guarantee they won’t die for lack of funds, one way or another.

Socialists don’t think this is acceptable. People only get a few decades each to live, and should not have to spend them doing things they don’t enjoy for the ultimate benefit of others. In order to keep society running, people will have to perform unpleasant tasks, but it should be easy to explain how those tasks benefit the public and the person doing them, and they should have some say in what gets done and how. If we followed that guiding principle, people would be more free, and their lives would not be wasted. There are other dimensions to socialism, but to me these are the building blocks.