PMM
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Why?
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PMM
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 00:25
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Ah. Found this thanks to the work of someone else...
http://www.zpub.com/notes/black-work.html
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Jane
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 08:21
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...because you haven't inherited yet?
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PMM
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fan-bloody-tastic!
Jul 08, 2004, 09:32
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The article linked to takes quite a bit of reading, but it nails absolutely what I was hoping to get across.
Here are selected quotes...
"My minimum definition of work is forced labor, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the stick by other means.) But not all creation is work. Work is never done for its own sake, it's done on account of some product or output that the worker (or, more often, somebody else) gets out of it. This is what work necessarily is. To define it is to despise it. But work is usually even worse than its definition decrees. The dynamic of domination intrinsic to work tends over time toward elaboration. In advanced work-riddled societies, including all industrial societies whether capitalist of "Communist," work invariably acquires other attributes which accentuate its obnoxiousness."
"The degradation which most workers experience on the job is the sum of assorted indignities which can be denominated as "discipline." Foucault has complexified this phenomenon but it is simple enough. Discipline consists of the totality of totalitarian controls at the workplace -- surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching -in and -out, etc. Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible. It was beyond the capacities of such demonic dictators of yore as Nero and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. For all their bad intentions they just didn't have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do."
"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.
And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately deStalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents and teachers who work?"
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cancer boy
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 10:45
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Yes, it's terrible when all your money's tied up in your parents' house... ;-) I particularly enjoyed one of the reader comments on the article that PMM linked to that suggested private income as an alternative to work - surely this is dependent on everyone else in society continuing to work, otherwise your investments wouldn't actually genereate any income. As Peter Cook said when asked how he supported himself "I am not working class... private income and blackmail..."
Some strange people like me do actually enjoy their work though. If you've got a shitty job that's getting you down why not leave and do something else - I enjoyed what I did, I just couldn't stand working in a corporate environment, so I took voluntary redundancy to start my own spectacularly unsuccessful company (no money earned in almost 18 months - go me!)
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ratcni01
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 11:31
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Do they owe us a living?
Course they do, course they do
Do they owe us a living?
Course they fucking do
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morfe
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 11:57
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Heee! I posted that link here, way, way back 4 years ago I think.
And here I am working like a bastard for no money yet hoping one day to get square and level just to be in the position to work for charitable pursuits.
Why work? Because you want to look after your family, buy nice things like computers and music and transport and central heating and communications and bla and bla. Go to gigs, eat a pie, afford to buy posh veggie food etc.
The ludic lifestyle needs a lot of clever planning and a complete change of social habits. However I believe that working towards a goal is as distinctly different to working to survive as is chalk to cheese.
There's always the Amish, the highway or the dole ;-)
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morfe
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 12:01
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But who is 'they'? The taxpayers owe us a living?
Big government owes us some freedom of choices, but do they really owe one a living?
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ratcni01
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 13:59
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Erm nope morfe - no one owes me anything, I'm responsible for me.
That "owe us a living thing" was a quote from a Crass lyric, there was another very similar sentiment expressed in an Anti-Nowhere League track - god how immature I used to be, still like the vibe behind the tunes though ;-) (angry fuck you basically)
"One day you will look back at all these years of struggle realise their beauty" Freud paraphrased
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morfe
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Re: Work
Jul 08, 2004, 14:25
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With you on that! Sorry for briefness, my reply seemed curt or cocky on retrospect, but just pushed for time and eager to discuss such things, so it was an un-nuanced literal question no offense :-)
bloody work!
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