Alienation. “As workers were divorced from the output of their labor, Marx claimed, their sense of self-determination dwindled, alienating them from a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. How’s Marx doing on this score? I’d say quite well: even the most self-proclaimed humane modern workplaces, for all their creature comforts, are bastions of bone-crushing tedium and soul-sucking mediocrity, filled with dreary meetings, dismal tasks, and pointless objectives that are well, just a little bit alienating. If sweating over the font in a PowerPoint deck for the mega-leveraged buyout of a line of designer diapers is the portrait of modern “work,” then call me — and I’d bet most of you — alienated: disengaged, demoralized, unmotivated, uninspired, and about as fulfilled as a stoic Zen Master forced to watch an endless loop of Cowboys and Aliens.”
False consciousness.“According to Marx, one of the most pernicious aspects of industrial age capitalism was that the proles [proletariat] wouldn’t even know they were being exploited — and might even celebrate the very factors behind their exploitation, in a kind of ideological Stockholm Syndrome that concealed and misrepresented the relations of power between classes. How’s Marx doing on this score? You tell me. I’ll merely point out: America’s largest private employer is Walmart. America’s second largest employer is McDonald’s.”
Commodity fetishism. “A fetishized object is one which is more than a symbol: it’s believed to have actually the power the symbol represents (like an idol, or a totem with magical properties). Marx claimed that under industrial age capitalism’s rules, commodities became revered talismans, worshipped through transactional exchanges, imbued with mystical powers that give them inherent value — and obscuring the value of and in the very people who’ve worked labored over them in the first place. It’s one of Marx’s most subtle and nuanced concepts. Does it hold water? Again, I’ll merely pointing to societies in furious pursuit of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, now, whether it’s the retail temples of America’s mega-malls, or London rioters stealing, not bread, but video games.”
“Automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots are transforming the world of work and the human condition. The promise of new technology is changing our attitudes to work, life and leisure – change will be forced upon us, not least because the idea that the means to life should be conditional on employment is now bankrupt. The increasing supply of labour is looking for employment within an economy in which demand for labour is falling dramatically. Pricing labour according to supply versus demand has driven millions into destitution – one only has to look at youth unemployment in Europe for the evidence.
“The protestant work ethic was a product of the industrial revolution and we’ve been conditioned from birth to believe that without a job, we are incomplete human beings. Is the right to be lazy immoral or is being enslaved to this abusive and destructive political economy a grave error in human thinking?
“Antiwork – a radical shift in how we view “jobs” by Brian Dean Over a decade into the 21st century, we seem as work-obsessed as ever. Is it time for a progressive reframing of workand leisure?
“If you are in any doubt as to what the future holds in terms of employment, watch “Humans need not apply” – that is the cold, hard reality of today’s political economy.”
I really enjoyed this piece. Thanks Scott!
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