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08.31.11 - 12:37 AM
Employment
From Argentina-based animator Santiago Grasso, a short, surreal, award-winning film about working for the man.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllThe simple concept is that it's the rich vs poor; the more complete one is that there are lower lower class, middle lower class ... middle middle ... lower middle ... middle upper... up to upper upper class with a very few at the top: the ruling elite, who will eventuially, according to their plans and desires, dominate everyone. Those below them who like to think they are part of the elite will also be ground down in the end unless everyone works together to stop class exploitation.
We now see what used to be the middle class starting to fall through the craxks, and white collar workers, professionals, academics, and others who were previously thought to be the 'cream' of society having jobs their outsourced, and being ground up, while the 'low hanging fruit' is dissolved into nothing, often by swallowing the divide and conquer psychological manipulations. In reality there are only three divisions: the ruling elite, those already eaten by them, and those who will be eaten by them (or him -- the emperor.)
"Now is the time of the gathering. In the end there can be only one."
Every time you hear someone say "we need more jobs!", think of this bone-honest animation.
What we need is meaningful work, not more jobs as doormats. But that won't come within this dystopian society and it certainly won't come from the technocrats who pull the levers. All the while those of us with jobs we hate or jobs that barely keep a roof over our heads should feel grateful that "at least" we have jobs. And the drum beats from every corner for more jobs as the answer out of this mess. And we seem to have no choice but to rise at 6 O'clock in the Morning and go to our jobs as doormats.
What can we do to create a new society?
Rick Wolff ( rdwolff.com ) talks about it. Economic democracy, out of the Marxian tradition, where those who work to produce control their labor and what is done with the fruits of it.
Before we can work to get there we first have to understand where we are trying to go.
@Ted Markow and bluepilgrim - great thoughts!
Ted, when you asked your question, it reminded me of a Facebook Thread I just posted. Then I read bluepilgrim's post and was pumped because it sounds like Wolff and I are talking about the exact same thing.
He's absolutely right that the economy should be democratic - which means production is coordinated, rational and planned; that the means of production, wealth and value should never be privately owned; that we ought to produce only what society needs/wants, and that those who do the producing should receive the FULL fruits of their labor - not be exploited for "surplus value" for the wealth accumulation of parasitic private "owners".
***Here is a basic proposal for a better society following the above premises:
Every able man and woman (age 18-55 let's say) works a certain amount of hours per week (let's say 30 - the precise number is a variable to be determined by a computer program that calculates production needs and schedules).
In exchange for their time and labor they earn and keep a membership in this society and access to all the goods and services produced by this society (including the necessities of fresh food, clean water, clothing, a vehicle, a computer, a furnished home, internet access, utilities, toiletries, child care, gym/spa membership, education, health care, X amount of vacation; and even luxuries - which we may consider 'universally desired' at the inception of such a society - like a DVR, TV, iPod, books, choice of hobby items, sporting equipment, musical instruments, etc.)
For those jobs which are more strenuous and less desirable, a system of rotation (i.e., you have to pick strawberries for 4 hours once a year, etc.) could share the burden and seems fair. For jobs which are more dangerous or highly skilled (air traffic controller, firefighter, prison guard, brain surgeon, etc.), AND assuming we had a shortage of people wanting to pursue such jobs (which is a big assumption in a society that promotes labor as free activity and lessens "alienation") - but there still could be a variety of ways to incentivize the pursuit of and reward this employment including having to work less hours per week to fulfill membership duties, more vacation time, and/or greater access to more scarce luxuries.
Benefits:
(1) No more economic crises or boom/bust cycles.
(2) No more unemployment
(3) No more debt (nobody would owe any money to any banks for cars, homes, school loans, or credit cards)
(4) No more poverty or homelessness (unless you really wanted that)
(5) More Leisure time/Less Stress
(6) Crime/Incarceration rates plummet
(7) Individual Health increases
(8) Environmental Health increases
(9) No more imperialism or capitalist expansion and the backing of foreign despots
(10) No more of the current activity and form of government
Is there any material, logical, or natural reason why this could not exist?
Be very careful with centrally planned societies -- they are fraught with dangers and open to abuse. I look more towards decentralization -- more along the lines, in computer database terms, of a relational database than hierarchical.
We have some models we can look at: cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, some aranrcho-syndicalist collectives and communes, the internet, some Native American tribes and nations -- but much of this will need to be invented and worked out to implement on a larger scale. A difficulty with finding past or existing socialist or communist systems is that they have pretty much all been either corrupted, or attacked by aggressive capitalist or hierarchical nations.
If we take socialism to be a step on the path to communism (the real thing, not state capitalism or some other authoritarian fraud), then a problem with communism is details of the implementation need to be worked out; it's not just a matter of the struggle against current entrenched systems, but that it is a system for the future, with out a solid base of experience yet, and one of learning as we go, possibly needing to be done incrementally in some areas. The good working examples we do have can't be simply ported over and implemented in our current world.
Agreed. Very well said.
Human nature hasn't changed and we need to take that into account going forward.
A thing to remember about 'human nature' is that it's a combination of genetice and epigenetic forces, and the environment, including how one is raised. (And, of course, varies from person to person, as well the chemicals one is exposed to.)
There are some interesting studies regarding epigenetics and how genes are turned off and on, and how stress in a woman can lead to different chemical levels in a child. In other words, 'human nature' changes all the time, in important ways. It changes depending on what circumstances a person grows up under, and how much love or nurturing, or hate and criticism one gets, and what one learns to expect from others.
The society we grow up and live in has a huge influence on how we act and what we value. This needs to be taken into account when considering what kind of society we want to build -- that socialism would likely work much better after it exists for a time because people would become more socialistic in attitudes, social skills, expectations and goals, and values -- and, of course, political outlooks.
Very true.
I think of the social democracies of Scandinavia and see this in action. They have been strong on the social side for a few generations and it is evident that most of the people have learned the social values that benefits them all. However, as you noted, there are still the external pressures from capitalist nations and that has eroded some of their social policies to some extent.
As with anything else, we need to build a bridge from this reality to the one we wish to see. And as with any other bridge, we cannot simply jump from one end to the other - we need to walk across one step at a time. This needs to take the existing "human nature" into account, knowing that most of us really don't know how to live in the reality we wish to see. We weren't raised that way, so it isn't in our bodies to know how to live like that.
We need to keep this in the fore of our minds as we proceed, knowing that there are many strong forces that are trying to keep us from moving forward, including (especially) our own biases for this reality. We may not like how things are here, but this is the here we have grown up in. Not an easy feat as we try to move, one step at a time, toward the other side of the bridge.
This is why I have come to the conclusion that we need to make some important changes within ourselves and at the same time reach out to others and do the hard, face-to-face work of changing our society.
We need grass roots groups that have a social (socialist) conscience. Eventually, and there's no getting around it, we will have to wrest power from the elite and use them for what they are intrinsically worth: fertilizer (for the grass roots). Thus the circle is complete.
In reply, I think we the workers of the world must literally walk out on the core problem of problems----PROFIT itself. We pull our existential weight in the world with 15-20 hours a week. After that it's all boss-man's parasitical profit. So we need coordinated, sustained walk-out's to re-define the work day ourselves (profit is nothing without OUR WORK) to starve profit out of our economics. When every person pulls their weight at a job they like, they should have equal access to everything in the stores. If you think "everybody would go crazy," ask, would YOU? I'm going to publish a full simple global proposal on this very soon at jackdempseywriter.wordpress.com and I hope to hear from you my friends about it! Profit cannot win against the combined power of the world's working people. We just don't realize it yet.
Mesmerizing, evocative piece of artwork. Sums up in a couple of minutes what people have been writing trillions of words about over the ages.
Thanks, CD - good stuff. More, please.
This little animated film is the best and most currently applicable description of capitalism I've ever seen. Compliments to the artist!
And my fellow wretched doormats, time to arise and create a new world.
Beautiful!
This just came in along the same line - the work of Richard Bell from the island continent known as down under will be exhibiting in Boston
Richard Bell You'd believe me if i was a white man
http://www.milanigallery.com.au/exhibit/youd-believe-me-if-i-was-white-man
in keeping with the arts on the you tube page of the brilliant video found by CD.... this animation from Bulgaria.....The Imitator...........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdM1sm7_8iA&feature=related
Uh huh. Realism. Just a glimpse of the rot moving up the economic ladder... We've been told for 30 years to hate those on welfare. Twenty years later it was every Muslim on the face of the earth. Thirty years later it was first the UAW, undocumented workers, the war against women and people of color, then a few years later the public sector unions. And, of course, atheists and non-fundamentalist Christians. So...the question is, who's next?
GENIUS! This is how I feel working in any business that is not supportive of the environment and people and it makes it impossible for me to WANT to find a job if this is the kind of "service" I feel I am being asked to provide. I CAN'T LOWER MYSELF TO THIS LEVEL.
Fantastic art project!! I will share!!!
freethinker68,
I remember Bob Dylan's "You Gotta Serve Somebody"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavBDpg91gA&feature=related
But at the end of the day it is not about you, is it?. I'm happy for you that you have the luxury to choose so that you can "not lower yourself...." lucky you. Many billions in this world don't have a choice, and because you cannot see that and do not empathise with them you make this self serving, self righteous statement that, marks you as an elitist.
You may have the privilege to choose what you do and for whom and what you work, but that can change in a flash. How much do you think that guy in Africa earns that chopped down the mahogany tree to make the coffee table that you use? Do you think he made a deliberate choice to be in the de-forestation business? The Chinese factory worker that assembled the key-board you are typing on is only supplying what you need, what you paid for. It might be producing another piece of consumer rubbish with build in obsolescence, but its your demand for cheep goods that keeps him on the factory line 10 hours a day and he can send some money back to his dad on the farm. Or the itinerant recycler in India earning 50 rupees a day dismantling your old monitor when you threw it out. I suppose he chose a job that could be seen as "supportive of the environment and people", he's only 12 years old and brings some cash into the family.
bluepilgrim - at the top of these comments said its all a class thing. That was a pretty simplistic view too. You see that CEO of BP, or Boeing, he's got to "serve somebody" too. He's got a board of directors, and then there are the customers, a couple of hundred airlines who want it cheaper, quicker, bigger, better or else or they'll buy the Airbus form the Europeans. You would think of him as an elite but he's got less room to move or change things than you and if he doesn't show a profit in the next quarter there are another hundred just like him wanting his job. He's got to serve somebody too.
So you need to be useful "supportive of the environment and people" but if you think about it a little deeper and from a broader perspective than your own pride allows, perhaps you will realise that it is not what you do but "how you do it" that counts in this world, that the dishwasher and the slaughter-house worker need a job and to feed their families too, because people just like you want to eat a steak in a restaurant.
When I think of the financial industry at the top of all this mess now with 80% of the trading controlled by algorithms on high speed computers, it makes me think that maybe we've already gone beyond serving some body. It isn't even the devil, and it sure ain't a God, it's just another hard drive. We are are pretty near to becoming the Matrix.
We all want to contribute to society and do something useful as well as live with some dignity and comfort for ourselves and our family, and we have to work together with others, the rest of the world to do so, but we are becoming nothing more than factors of meaningless, mindless, production and consumption in a debt driven society on the road to hell, and why? Because, we cannot see further than what "we" want now......
"bluepilgrim - at the top of these comments said its all a class thing. That was a pretty simplistic view too. You see that CEO of BP, or Boeing, he's got to "serve somebody" too."
I find it difficult to have much pity for the poor CEO who is trapped in a $50 million a year job. No, I do not have more room to move or chnage things than he does.
Yes there are structural problems which necessitate a new system, but it's not simply something that happened, like a chance force of nature; there are people making decisions about how things will be, and those with the money and power are the ones who can make their decisions stick. It's easy to blame just 'the machine' when you are driving the machine and it's working for you.
good points and i agree....i also want to add that if people would make conscious shopping decisions even HALF the time and learn self-sustaining skills and share resources w/ others that you could bleed the rich of their resources and POWER....our purchases determine who controls and who is in the slave seat! With all the info out on the web etc.... we know our lives are part of the problem (driving everywhere and making multiple trips in one day, buying cheap crap instead of learning how to eat healthfully AND that means learn how to grow food....you can even grow food in containers on window ledges and in empty lots....food gardens are popping up everywhere) and we don't make conscious choices on a daily basis.
"I find it difficult to have much pity for the poor CEO who is trapped in a $50 million a year job."
Pity is not the reaction needed, empathy and understanding is. As you rightly comment too "it's not simply something that happened, like a chance force of nature; there are people making decisions about how things will be, and those with the money and power are the ones who can make their decisions stick." So, if we need to make necessary changes to the system stick we need to find the pivotal pressure points, so to speak, around which we can spin the system onto its head.
As in nature he have to deal with the patient, the human ailment, in a holistic manner, we [humanity] have to bring all of humanity out of its depression and self destruction, and we must do it from within, performing the operation on the humanity that "is", with all its faults, not on a humanity we hope for or wish it to be. So we have to get to that part of a 50 million a year guy, and all the rest of them and make them happy too. At the moment he is killing himself with stress, while he destroys the rest of the world with his demands for more and more. So how can he be "happy". Can we be happy.
Is it not a new and revolutionary paradigm that is needed to come into play? Not religious, yet it must be spiritual because it requires a degree of "enlightenment" of humanity, for them to realise, not just become aware, but -realise-, that "life" is more important than their lives, than their desires, than their fulfilment of expectations. In other words a concept of sacrifice.
The events driving the military industrial complex (MIC) seem to be manufactured with relative ease by the powers that be. Can we, the thinking, active, creative part of humanity, not create equally revolutionary events to reverse the destruction and decay? I believe we can.
Listen shallow-hal....you don't know anything about me...but please feel free to judge me like you've done!!! I don't have "priviledges" to "choose" my life as I see fit....I actually live out of my car and have food stamps (I figure all the fuc$ing years I've paid into unemployment, social security, medicare and paid my taxes UNLIKE THE RICH PIGS AND CORPS) I am ENTITLED to get my money back in the form of 200.00 mo. in food stamps. I bake organic spelt cookies and sell them (using my food stamp money) and my partner helps me w/ the few bills I have so I can try to make a "survival" living doing something that honors my soul and doesn't add to the degredation of lives in 3rd world countries like when people buy coke products or proctor and gamble who fuc$ up the environment and use slave labor to give us CHEAP AND UNHEALTHY goods.
You are an @sshol go lift your leg up on someone else now. LESSON: don't assume anything...you just make an ass out of yourself. and by the way.....NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO "CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL....etc" so stop making such grandiose statements! I can name several people who don't give a damn about the planet or anyone else. I am clearly not one of them...but you might be.
I don't know quite why you have got so upset. You seem to be missing my points entirely. But I'm glad you got all that off your chest, and I'm glad too, as I said, that you are living the way you want to live, by your principals. I hope you your circumstances improve and your cookies sell well, but not too well to become a "rich pig". It has nothing to do with whether you have more or less wealth or you live out of your car on food stamps, or is that all that is bothering you? Is that what matters? It is your life choice. Other people do what they do to feed their families too. Some are even cops and corporate employees. They don't feel they can live the way you have chosen to, and you feel you could not do what they do on principle, or so you say. Good for you.
Do you really give a damn about me? I'm one of those someone elses. So is the rich pig and the cop. If you give a damn about the planet and its people then you will have to deal with me and them as we are. A lot of them are unable to chose how to live. Some just die.
You are right, of course, not everybody wants to "contribute to society and do something useful" although it is far more rewarding than wealth and power, but until people realise that and stop destroying one another to get ahead instead of working together (perhaps discussion without CAPITALS and name calling would be a start) we will be stuck with a small minority of sociopaths and egotists driving society over a cliff.
Here. another appropriate Dylan number:
There's a slow train coming:
http://www.mojvideo.com/video-bob-dylan-slow-train-coming/8e5ed8673b29afa29b7a
Brilliant film. It really shows the degraded nature of life under capitalism. Everyone is turned into an object. Life becomes a robotic, debased situation, dominated by the clock and the grind. Everywhere, we see machines in human form: the alarm clock, the standing lamp, the human traffic signals--each one illustrating the interchangeability between human and machine. Ditto the human "cabbies" who carry people on their backs. Under capitalism, working people are reduced to virtual machines in order to serve the owning class.
Work vs Prison
IN PRISON... you spend the majority of your time in an 8X10 cell.
AT WORK... you spend the majority of your time in a 6X8 cubicle.
IN PRISON... you get three meals a day.
AT WORK... you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON... you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK... you get more work for good behavior.
IN PRISON... the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK... you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for yourself.
IN PRISON... you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK... you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON... you get your own toilet.
AT WORK... you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.
IN PRISON...they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK...you can't even speak to your family.
IN PRISON... all expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required
AT WORK... you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON... you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK... you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.
IN PRISON... you must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK... they are called managers.
So why is it, again, that we work?
Love it!
Just a few more trillion$ to the banksters and we'll be there!
Each element in the film, from the clock, coat rack, table and chairs, locker etc. are the product of someone's labor. The film reanimates the inanimate objects created by working people. But also I think you can look at it from a slightly different perspective, that at the end we find out that the main character in his job(?) functions as a doormat, or his life - objectified - is a doormat. At every turn in the film, in the home, on the street, someone is subservient to someone else. This whole system of commodified humanity is not questioned; it just is. Of course "the man", the master, the capitalist, is never seen in the film. The animation can be seen as realism or surrealism, surreal in the sense that it is more real than "reality".
The thing that is really troubling about the work world is really shitty people are rewarded for doing really crappy things. I worked in a community college as a teacher for about ten years and my supervisor treated all the teachers like low level employees. It was aggravating and she was always threatening me and the other teachers into wage theft and theft of intellectual properties. I didn't like it and managed to side step her quite frequently but it just made me a target.
Literally, I was sneered at for not being able to attend all manner of extra meetings and such in which I was not paid because I had another job. CC teachers are paid by the hour. Finally, I quit for health reasons but the next year would have been my tenth year and I would have gotten a considerable raise. All the teachers had been there the same amount of time as myself and we had discussed it a little over the last few years. Five days before the beginning of the tenth year, all the teachers were fired and replaced with entry level "instructors". Many with high school diplomas only. I knew this because our aides were hired in our place and we, the teachers, had chosen them. The CC can get away with this because it is somewhat different than a regular college. However, all of the teachers fired taught academic classes and this was highly inappropriate.
They did it anyway. They bought a bunch of dvd curriculum and they didn't need college grads to push them into the machines and hit "play" and hand out worksheets and computerized tests.
Anyway, this is what a lot of people are getting for their college dollar. You will be seeing more and more of this if you care to investigate. Now what kind of an education do you think these kids are going to get. The sad thing is the college is happy because they are making more money.
Will the students be prepared for anything....I doubt it. Teachers do a lot more than just recite a static lesson and pass out papers. It's a disgrace on every level.
"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles: and surely the resemblance holds?"
Plato, Republic, Book 9 (ca. 360 B.C.E.)