Blog-Rebellion – Pilot Post

Mein Beitragsinhalt

Hey there fellow rebels,

Welcome to the bildungsrebellinnen - blog - our personal platform for an educational revolution.

This blog is dedicated on bringing you analysis of current political situations and questions, offering solutions on societal, political and economical challenges and on being an outlet for our voices and the voices that go unheard or are silenced in a post-capitalist society that is ready to collapse - with those in power holding on to it with everything they've got. It will be dedicated to those that seek knowledge - not truth - in a world that has become so fast, it's almost impossible to understand without finding community. It is for those that feel alone and hopeless with what is going on. The people out there knowing that something has to change, but are struggling to find their topic and become a part of the solution.

We will touch many different themes here - from education and personal growth, community resilience and sufficiency, antifascist activism, politics and theory to economic transformation, especially within the agricultural sector. All of these are the core focus of our educational work and practical research we do within our projects and teams.

For now, the postings will be written in the English language for reasons of necessary outreach and the lack of a proper translation plugin on our website’s hosting. If you struggle to understand a point or a Blogpost, you can gladly reach out to us for translation to Spanish and German.

Today we are going to dive into a topic that is very broadly discussed in Germany right now and that is very dear to our hearts: Work.

So Buckle up people, we’re going in.

Germany is under conservative leadership once again. And while Angela Merkel already was polarizing – but likable - we now have to deal with a former Black Rock board member as chancellor that proudly spends thousands of Euros on a haircut that holds severe similarity to a well known Austrian mustache – just he carries it on his forehead. A millionaire who could not be distanced further away from the working class reality of the everyday people in Germany. When we knew Friedrich Merz would be new leader of Germany, we knew we were in for a ride. But how quickly he would accelerate attacks on the rights and dignity of the working class members of our society were even surprising to most political analysts.

Now, to give a little background (skip this part until the next bold headline if you don't want to get into the dry depth of German Social security politics and neoliberal clusterfucks): Germany was once known for having one of the most advanced social security systems in the world. Good pay, good healthcare, a good social security net keeping most people from falling through the cracks of a capitalist society. This could go undisputed until the neoliberal policy makers of the 80s and 90s started shifting the country away from it’s highly praised “Social market economy”. In late 90s and early 2000s, Social Democrat chancellor Gerhard Schröder, now buddy with Wladimir Putin and long time supervisory board member of Gazprom (until the criticism due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine got him to quit in 2022), started really gutting the social security net with his “Agenda 2010” and paved the road to make Germany a low-income country. Since then, the society has drifted apart with Germany being one of the European countries with the biggest wealth inequality, as billionaires got incredibly rich off of the backs of working class people working low income jobs with worsening social security nets that in 2025 are only granting an existencial minimum that is ridiculously low compared to the cost of living.

Currently, the Merz-lead conservative coalition, sadly partnered up with the social democrats, fluttering in the wind of neoliberalism to keep the 10-15% of voters left to their big name they held once upon a time, is again crushing down on the social security net. Beside a big discussion with even bigger lies about cutting the existencial minimum of unemployed workers there are two main attacks on the social security net they are currently launching: One is the crushing of the 40-hour week in exchange for a 48-hour week, and one is the attack on the retirement age of 67, which already is one of the highest in all of Europe, in exchange for a retirement age of 70.
The statement is clear: The social security system costs too much, to uphold it people have to work more – and longer.

I agree, there are many things going wrong with the social security system in Germany. For example, it has been clear for decades that Germany’s so called “Generational contract” (young people paying into the retirement system so old people can get their retirement pay) is going to crumble, because the society is rapidly aging, there are not enough immigrants to compensate the low birth rates and therefore the overaging society. But, there is also another truth here: The super rich pay relatively low taxes on their income, their wealth and their inheritances. This could be a huge lever to attack wealth inequality in Germany – only 10% of the population have 60% of all the wealth in the country, while the poorer 50% share only 3 % of the overall wealth. It could be a way to invest into education, social security and infrastructure. Instead the conservatives aim at – the working class. What a fucking surprise.

Now, this is where it gets interesting again, from politicians to media outlets everybody is raining accusations on the working class. Of course they can work longer, of course they can work more. For a healthy and thriving Germany, they need to make sacrifices. It’s funny, isn’t it? When we ask the rich to make sacrifices, like the left party “Die Linke” is fighting for within the political system, there are tons of excuses on why we can’t make them contribute more. But when it comes to the working class, all these fine suits are sitting in front of their keyboards and are fighting to make the working class pay – without having to walk a day in their shoes.

Let’s do a little thought experiment here, shall we? All of these keyboard warriors in their fancy offices in the German Reichstag or the Springer-media-HQ say it’s no problem to work more, it’s no problem to work longer – but when did they really have to use up their bodies for the work they do? Now, I am sitting here writing a blog-article and hell yeah – this is fun to me. This isn’t work that is taking a toll. All my life I have been working in the retirement centers as a social worker or an office aid that my dad built with his company. My work? I could have done until 70, and maybe for a couple of hours more a week (even though my productivity would have fallen so much wasting away more time on the job as I lose the time I really cherish for myself, but this is another discussion). But the care takers that are already working back-to-back shifts, lifting grown ass men whose bodies don’t function anymore out of their beds and into showers and back into their beds? That deal with the psychological trauma of reliving death as an everyday reality in their lives for 40+ years? They can not give anymore of themselves. And they should not have to, because they are fucking heroes. What they contribute to our society is breathtaking – and we should honor it by easing the toll their work is taking on their bodies and minds instead of deepening it. The hospital workers who are hustling in a crumbling health care system who were the backbone of our society for 3 years of a pandemic, keeping everyone alive and therefore everything running – we are really asking them to do that for 3 more years and 8 hours more? Excuse my anger, but what the fuck people? We, as academic scholars, have been very much humbled by the experience in our agricultural projects at Finca Altermundialista in southern Spain and Casa Altermundialista in northern spain. We had to become craftsmen – building infrastructure for regenerative agriculture, community spaces, building energy grids to power tools and learning plumbing to build up irrigation systems. We became “hobby”-farmers for producing food, regenerating soil, experimenting with techniques – and we used our bodies for most of it, just like many small scale farmers have to - as a means to survive. And while this work is very rewarding to us, as it shows us what really we are capable of doing besides sitting in front of excel spreadsheets for 8 hours a day – it’s backbreaking fucking work.

You’re a journalist or a politician or an office worker? Great, follow me: imagine tearing down a wall in your house or your office because you have to, moving 2000kgs of the rubble in buckets into your car, then driving it to a recycling place and unloading that again. Your body will tell you the story of the toll this took on you for days. Now, your office wall might be done after a day or two. And your body is striking anyways? Good, now imagine doing that again for the rest of the week, getting up everyday with a body that’s in pain and doing it all over again, every morning, every day. Let’s get to my point: If you have never lived this experience, you shouldn’t be talking about these people needing to work more or longer hours. You. Just. Fucking. Shouldn’t. Period. Let me make a suggestion: All of you fine suits in politics and media campaigning for the 48 hour week or the retirement entry age of 70 years – if you want to continue running your little campaigns on the backs of the working class, it’s time you put your back into it. It is time you pick up a shovel and dig. It’s time you throw on an apron and hold the hand of a 90 year old man with lung cancer who’s breathing his last breaths. It’s time you fucking put on some gloves and carry rubble out of a construction site. It’s that easy: If you can’t work the work, you don’t get to talk the talk. I recently saw a post by Ronen Steinke, a constitutional law expert I dearly admire, who posted the image of a court that is right next to a county jail. He stated that besides a short internship in jails during their studies, judges never get to see the inside of a jail again when they are working on the job. I suggested to him that this would be a campaign worth fighting for, that judges get a requirement of a yearly minimum time in a prison to stay connected with the reality of the people that is created by their decision making. We should do the same for politicians and journalists. If you are campaigning and commenting on retirement entry ages and working hours for working class people, you should be required to live at least a month in their shoes. And I mean, what’s a month compared to 40+ years, right? But I think it would but some things in perspective if you have to really feel the toll these jobs take on your body an mind, while after working them full time, you are still struggling financially. Also: I would really love to see Friedrich Merz carrying 30 days worth of rubble out of the collapsing building of German post-capitalist society. Now that would be a politican I could deem honest. I would love to see Ulf Poschardt of Springer-Magazine “Welt” in an apron, fighting for the live of a cancer patient next to our everyday heroines and heroes of German hospital workers – doctors, nurses, maintenance staff etc. And if after a month of working in their reality they still feel the same need to have that discussion – maybe at least we have a discussion on an eye-to-eye level. Or maybe we finally ask those to contribute more to our society that are already living off the backs of working class people: The Friedrich Merzes and Ulf Poschardts of this country. It’s time they get off their lazy asses and finally and really do some work for this society.