I bungled saying this to Patty Kirsch earlier this week. Here's what I was trying to go for:
There are three classes of person within capitalism:
1. Capitalists. Owners of a company, who provide vision and no labor. Also: Leeches.
2. Management. Direct employees of the capitalists, whose job is to extract as much labor for as little cost as possible. Also: Class traitors.
3. Job doers. Employees of management. To act professionally is to privilege the desires of capitalists and management over your own health and family. Also: Dupes
In the interests of full disclosure: I like to think my job is a fourth category, an employees whose job is to fight management for the good of the employees and team. But, really, this is just a subset of (2).
I also like to think my particular company avoids the perils of (1) by being a non-profit. And that we escape the worst evils of (2) by having employees whose job is to fight management. And that (3) is less harmed than normal, due to the modifications to (1) and (2) above. As my management also provides labor, they are part of (3) as well. Our contract is such that it is in the interests of (1) to pay (3) as much as possible. The real world is, of course, muddled.
I don't know if that's true; it is though what I tell myself.
Anyway.
In a system where to not work is to starve or be homeless, work is not free.
Companies aren't families. Their relationship to employees is inherently fraught, and often parasitic. That sense of professionalism where we privilege the needs of the company over our own health or family is intentionally designed so that we will serve the needs of (1) over (3).
The feeling of camaraderie we have with the people we work with can be confused for friendship, but I think it is something very different. I have real friendships with the people I choose to be around, the organizations I join voluntarily, and the bonds I make based around my choices. My colleagues are people I am around (quite a lot!) because we all have our labor extracted against our will by the capitalistic class.
We have options with how to deal with this. We can ignore it. We can deny it. We can get angry. We can sabotage it from within. My suggestion is our duty to our family and others is to:
(A) Extract as much capital as possible from the capitalistic class, ie get paid as much as we can.
(B) While within this system, take care of other employees as much as we can.
(C) When possible, opt the fuck out.
(D) When safe, reduce the inherent information asymmetry and other ways (1) and (2) control (3). That means talking about time off, wages, and how much time is really spent working. Encouraging honesty and bravery among (3).
I may delete this post. It's about how I feel about capitalism. Again: The company I work for is different, as we're a non-profit and our management also do labor. And the nature of our contract is they want our salaries as high as possible.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Psst. If you invest most of your fight in #2, #1 wins.
ReplyDelete... is that why (1) wants to invest in people to fight against (2)?
ReplyDeleteSeems to make sense. Unions essentially exist to allow #3 to gang up to help level the playing field. Many organizations have you keep your wage confidential, which increases information assymetry that undermines your ability to negotiate a fair wage.
ReplyDeleteMaximizing the amount of wages for workers always seems like a good idea to me, since that is the biggest benefit to society.
Of course in the real World the lines can get a bit messy. Every former worker who retires with a pension is effectively in category 1 for example. And then you have employee owned companies…
A) Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteB) Although I have some differences of opinion with him vis-a-vis Occupy an Black Blocs, in his book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning Chris Hedges makes an interesting differentiation between true friendship (which is due to mutual admiration and respect and choice) and "cameraderie" which can feel similar and feel powerful is something imposed upon people due to circumstances and generally once those circumstances are no longer extent the relationship tends to wither. I think connections with coworkers tend to be more of the latter.
C) Unless you have firing ability I wouldn't really put you in #2.
ReplyDeleteTevel Drinkwater How do retirees become capitalists?
ReplyDeleteOh, and for your list of things employed people should do: do the minimal amount of work possible to continue receiving the wage.
ReplyDeleteAlso for some reason I now have this stuck in my head...
ReplyDeleteyoutube.com - The Faint - Agenda Suicide
The alternate phrasing, popular among cynics at my wife’s company, is that the three classes are
ReplyDelete1) sociopaths. Those who cut each other out and use other humans for gain rise to the top.
3) suckers. These are the people who do the work, often in conditions that have been deliberately been made just shy of very poor.
2) ablative middle management.
Notably, ablative middle management’s secondary job is to be who (3) puts to the sword when they’re pushed too far. Jews in Europe, being outsiders but generally educated and competent, were used heavily as (2) by royalty, government, and business.
This is a large contributor to lingering antisemitism.
Dude, this post is most of a revolutionary manifesto that must live to see much wider circulation. It's magnificent.
ReplyDeleteIf you decide to delete it, please use nested proxies to create a blind account called 'Diogenes' (or similar anonymous handle with wry classical and sci-fi revolutionary echoes) and repost it there.
Shane Liebling I think it's the inference that you are always one of the three, and when you become a pensioner you are really no longer a job doer and you are not management so effectively the roll you are in is "leech".
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson, Shane Liebling, Tevel Drinkwater: Let's bracket pensions qua pensions for a moment. My own retirement (and that of most of us) is 401(k) plans and IRA's and other acronymns to safe-haven money from taxes and put it into the stock and bond markets. That is: My plan (and that of many of us) is to accrue sufficient wealth to become (1).
ReplyDeleteSo, I think that is what Tevel means.
Pensions qua pensions are a little bit different, with a couple layers of asbstraction between the pensioner and stock ownership.
Something Jenn Martin said to me resonates here: we are being domesticated to be beasts of burden and resources for those who are domesticating us. We are trapped in cycles of debt and capitalism that want to keep us isolated, inside, depressed and consuming. Going outside and hanging out with friends is free and good for us in every way, so anything they can do to keep us from doing that, they will do.
ReplyDeleteCapitalists don't provide vision. They provide capital. That's literally why they're called capitalists. Vision comes either from entrepreneurs, for new businesses, or from management who fancy themselves as entrepreneurs.
ReplyDeleteBut vision is worth exactly bupkiss unless the person with the vision also has the capital to apply towards pursuing that vision.
There are 3 basic ways to acquire that capital.
1) yourself. The slowest and most painful way. Very few visions would ever get off the ground if they required the visionary to front the capital. Also only rich peoples visions would happen.
2) lenders. Lenders provide capital with the expectation of being laid paid back with interest. This can be an effective way for an established business to raise modest capital for standard uses via bonds or bank loans, but it's a terrible way to raise capital to pursue a vision. This is because the goals of a lender and the goals of a visionary are at odds. A visionary wants to reach for the brass ring and take big risks for big rewards which may require suffering an extended period of pain. A lender wants you to take little risk and pay them promptly and reliably. There's no surer way to quash a vision than to borrow money to pay for it.
3) other people. This is both the best and hardest way to raise capital. Hardest because it requires finding someone who a) has sufficient capital to invest in your idea, b) is willing to take that level of risk, and c) has sufficient knowledge to understand what you are trying to accomplish. Best because if you find such a person you can start working on your vision immediately with a partner who can ride the roller coaster of suck with you to make it happen, unlike a lender.
This person is the capitalist.
The most natural arrangement for this person is as a partner. But that is very economically limiting because it means the rare individual who has the above three qualities gets locked into a single enterprise indefinitely.
Better is if this person can invest the capital to get the enterprise going, then cash out so they can do it again with a different business.
That is the purpose of the IPO and primary stock market. The primary stock market is made up of people who don't have as much capital as the capitalist and aren't willing to take as much risk as them. But there are more of them and there isn't as much risk in a company that has reached IPO stage as there was when it was a true startup and so they don't need as much knowledge to be comfortable. They would never have invested in a startup but they'll buy in now and this enables the capitalist to cash out and repeat somewhere else.
However, while there are more of them, it's still a limited number. So this is where the secondary stock market and broad market ownership comes in. The average stock investor has very little capital, isn't willing to take the risk of a capitalist or even an IPO investor and doesn't know shit about shit. But they're greedy and want to make money and treat stock shares like lottery tickets.
They are the leeches. They don't work for the company, they may not even be customers, but they expect the company to send them profit on a regular basis because they own a piece of electronic paper with the company's name on it.
Parasites. But essential parasites. Because their purpose is to allow the IPO investors to cash out, freeing up funds for the next IPO...which enables capitalists to cash out, freeing up funds for the next venture.
Without the secondary market ultimately enabling capitalists to cash out, all new ventures would have to be solely self funded or lending funded...which is crippling to any kind of economic development.
So the people you are talking about as #1 above are not capitalists. Those people are stockholders (as represented by the board of directors). By the time a business is long established, the capitalists are long gone and out of the equation. Established corporations typically raise additional capital via their own profit through retained earnings, via lending through bond issues, and occasionally through a subsequent IPO. Sometimes when a business is failing it will be rescued by capitalists who provide the funds to keep it afloat...distressed capital rather than venture capital. But there is very little involvement of capitalists in the day to day running of major corporations.
ReplyDeleteThe board of directors, who represent stockholders originally back in the day were capitalists. They actually owned all or most or at least a sizeable portion of the company and did, in fact, provide the vision and most corporate direction. Management back in the day were basically clerk's and implementors of board policy.
Today that's not usually the case. With the exception of corporate raiders or activist shareholders, very few board members own any significant shares in the company. Most are themselves management of different companies who all sit on each other's boards and collect fat fees for rubber stamping management decisions. Also leeches. In smaller companies you can still get effective vision and leadership from the board, but if you're talking about most Fortune 500 companies, the board is just a structural figurehead. Especially if the president / CEO is also chairman.
None of this may impact the thrust of the point you are making directly, but I do think it important to be accurate what label you apply to the people in #1. When postulating treatments for a disease, it's good to be accurate in the diagnosis and identification of symptoms.
(" Lenders provide capital with the expectation of being laid back with interest." - possibly the best typo. Also all solid info.)
ReplyDeleteMeguey Baker Jenn sounds smart.That sounds like exactly what our phones and screens and fast food and apartments want. Instead of building things ourselves with the people we trust.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as I've got you here: I just pitched an office larp about practical virtue to management, based off Big Bad World from Big Bad Con, which is itself pbta. Made with consent of BBC, and hopefully yours, too!
The Agenda is to make the workplace more inclusive and friendly. The Always say is What honesty, courage, integrity, and kindness demand. The principles are along the same lines.
The "playbooks" are the company virtues, which are actually pretty good. Each has three XP triggers. There are triggers like "do the dishes" and "actively listen to someone about what matters most to them", and "do something hard, without complaint".
The game is setup like: Get five XP in a virtue, get a new virtue and a metaphorical non-monetary cookie. Do all five virtues, get a special challenge from management.
If you have thoughts on this, I'd appreciate hearing them.
William Nichols First, best of luck. Second, yes, ok to use PbtA to talk about Office LARP, especially if you land solid on consent and agency and that not everyone has to play. Work is hard enough without having extra “fun” asked of you. OTOH, making games and having fun to get through whatever your drudgery is, that is some seriously life-saving organizing and DO that! Third, check for self-care and rewarding things like “stayed home sick when I was a germ factory” and “ate lunch away from the office” and “left on-time”as well as other stuff.
ReplyDeleteOh gosh, self-care XP triggers. This is why you are a genius.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, in all documention I list it as voluntary and opt-in.
"And yes, in all documention I list it as voluntary and opt-in. "
ReplyDeleteOh, good... good... I was trying hard to not react in horror to this...
Also: I just realized that, while I directed that to Meguey because her name is on the book, literally everyone on this thread also cares about game design as mind control and making safer workplaces.
ReplyDeleteSo: Everybody else? Thoughts and concerns?
Matt Johnson
ReplyDeleteYes. Very important that there's built in consent culture.
Edit: Pinging the right Matt.
Yeah.... I can't imagine spending all day at a thing (or not actually doing the thing as Shane Liebling seems to be advocating) and not giving a shit, even if that makes me a sucker
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Thank you, and credit where it’s due: self-care as an XP trigger is a straight lift from the PbtA game Big Bad World as played at Big Bad Con and designed by Nathan Black and Sean Nittner and I think one other person? Self care as mechanic also shows up in DC’s game Mutants in the Night (as a hack of BitD vices), both of which I played last weekend and heck yes, it is genius.dungeoncommandr.itch.io - Mutants In the Night (Early Access) by DC
ReplyDeletePeople are really talking up Mutants - guess I need to dig into that.
ReplyDeletePatty Kirsch We are all kinda suckers. We identify with the group (either the company or the employees), and want to do the thing we're all doing together (enriching the owner class).
ReplyDelete