EQUITY: Own Your Own Job

 

EQUITY:

Own Your Own Job 

There's an old quote, sometimes attributed to Mark Fisher, often attributed to Slavoj Zizek, who attributed it to Fredric Jameson, who did not take credit for it.  It goes "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."  Mark Fisher took that theme and explored it in various ways, pointing out that among the many crises that we face, one of the greatest is a crisis of imagination.  Similarly, Zizek speaks of a "deadlock" in contemporary society - an inability to think beyond the present and its political traps.

This is an attempt to break that deadlock, to imagine a new form of the left that would not get stuck in the traps and failures of the 20th century.  All too often, when people try to think of an alternative to capitalism, all they can think of is government redistribution.  I want to spur us to think about politics in a different way.  

What, if anything, should be saved from the wreckage of Marxist theory is the concept of labor power.  Marxist theory is often accused (by, for instance, Foucauldians) of not focusing enough on the question of power.  Even if that is so, nonetheless, Marx highlighted a kind of power that is often forgotten: labor power.  The primary lesson I get from Marx is that the power to labor is a kind of power, one that is absolutely fundamental.  Don't give it up without a fight.

And it will be a fight.  In this age of AI, automation, and other forms of technological development, we have the battle of our lifetimes ahead of us.  AI isn't just stealing our jobs, it's stealing our skills. 

It's not that I'm morally opposed to redistribution of wealth; redistribution of goods and services is fine - but it is not enough.  Government redistribution of goods and services does not bring an end to capitalism - it happens quite a lot within capitalist economies.  In fact, it is the primary way that the capitalist system maintains itself. 

To understand this, one must understand the distinction that Marx made between private property and personal property.

What I'm calling for is what the leftists of the 19th century were calling for: that the workers should own the means of production - that is, what under capitalism is known as private property, i.e., capital.  What do we mean by "means of production"?  Usually, people picture factories, warehouses, and machines.  That's part of the story, but not the most important part.  Marx distinguished between two forms of capital: constant capital and variable capital.  Constant capital is what people usually picture as the means of production: land, raw materials, tools, machines, factories, etc..  But as Marx demonstrated, what really matters is variable capital - i.e., human labor.  By abolishing private property, what Marx meant was that we should abolish another person's ability to own your labor.  You should own your own job.

What would it mean to own your own job?

Well, what does it mean to own anything?  It means that you get to determine what happens with that thing.  You set the terms and conditions.  Owning your own job means a resurgence of autonomy and sovereignty.  Above all, owning something means that someone else cannot legally take it away from you - at least, not without some kind of legal process, and most likely some quite hefty form of reparation and compensation.  Of course, you can, if you wish, trade your job for another job.  But that's up to you.

I'm sure old Leninists will accuse me of engaging in a kind of individualist reading of Marx, here.  To that, I plead guilty.  I am an individualist.  (At least as much as Hegel was, if not moreso.)

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