Work

Work is a confidence trick that lies of the heart of the economic system of capitalism. If a man walked up to another man and hit him over the head with a stick and stole half the money in his wallet this would be considered a crime and the man would be considered a threat to society. But if a man offers another a job and pays him half the value his labour generates we laud him as a wealth-creator, as a worthy entrepreneur, the sort of person our children should be taught to emulate in school. The perceived difference between the two situations is the primary myth that the capitalist work system generates.

This is the central myth but there are many others; I came up with seven for a short book I wrote a few years ago, but this is not an exhaustive list. When I wrote Seven Myths about Work I was enraged about the pressure being brought to bear to force everybody into work. On re-reading it I am pleased to see that my rage is clearly manifest in every chapter. While quite a few minor issues now seem dated, that does not.

I notice with some sadness, though, that the determination to avoid the destructive and oppressive work system has faded since the book was published in 1996. The draconian employment and social security legislation that was passed at that time has been effective, and many people, especially young people, who were living creative lives improving either themselves or their communities, or just enjoying life, have been forced into meaningless and poorly paid employment in call centres and fast-food outlets. Perhaps we could have expected nothing better from a government that proudly calls itself 'labour' with no hint of irony.

When I wrote the book I was vaguely aware that it might be of some support to people who either wouldn't or couldn't work. It was well received by exactly those people and I am proud to think that it may indeed have offered them some emotional support when their identities were under attack on all sides because of their refusal to submit to work pressure. One kind reviewer of the book used the word 'advocacy' to describe this role and I like that.

I also had a cheering phone call from a New Deal dodger. He was being persecuted by the DSS, who refused to pay him benefit because he was working on various Local Agenda 21 projects and refusing to undertake 'training' instead. He told me that he had already bought two copies of the book and that he needed another one to put on his DSS file, so that every time they asked him to justify why he didn't accept the offered 'training' he could just refer them to it. The thought of providing such provocation to the people at the sharp end of work oppression could not be refused.

The issue of work was a live one during the early days of New Labour in power. In those days people still talked about whether they wanted to work at all, and what sort of jobs they might want to do. Now most discussion has drifted towards the work-life balance--a concern of the educated middle classes who tend to decide what is debated in the newspapers. You can read my blast against the creation of ever more pointless labour in an article I published in The Idler in 1998, and which is reproduced on the Toil and Trouble page.

The pages in the section of the website dedicated to cooperatives suggest pointers towards a system of work that would be compatible with respect for people and the planet. An article I wrote for the left-wing magazine Soundings also covers some of these issues and discusses ways of achieving job satisfaction and job security through organising the economy cooperatively. The article called ‘Buy Your Own Job; Own Your Own Life’ begins as follows:

The term ‘ownership’ is a popular buzzword in contemporary management speak, in which usage it has no connection with genuine ownership but rather means a willingness amongst employees to pay lip-service to their corporate mission statement. Parallel to this rise in popularity of phoney ownership what we have actually seen is a loss of autonomy by employees over their work, and an increasing loss of control of their workplace to global financial interests. In this article I argue both for a regaining of physical control of the workplace through the expansion of cooperatives, and for a shaking off of the ideological dependence on work which provides such valuable support for capitalism as an economic system. These two arguments can be seen as addressing the two fundamental needs of a decent employment system: for job security and job satisfaction. The following sections propose some possible solutions: moving towards cooperative workplaces; reducing our dependence on the money economy and our standards; and changing our ideas about what we need to live a happy life.

You can download the whole article here (ownjob.pdf: 171KB).