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Wage-labour is ‘the way in which most people acquire access to the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. It is not only the primary mechanism by which income is distributed, it is also the basic means by which status is allocated, and by which most people gain access to healthcare and retirement. After the family, waged work is often the most important, if not sole, source of sociality for millions. Raising children with attributes that will secure them forms of employment that can match if not surpass the class standing of their parents is the gold standard of parenting’ KathiWeeks, The Problem with Work
From ‘market economy’ to ‘market society’ the problem with work cannot be reduced to the extraction of surplus value or the degradation of skill, but extends to the ways that work dominates our lives. The struggle against work is a matter of securing not only better work, but also the time and money necessary to have a life outside work Weeks, The Problem with Work
Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them. On the other hand, I have been fortunate enough that my job, the production of philosophical and sociological works and university teaching, cannot be defined in terms of that strict opposition to free time, which is demanded by the current razor-sharp division of the two. I am however well aware that in this in enjoy a privilege, with both the element of fortune and of guilt which this involves: I speak as one who has had the rare opportunity to follow the path of his own intentions and to fashion his work accordingly. This is certainly one good reason why there is no hard and fast opposition between my work itself and what I do apart from it. If free time really was to become just that state of affairs in which everyone could enjoy what once was once the prerogative of a few – and compared to feudal society bourgeois society has taken some steps in this direction – then I would picture it after my own experience of life outside work, although given different conditions, this model would in its turn necessarily alter Adorno, ‘Free Time’
[The] tension between the contradictory requirements of capitalist consumption and capitalist production do not become evident until the era of consumer capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. But they are implicit in its logic from the start. The sale and purchase of commodities implies the controlled release of pleasures and their channeling through commodity consumption. Marx was aware of this double standard intrinsic to capitalism. ‘…each capitalist does demand that his workers should save, but only his own because they stand towards him as workers; but by no means the remaining world of workers for these stand towards him as consumers. In spite of all “pious” speeches he therefore searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs…’ Capitalist consumption was never integrated into Marx’s general theory of capitalism. But it is evident that there is a potential conflict between the imaginary selves sanctioned and fostered by church, family, school, legal system… and the imaginary selves fostered in the market-place by the proliferation of commodities. Perhaps we have taken too seriously the pious speeches emanating from these institutions? For capitalism is simultaneously transmitting another message: spend, spend, spend! Terry Lovell. Consuming Fiction
Production and consumption are part of one and the same process of expanded reproduction of the productive forces and their control. This imperative, which is that of the system, passes into daily mentalities, ethics and ideology – and here is the great trick – in its inverted form: in the form of the liberation of needs, individual self-fulfilment, enjoyment and affluence, etc. The themes of Spending, Enjoyment and Non-Calculation (‘Buy now, pay later’) have taken over from the ‘puritan’ themes of Saving, Work, and Heritage. But this is merely the semblance of a Human Revolution: in fact, it is an internal substitution, within the framework of a general process and a system which remain in all essentials unchanged, of a new system of values for an old one which has become (relatively) ineffective. What could become a new finality has become, when emptied of its real content, an enforced mediation of the reproduction of the system. Jean Baudrillard ‘Towards a Theory of Consumption’
The truth of consumption is that it is not a function of enjoyment, but a function of production and, hence, like all material production, not an individual function, but an immediately and totally collective one As social logic, the consumption system establishes itself on the basis of a denial of enjoyment. Enjoyment no longer appears there at all as finality, as rational end, but as the individual rationalization of a process whose ends lie elsewhere. Enjoyment would define consumption for oneself, as something autonomous and final. But consumption is never that. Enjoyment is enjoyment for one’s own benefit, but consuming is something one never does alone… One enters, rather, into a generalized system of exchange and production of coded values where, in spite of themselves, all consumers are involved with all others [T]he current training in systematic, organized consumption is the equivalent and extension, in the twentieth century, of the great nineteenth-century-long process of the training of rural populations for industrial work Jean Baudrillard
Work: world-creating (objectivating) or alienated/alienating (objectifying)? What is the relationship between ‘work’ and ‘human activity’ (in general)?
Paul Robeson, ‘The Volga Boatmen’ (Painting by IlyaRepin [1873]) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfsWoNpHg2s
A new guiding principle in labor politics would mean a necessary shortening of every person’s labor time to one-fourth of one’s working time, that is, to four hours, in order that we may have time for a meaningful life that is balanced among all four spheres. Thus, the problem of unemployment, including precarious and part-time employment, would disappear since we would then have fewer people than jobs. Under this approach, we all are engaged in part-time wage-employment and the term itself ceases to be meaningful. We can concentrate on the quality of work and on the question of whether each is provided for adequately in the deployment of his or her capabilities. Thus, it will no longer be necessary to carry out labor limited to repetitive movements as in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times or its modern counterpart in front of the computer screen. This leads us toward a concept of labor which joins the greatest possible diversification with the development of all human faculties. FriggaHaug
‘For any number of years now, new media technology has been marketed as giving us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, in flexible arrangements that apparently suit the conditions of the modern office. But little has been written to illustrate the consequences of this development, where work has broken out of the office, downstairs to the café, in to the street, on to the train, and later still to the living room, dining room, and bedroom’ Melissa Gregg
Communication platforms and devices allow work to invade spaces and times that were once less susceptible to its presence. This is a process we might describe as the presence bleed of contemporary office culture, where firm boundaries between personal and professional identities no longer apply. Presence bleed explains the familiar experience whereby the location and time of work become secondary considerations faced with a “to do” list that seems forever out of control. It not only explains the sense of responsibility workers feel in making themselves ready and willing to work beyond paid hours, but also captures the feeling of anxiety that arises in jobs that involve a never-ending schedule of tasks that must be fulfilled – especially since there are not enough workers to carry the load. Melissa Gregg
starting from commodity fetishism… Fungibility (exchangeability, substitutability) of all things 2. Our functionalisation by objects
‘As Dany-Robert Dufour has observed, capitalism dreams not only of pushing to the limits of the globe the territory on whose surface every object is a commodity (think of water rights, genome rights, living species, babies, human organs), but also of expanding it downwards to dig up and make available for commercial (profitable) use what were previously private affairs, once left in the charge of the individual (think of subjectivity, sexuality), recycling them into objects of merchandise’ (Zygmunt Bauman, 44 Letters from the Liquid Modern World)
‘Partnerships are increasingly seen through the prism of promises and expectations, and as a kind of product for consumers: satisfaction on the spot, and if not fully satisfied, return the product to the shop or replace it with a new and improved one! You don’t, after all, stick to your car, or computer, or iPod, when better ones appear’ (Zygmunt Bauman)
Baudrillardinsists that it is necessary to describe the objects as we see and experience them, that is, as they present themselves, ‘while not forgetting... that they are in actuality the products of human activity, and are controlled, not by natural ecological laws, but by the law of exchange value’ (‘Consumer Society’: 30). When we focus on the world of consumption, we realise that it constitutes a system with its own logic, mode of representation, trajectory, political economy. At this level, the object of consumption is im-material; arbitrary; pure sign.
What does your dog say about you?... [S]mall breed dogs indicate a desire to love and be loved and cuddle. Or a need for an extra fashion accessory if you happen to be a celebrity
[The] tension between the contradictory requirements of capitalist consumption and capitalist production do not become evident until the era of consumer capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. But they are implicit in its logic from the start. The sale and purchase of commodities implies the controlled release of pleasures and their channeling through commodity consumption. Marx was aware of this double standard intrinsic to capitalism. ‘…each capitalist does demand that his workers should save, but only his own because they stand towards him as workers; but by no means the remaining world of workers for these stand towards him as consumers. In spite of all “pious” speeches he therefore searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs…’ Capitalist consumption was never integrated into Marx’s general theory of capitalism. But it is evident that there is a potential conflict between the imaginary selves sanctioned and fostered by church, family, school, legal system… and the imaginary selves fostered in the market-place by the proliferation of commodities. Perhaps we have taken too seriously the pious speeches emanating from these institutions? For capitalism is simultaneously transmitting another message: spend, spend, spend! Terry Lovell. Consuming Fiction
