The Value of Work.
{Photo via Wikimedia Commons}
Capitalism, at least in its current evolution, represents a very rigid and structured system of causality based on acquisition.
In order to acquire, which has become the verb of choice representing an ideal function of the person, you must work. In order to get A, you must do B. It’s a very logical system. But it is also an easy one to corrupt if that chain of causality is drawn out.
In order to get A, you must do B, and then C, and then D. Those extra steps are not designed to get you any closer to your needs, but to exploit your labor for the benefit of those imposing this causality.
There is a very Judeo-Christian sentimentality tied up in the system of capitalism, which posits the eventual attainment (or acquisition) of something good and desirable as preceded by difficult labor and suffering; if you work hard and endure a certain period of oppression and necessary evil, you will prove yourself worthy enough to receive something good and desirable in turn.
It’s a belief that is so cemented in the social consciousness it is taken for granted. The expectation of domesticity. You will get an education, you will marry, you will get a job, and then work — and eventually, after you’ve worked long enough, you will reap the benefits of that work. From a colonial point of view this has been very effective: the standard of living that arises out of an ability to centralize labor (and in many cases, automate it) is the ultimate definition of first world.
The columnist and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has already asked the question: if the current model, which operates under an infinite-growth paradigm, isn’t sustainable, then what are the other possible alternatives? The linear focus on the creation of jobs in America begs the question — do we need more production?
Rushkoff argues that there is more than enough production already — we grow and produce more than enough food, and we build more than enough homes, to the point where we have difficulty actually filling them with occupants. The problem with jobs is not production: it is the exploitation of that system.
It benefits a very small portion of the population at the expense of the rest. China is the poster child of useless overproduction: entire cities being built, that remain empty because no one has the money to live in them. In order to maintain GDP growth, production must continue unimpeded, regardless of the general population’s inability to function within it. The current economic system has enough food and shelter for everyone: but unless you have acquired a job, you are not eligible for these necessities, regardless of their ubiquity.
And what is a job? When you step back and consider what constitutes a career, it’s ridiculous that we should go to school for 15+ years, enlist in some sort of arbitrary labor, all in order to supply ourselves with the necessary things to survive.
Capitalism encourages competition, but it’s a competition for things that are already in abundance. This gives rise to a poisonous effect called consumerism, which has again redefined in the social consciousness what is or should be necessary in our lives.
In the United States, the annual Black Friday sales are pertinent reminder of how widespread consumerism is, and how zealous.
The key, then, is to bring back the old definitions of necessity. It is important to recognize the distinction between a job, which is to work for a corporation by helping to supply something that inherently has no value, versus work, which is to create something that has practical value and satisfied a useful demand.
Several years ago, while visiting a friend in Vancouver, I remarked on how he was one of the few in our group of friends who had achieved an actual career, in terms of stability and income. However, he quickly countered by pointing out that there was little value in what he was actually doing (working with information systems), as it didn’t change or add anything practical.
As we began to chart the value-system of our generation, we realized how radically it contrasted with previous generations. In the past and even now, to a degree, there is an automatic tendency to be defined by your job. When you meet someone, you get to know them according to what they do.
The concept of self becomes synonymous with your job. I think we are seeing a slow but gradual replacement of this contextualization of identity into something other than career. When I get to know people, or when I think of people I already know, their job is the last thing I contribute to my idea of who they are.
But a career is central to self only in so far as it is equated with acquisition. The problem is that acquisition on this scale is fundamentally self-serving and doesn’t give back.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Rushkoff notes that the problem with unified government policy and centralized currency, is that it loses its viability and strength as it continues to try to expand.
By decentralizing currency, and using local currency, by redefining work as a practical interaction among a community rather than the injection of more production which only enriches the corporation, there is a possibility for a different kind of economic system, one which we see operating effectively on a small scale in rural villages in Ecuador, China, and even Canada and the US.
By investing within a community, you see a propagation of wealth that continues to stay within the community. You buy local, and that currency, instead of bleeding off into corporate interests, is retained and strengthens the community.
There exists a digital economy, which Rushkoff continues to argue is a major contributor to the current economic crisis. In a digital economy, currency becomes a standardized form of exchange that has no physical or practical basis — it becomes a potentiality. You take out a mortgage, and have a potential currency, which you can use to buy physical products — the problem comes when this exchange doubles back on itself, and the relations between the potential and the physical breaks down. Ultimately, you develop debt. And this debt is expressed as a standardized currency.
In Rushkoff’s model, local currency becomes equated with skills — if you have a need, then you exchange that need for a skill, rather than accommodating a job to acquire the currency first. The middle-man is eliminated, and in capitalism, that middle-man has always been the bank.
Instead of relying on the bank or a financial institution to get currency so you can eventually acquire your what is needed, you go directly to the source of your needs, and make that exchange.
There was a recent article on Wake Up World about a woman in Germany who set up a very similar system. Disillusioned with the consumer mindset and the homeless problem in her region, she implemented a Tauschring (swap shop), called Gib und Nimm (Give and Take), in which anyone could exchange skill-sets for basic needs. It represents a completely independent economic system outside of the dominant corporate one.
There is another factor that is to blame for a general reliance on capitalist ideology: comfort. Even in those below the poverty line, there is an ingrained standard of living that is unreasonably high, and it’s this comfortability that empowers the capitalist endeavor.
I use my parents as an example: for all intents and purposes, they’re well off, they’ve had stable and well-paying jobs, and they’ve avoided mortgages and debt. However, their wealth is not exclusively derived from financial or monetary acquisition.
They don’t have a mortgage, because they were willing to build their house from the ground up, and not rely on potential or fiat currency in the form of a loan. This meant living meagerly and, for a number of years, in a tent. They grow (weather permitting) a significant amount of their own food, which requires a great deal of time and effort on their part. They use wood-heat, which as anyone who has chopped a couple of cords by hand will know, is a lot of work. And more often than not they will exchange skill-sets for necessities and amenities alike.
In the region where I live, this cooperative interaction of products and local economy is already present. It would be great to see other rural communities adopt similar strategies. There is a growing trend in the younger generation, a movement back to the land and to old methods of supplement.
Backyard growing, guerrilla gardening, local farming. And part of this involves a re-acquisition of practical skills. Homesteading, animal husbandry, permaculture.
If there’s going to be an insurrection of an oppressive economic system, it will come about in the form of small-scale independent alternative economic systems which aren’t constrained by false concepts of value.
Comfortability is a myth. It is a method of subjugation. To live a simpler life does not mean an easier life. But it does mean a life free from the oppression of an external power, a life that is personally fulfilling, and a life that is fostered and strengthened by the presence of a community.
A job is a reason to groan when you wake up in the morning. Work is something to look forward to.
*****
Jordan Mounteer is a Canadian born nomad-poet. His writing has appeared in numerous Canadian journals and online magazines including Hush, UnNomDeGuerre, and Vancouver Weekly. He loves to travel, hitchhike, climb mountains, and read books that interesting strangers have suggested.
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