|
|
|
|
|
Thursday, June 23, 2005
"Demotivational Training: Anecdote on the Drop in Economic Optimism", Guillaume Paoli.
What, then, is productive work? Symbolically speaking, our concept of work is still colored by the biblical curse that impresses upon us the necessity to sow and to harvest if we want to eat. We have to "plough through" in order to "earn our daily bread." Even as late as the 18th century the physiocrats still considered agriculture to be the only productive work. The tradesman did not perform productive work but rather "hired" work, since he depended on surpluses supplied by the primary work carried out by the farmer. The problem is, according to this definition not even three percent of Europeans today are doing productive work! Although the majority of the earth’s inhabitants are still occupied with agriculture, this line of work has sunk beneath the horizon of the market society. The dominant production model has long since detached itself from the cultivation of the earth for food. Even if you don’t plough your acre, you can still harvest your frozen pizza and catch the chicken flu.
With the general spread of manufacturing and the political economy, the concept of production was extended to cover all tasks related to the "natural metabolism." Whatever that is actually supposed to mean is wide open to interpretation. After all, dropping an atom bomb is also a powerful metabolic exchange with nature. And it’s not only in this extreme case that the question arises of whether it might be appropriate to replace the word "production" with "destruction" instead – in order, for example, to be able to speak of a fundamental contradiction between destructive forces and the means of destruction. It is easy to forget that the unlimited reproducibility of goods is based on the outright looting of non-renewable resources. Nonetheless, a consensus prevailed for two hundred years: production encompassed all fabricated commodities and thus stood as the fixed and uncontestable center of society.
Today, the production of goods, just like agriculture, has disappeared into the invisible hells of Asia and South America. The western intelligentsia rejoices in having done away with the working class. At the same time, in Shanghai alone over two billion pairs of shoes are being manufactured each year. Should we take this to mean that the inhabitants of the centers of capitalism are now freed from productive work? No, because a third production model has been invented for them: "immaterial" production. Not a trace remains anymore of the natural metabolism – unless one conceives of neurons and bytes as part of nature. And yet, just as the transformation of gold coins into electronic funds did not touch the true nature of money, dematerialization has changed nothing of the compulsive character of work – even the element of bodily exertion remains.
[The rest here]
|
|
See also left sidebar for more.
Weblog est. January 2005
|
|
