Jobs and Unemployment
The pillars of capitalism were built on the foundation of slavery. The universal conversion of life into labour is the capitalist means of domination. A core requirement of a capitalist society is that a large portion of the population must not possess sources of self-sustenance that would allow them to be independent, and thus in order to survive must sell their alienated labour in exchange for a wage. Forced labour is a form of slavery which would seem incomprehensibly oppressive to even ancients and medieval peasants. In order to create the workforce for the Industrial Revolution, the commons had to be closed such that peasants had no choice but to work. Also, hence the derogatory term “commoner” to refer to such people.
“I would like to see people refusing to work in any job they felt was wrong. I would like to see work-dodgers: honourable and brave people who refuse to continue to feed this monstrous culture.”
In his the popular anarchist essay “The Abolition of Work“, Bob Black argues for the end of consumer-based society in which all of life is reduced to the consumption of commodities. Indeed, so much of life is now monetized that people have little to do outside work, but consume. As such, our alienated culture is awash with distractions and glamour to meet false needs. Black argues that the only way for people to be free is to reclaim their time from jobs and employment, instead turning necessary subsistence tasks into free play done voluntarily. He goes on to say that employment cements rigidity and regularity which prevents people from achieving self-actualization. Furthermore, he reasons that the vast majority of work doesn’t need doing in the first place and only serves to further commerce and social control.
“Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being.”
In the current system, success in the job market is largely determined by the marketability of one’s skills. To this end we have the faithful resume and curriculum vitae which give a brief one-dimensional representation of a “human resource”. These formal documents do a great injustice to who we are as human beings and are biased towards labour which is institutionalized. However, the Internet allows for mass collaboration and new modes of working which are outside the reach of the categories that formal documents and job titles place us in. For example the boundaries between professionals and amateurs online have blurred such that people can acquire graduate-level knowledge through self-directed learning on the Internet even though they have no formal qualification.
Another common fallacy of working life is how work is distributed. According to a recent labour force survey, the U.K. managed to clock in 2 billion hours of unpaid overtime last year, which is the equivalent of one million extra full-time jobs. There are millions of people who want to work less but struggle to do so because of work requirements. Yet, during the second quarter of 2011 around 9.1% of those employed were underemployed whereas 9.2% of the employed population where overemployed. While it’s not possible to relocate all full-time jobs though a simple substitution, there is a certainly a case for redistribution of paid work. In the U.S. there is an implementation called “results only work environment” where employees have control over their time and are evaluated on what they get done and not how many hours they are at work. Research shows that with ROWE, staff turnover is 45 per cent lower for employees and productivity is 35 per cent higher compared to those in an ordinary working environment. Why should we be expected to work 40+ hours a week if in principle we only need food to keep us alive? Shorter working hours is a practical way for those who care about safeguarding the natural resources of the planet to break the damaging habit of living to work, working to earn, and earning to consume.
The nature of work is changing as our societies are collectively faced with record levels of unemployment, particular amongst the youth. High unemployment is here to stay, because it is largely driven by deep systemic causes. One being the end of infinite growth, when growth slows so does employment. The other being automation which allows firms to increase their operating efficiency multiple times over and reduce the need for human labour. Consequently, the cost savings from deploying automation further concentrates wealth up the hierarchy. The real problem then isn’t technological, but cultural. We face an income crisis not an employment crisis, the emphasis then is how we can distribute wealth rather than producing it. Therefore we have to begin to ask ourselves how can we organize society around something other than employment?
The political focus on full employment is a misnomer, nobody wants a job to occupy their time. People want autonomy over their lives, they want a mission to inspire them and bring out their deepest human capacities. When denied of this, the psyche swings wildly as people reject to their mandated roles and experiment socially to make life more fun and spontaneous through avenues such as aberrant sexual behaviour, drug abuse, body modification, spirituality and radicalized ideologies. Our current system is idiotic as it destroys our vital and creative impulses in order to turn us into mindless zombies staring vacantly into screens doing work that doesn’t matter.
“Unemployment is not a disease that needs to be cured by creating more employment. Unemployment is the cure.”
What is wrong with unemployment is not its proliferation, but the unsustainability of a system where employment is seen as “good” and unemployment as “bad”. In a recent national survey, 75% of respondents said they feel disempowered and disengaged in their workplaces. One of the reasons we have such large consumer debts in the first place is that people use credit to live beyond their means to try and temporarily escape the drudgery of working life. Much of our so-called “free time” is taken up preparing for work, getting to work, getting home from work, recuperating from work and doing what is necessary so we can go to work the next day. The end of employment is by no means the end of doing things, human beings are by nature creative, innovative, and vigorously pursue their goals. The greatest waste is squandering the full richness of human potential by constraining it to a monetary economy. Money itself only ever works as an extrinsic motivator for mechanical work, which provides no room for creativity, put simply we do our best work when money is not an issue. The political economist Karl Polanyi suggested incentives to work should be based on reciprocity, happiness and social approval.
“We have not found a way to let industry pay us to save our own lives.”
To give everyone an equal chance in life, we need to level the playing field in terms of the ownership of assets. This is also especially important given the long-term impact of technological unemployment which excludes people from contributing to society and threatens social stability itself. In his book “The Lights in the Tunnel”, Martin Ford argues that most routine jobs in the economy will ultimately be automated via advancing technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence. He goes on to suggest that without a basic income guarantee, this will cause widespread unemployment and a drastic decline in consumer demand and confidence.
A common objection to such a proposal of entitlement is that people would have no motivation to work. If money was no longer an issue what would you do? Sit around doing nothing with your life waiting to die, or would you want to find something meaningful to do with your time and skills? Much of the lazy work ethic that people have today is a direct result of doing a job that they don’t care for.
There are many ways such a social dividend could be applied, one straightforward approach would be to provide all citizens with a cash transfer on reaching adulthood, money which could be used to start a business, or could be invested in real assets in their local communities, or in human assets such as continuing education. Another alternative could be that society provides a citizens wage for all, such that everyone is capable of meeting their basic needs. While there would still be poor people and wealthy people, poverty would no longer entail extreme anxiety. Without the pressure of having to “make a living”, there would be little demand for degrading or tedious jobs, to attract workers employers would have to provide jobs that were meaningful and respected human dignity.
“Happiness comes from the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.”
In 2004, Charles Clark of St. John’s University estimated the U.S. could afford a basic income guarantee at the 2002 poverty level of $9359 per adult and $3500 per child by eliminating some federal welfare programs and by replacing the individual income tax rates with a flat tax of 35%. Alaska actually already has a system whereby each citizen receives a share of the state’s oil revenues, even though this amount is not necessarily enough to live on. Similarly in 2008, a pilot project with a basic income was started in the Namibian village of Omitara by the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition and after six months the project had significantly reduced child malnutrition, increased school attendance and raised the community’s income significantly above the actual amount from the grants as it allowed citizens to partake in more productive economic activities.
“The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.”
The goal of the future economy is not to provide “jobs” as most politicians seem to think. This type of thinking is a reification of the infinite growth paradigm they are trying to prop up. New jobs can only be created by producing more private goods and services, that is not what we need because it ultimately encloses the commons ever more and pushes us ever further towards ecological catastrophe. That said, whilst there may be a shortage of jobs, there is no shortage of work to be done. There are communities to rebuild, students to teach, forests to replant, rivers to clean, homeless to feed and so on.
As opportunities to do rewarding work increase, our desire to work for extrinsically motivated work once we have satisfied our basic needs diminishes. People will choose to work less, have less disposable income, whilst enjoying opportunities to create more. At the same time, our reliance on money to meet basic needs will continue to fall anyway.
Decentralisation is the key.