Who are the workers?

You might not like it, but you are

One of the biggest arguments thrown at those on the hard left is that their ideas of the workplace and society are out of date. The days of clear social castes, of the proletariat and the bourgeois, are behind us.The workplace environment is no longer that of faces covered in soot, of factory workers or coal miners. The workplace now has nice bosses and ping pong tables, nap pods, and is managed by merit and competencies instead of piecemeal goals. Knowledge work, social capital and entrepreneurship has left the class analysis of Marxists in the past. Get an education, Work hard, and you will be sure to succeed.

Atomization

For a part of the world, this is true. Working hard means you can build a decent future for yourself. Access to affordable education, a minimum wage, socialized healthcare, and, in some places, rent control makes sure that you don’t need to worry much about your plans for success being derailed. Ironically though, most are quick to forget that these conditions were not provided from the benevolence of the state, but rather were hard earned through the work of workers unions and campaigns.

But even with this knowledge, the objective of those on the hard left, and the purpose of the class based analysis of society, was never to counter the idea that if you work hard you will succeed — a socialist society will also require hard workers, any society does — but rather the inherent power dynamics within the system of capitalism and what is defined as success within it and what that success requires. Indeed, one of the most powerful aspects of capitalism is the big carrot at the end of the string. The idea that only through it can you achieve both freedom and power.

This is the most powerful concept in the capitalist toolkit and it has proliferated through our culture, from the industry of motivational speakers to the films we consume and our glorification of successful entrepreneurs. We are consistently being told that all we need to do to succeed and ‘find ourselves’ is to dig deep and give it all we have. This idea has also led to our own alienation. Our belief that our individualism is not achieved through the natural pursuits of our passions, interests, and social lives, but through consumption and the accumulation of material goods.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” — John Steinbeck

This perception conveniently covers the reality of the capitalist system, that it requires us to compete against each other, meaning that even if we do the best we can, we might not necessarily succeed. That, at the end of the day, the room at the top is limited and to get there requires us to compete with (oppress or be oppressed by) fellow workers or machines. This is not a result of an inherently sinister design in capitalism, it is driven simply by the fact that capital itself is limited and private control over it makes it exclusionary.

The competitive nature of capitalism then pushed us to look at ourselves as individuals trying to get ahead (to the detriment of others) instead of looking at each other in a cooperative way and working towards the mutual benefit of all.

Cosmetic adjustments

Our drive to not see ourselves as workers is also reinforced by the labour market itself. The fact that workplaces are now more concerned with work-life balance, are making concessions to remote working, and are ensuring that we are healthy can make us feel like we are progressing in the workplace. Rather, these are cosmetic adjustments that remain bound in the same power structure. As a matter of fact, these adjustments serve as perfect proof of how corporations are seeping into our personal lives in even more ways. From controlling what we can and can’t say on our own social media profiles to how much movement we should have in a day, all these adjustments are fueled by how beneficial it will be for the corporation itself, for those who own the capital. This is refereed to as the ‘business case’.

Working from home reduces office costs, making sure you move reduced insurance premiums, and work-life balance will reduce the sick days you take making sure you can be squeezed for all the time you are being paid for. These initiatives may seem empowering but they are actually alienating and reinforce the power dynamics in an organization that views you, a worker, absent of your individual humanity, as a set of variables (mainly work hours) to be controlled and manipulated to increase efficiency or productivity.

Even the hierarchical way in which the workplace is structure encourages us to disassociate with the title of worker. As we push forward with our careers, we are bribed with the power we will have over others. This internal labour market makes it seem as if we are getting ahead when in fact the only thing we are getting access to is the power to oppress others. Our larger mandate of power also means, in most places, an increased pressure as a result of greater responsibility and a loss of access to overtime work. We are expected to put in more work and made to believe that it is somehow in our best interest to commit more time and energy to make the organization more profit.

In addition to these dynamics, we are also fed a healthy diet of information that all these problems in our work environment can be adjusted with changes to culture or our attitude. We can integrate social goals into businesses, and teach our managers how to be more empathetic. If we do these things then we can have more humane workplaces. These suggestions, again, reinforce our perceptions of agency within a system that requires our total submission and makes our submission seem a bit more tenable.

Finally, we have the biggest myth of all, that of entrepreneurship and self-employment. The myth is that these are ways for us to escape the random forces of employment. Entrepreneurship is presented as the shortcut on the capitalist path.

The promise of freedom though continues to fall under the same dynamics of work or starve, and their recent manifestations are nothing but a result of the harsher competitive conditions. These conditions are leading to greater precarity in the forms of economic participation. Entrepreneurship then is not a liberation from market forces but rather a way of economic participation where you become your own exploiter and tyrannical boss.

Class consciousness

On a psychological level, it’s understandable why we do not want to see ourselves as part of a larger class. As individuals we want to maintain what makes us unique and capitalism seems to provide us with a way of doing so through competition. Why would we give that up to identify with a movement that requires us to give up that individualism? Furthermore, who really wants to see themselves as a victim to an invisible system when capitalism provides us with a clear perception of control?

The simple answer to that is that capitalism does not preserve our individualism but rather molds us in unison as producers. Yes, we can express our individualism through consumer goods, but at the end of the day our entire life from birth has been pre-ordained by the capitalist system and is infected by it at every turn. From what education is considered valuable, the 9 to 5 schedule, our perception of ‘the real world’, to our eventual retirement, all is determined by the market. This doesn’t sound much like individualism does it?

The reality of the matter is not that those on the hard left are trying to create and divide people into social classes — they are not trying to rob you of your individualism. Rather, they are recognizing a a classification thrust upon us against our will by the capitalist system.

So how, then, do you know if you are a worker? Well, socialists have devised a simple test, and that is to ask yourself if you have to earn a salary to survive. This doesn’t need to mean that you barely earn a salary, you could be a CEO, but the demarcation line is simply if you are someone who depends on someone else’s benevolence (employment) to survive. If so, then you are a worker.

Understanding this and the inherent contradiction between workers and capital owners is important because it leads to the understanding that progress, for all, is achieved through collective and not just individualistic effort.

It’s important to note here that the two are not mutually exclusive, one does not need to fully embrace Marxism and the call for the abolishment of private property to push for progress. But only understand that the social systems (healthcare, paid days off, the weekend, the 8 hour work day, maternity and paternity leave etc.) that continue to improve our quality of life were adopted as a result of workers organizing and collectively influencing policy to their benefit.

It is these improvements to society that have allowed us to express more and more of our individualism and change the face of work from the dingy factory settings.

It’s time then to stop looking above us and start looking next to us in the work place and understand that the betterment of our quality of life is not exclusively a vertical move as individuals but also a leap as a group. The best way to achieve this leap is to help organize your workplace, investigating the possibility of joining a union, or supporting political parties that value workers rights.