Our new cycle of serfdom

In the medieval era in Europe most kingdoms employed the system of serfdom. In this, the rights to ownership, movement, and other basic forms of self-determination were severely curtailed by the landowners on whose land people worked and lived. Their state of dependency - that they had no land or means of production - meant that they were exposed to unfair conditions in dealing with the landowners. We are now entering a state of modern capitalism in which a great part of society lives or will live in a state of semi-serfdom. The landowner is today the alliance of the corporations and major governing parties. This is the situation in most of Europe, China, Japan, and the US.

The cycle of serfdom is different from the old one. The recipe now is to instill in people a sense of competition and ambition. All rewards - money, ownership, etc. - are performance tied, and performance is measured relatively to one's competing cohort not absolutely. People are then asked to get in dept or deplete a large amount of their resources to obtain the rights to enter the competition (go to uni, obtain professional training and licenses, etc.). This stage already sees a large number of people becoming indebted, with only a part of them having a chance of repaying those debts within reasonable times, say 4-10 years.

In the next stage more and more institutions raise the levels of entry to all positions. Cleaning and service jobs require now several trainings and previous experience; highly skilled jobs see the graduates of top universities go to to toe even with numerous internships and work experience under their belts. At this stage participants of the workforce who have to rely on wages or a salary get exposed to companies and governments. They are asked to be mobile to an absurd degree, and without adequate compensation. Without willing to enter the race for the mid-management or higher jobs their financial rewards will never be enough to make them truly independent. Already their first purchase of a flat or house will put them into debt and dependence towards both their crediting institution and their workplace.

Take a career in medicine for example. University entrance exams are hard and so is progression. That's a good thing, for quality control reasons. But these institutions are also expensive in most countries, even with scholarships or loans. Then doctors are asked to work a large load of extra hours, night shifts, weekend shifts. They are rewarded to some degree, but comparing with the people owning factories, lands, businesses, shares, or being able to invest in bonds, securities, etc. their income is minuscule, while their work/life balance is abismal.

Take another as another example researchers. Research jobs used to be prestige jobs and a large number of them granted tenure. However this changed in the last 30 years. Business administrators and managers infiltrated the higher levels of higher education everywhere. Their salaries and numbers are rising at never before seen rates (this is what drives up the tuition fees to exorbitant levels), while some of the key reforms they bring is it undermine tenure, offer short-term and term-time only contracts, and dispose of any researchers speaking up on important social issues if they don't fit the ideas of Marketing.

The dirty work part of managing these changes and carrying them out is usually relegated to the throng of mid-level managers now found at almost any institutions. These folks are usually naive, good-willed, and often talented, hard working people. Nevertheless, they are either blind to what they assist in, make themselves believe that the rosy phrases in which marketing dresses things up are the reality (e.g. introducing mandatory extra tasks for job-roles is called 'opportunity to learn new skills', whereas in reality it is simply an additional duty to perform an extra task not included in the original contract without further remuneration for it), or they are corrupt enough not to mind.

It is a sad world, and most us either end up playing the debt game, or shape our lives in ways to accommodate the needs of corporations and public institutions increasingly run by people with a business background, having zero sense of social responsibility and the mission of public institutions.

This trend is horrible in itself. It makes it even more worrying that having to shape our lives around the needs of companies shatters most social networks. Shifting living places repeatedly makes us unable to stay near and take care of our parents and other old relatives. It ruins are chances to have a local identity and properly participate in charities, volunteer, get to know our neigbours and the folks at the local pub, and to participate and understand local and regional politics. That is, it makes us vulnerable to a lack of identity. Our votes are then only informed by what we see on TV, which are usually debates and slogans regarding enormous topics like the economy, war, immigration or healthcare. The dumbed-down and oversimplified choices we are offered aren't real, and our influence and understanding of politics is vanishing, as are our family ties and abilities to shape our local social groups.

It was just a question of time of course how the people will big money - the owners of corporations, land, politicians, business people, etc. of all nations, Americans, Chinese, Swiss, Brit, French, etc. - will come to figure out how to thwart the progress made between 1919 and the 1970s. That era saw a great shift in general welfare, supported by strong labour unions, strong government regulations, corporate social responsibility directives, and activism in politics of middle class and working class people. As we are gradually pushed out from politics and business takes over, the gains we made in equality are also disappearing. We can still stop this, and then move on with equalisation, developing sustainable economies and stopping climate change. Or we can see how for the sake of a few percent of the world's population it all goes to shite.

How we are made to work

In the recent years there has been more and more pressure on academic workers and educated workers. Work gets extremely standardized and regulated, much like factory work did a 100 years ago. The long-term goal of companies, and the humans behind them, is to make every kind of job a collection of small, well described tasks, so that they can evenetualy be automated and humans can be replaced. This will lower costs for the owners and investors, and make more profit. These people don't give a single solitary f..k about the people who lose their jobs, who cannot support their family anymore, and societies where the general buying power is decreasing. It is an extremely short sighted and selfish direction the economy is going in.

Politicians assist this. Since no one else but the richest companies and individuals have enough money to influence politicians and their parties, no one else has substantial influence on politicians. Except some of the strongest and oldest media products, much of tv, websites and newspapers is politically motivated fake news stuff that only serves to sway people's attention away from the real issues and keep them occupied with movies, scandals, sports, and non-issues (gender-related issues, minor corruption cases, etc.).

The political classes in Europe and the US, as well as in Japan, have been cooperating in bleeding out the social services, freezing the pay of people below top managerial level in all public services. All good people are driven to the companies, which enforce stricter and stricter regulations on workers, and demand long hours and ridiculous flexibility. They demand relocation, constant travel and other forms of engagement which ruins social structures. It makes proper family life impossible and taking part in one's local community is not an option either. The networks which are necessary for a healthy society disappear, old people end up in care homes, kids spend their times with nannies if the parents are well off, and in daycare or on the street if they're not.

This is not a serious way to make a society work. And it requires urgent change.

Drive for climate change and drive for healthy societies demands states which can regulate the economy and companies. For this, ownership of means of production needs to be regulated too.

Sadly, we know from history that such changes do not happen without violence. Unless our politicians push now for radical change in the economy and ownership structures - homes and means of production - the inequality will increase, buying power levels will drop further, this will lead to higher crime rates, more insecurity, and shrinking populations.

On bullshit jobs, again

David Graeber's (LSE) silly stuff on bullshit jobs is making the rounds again. I wrote about it already back when he came up with this. Graeber is a good guy and he wrote some interesting things on debt and topics in anthropology. Bad sadly he has become one of those folks who think that because they are smart in their field they know about everything.

Many of the jobs Graeber describes as bullshit - in admin, customer services, etc. - are only bullshit if you don't have any clue about running an organisation, if you don't understand anything about customer service, and so on. Graeber doesn't seem to have much first hand experience in doing these things (I don't doubt that he has read up on them, done interviews, but that's not the same). Like many academics he doesn't see nor does he take the time to learn about how the institutions he is/was working. If he would have to do a tiny fraction of all the things a university needs to do for its students to stay afloat these days he would go nuts and wouldn't have any time to write books about how these same jobs are meaningless. Think of organising exams, making sure students all get the same quality of services for the same money, sorting out the legal and financial issues of an institution and so on.

One could of course say that we should drastically cut back on admin and management positions. That's possible but then companies and public institutions won't be able to serve people. We are not in 1800 anymore, the population numbers are through the roof. The number of people attending higher education institutions, using banks, shopping, traveling, etc. has increased by several magnitudes.

To give just one example, no country could have broadened its higher ed system and admitted more students to more courses if there wouldn't be a professional administration to deal with the issues connected to this and an efficient and competent management to oversee and organise this.

Graeber is right that management, especially in competitive for profit sectors, takes a view that helps maintain a bad social track we are on towards inequality. But the solution is not to create nicer jobs or to banish ones he feels are useless. The solution is to change redistribution patterns. Yes, we might be able to work less, but no, we don't want to give up on quality standards in education, food processing, banking, we don't want to live without audits for government institutions, social services, car making, iron and steel production, etc.

Second, just because a job doesn't change the world and is not crucial to our survival, it isn't bullshit. It's not a bad thing that we don't all have to work on the fields every day just to have enough food for our community to survive a cold winter. Or that we don't all have to participate in war planning or other such activities which have a big impact and high intensity.

There are plenty of jobs that won't change the world, but they make it the more and more safe and increasingly convenient and pleasant place that it is becoming, at least in terms of services and support we get. This enables us to do a lot more with our free time and also in our jobs if we chose to do something creative.

Democracy and capitalism don't necessarily go together

http://www.truthandpower.com/blog/blog/politics/capitalism-and-democracy-a-lesson-from-hong-kong/

A very good essay showing that capitalism is not aligned with democracy and the most influential people in a capitalist system do nothing to maintain a democracy if that is not in their immediate interest or even threatens it.

 

To me it seems obvious, that in the US and the EU at the moment we are making the mistake of giving way too much room in decisions about public policy to business interests, and especially those which are aligned with the interests of the big political parties' supporters. If we want to resist the current trends of authoritarian governments rising we would need to push society centred legislation.

 

For example when looking at health spending, what matters most isn't whether it's good business to provide health services but how they can provide best for most people. When looking at legislation on child support, maternity/paternity leave, working hrs, what kind of products can be introduced in a market, whether advertisers can push certain products in schools, etc. should be dependent first on their immediate social effects and just second on the interests of business doing even better.

 

If people are doing well, that will rejuvenate local economies and society will do well. This would create the real disruption, breaking the dominance of giant companies on politics.

 

Democracy and capitalism can work well together. But only if there are strong governments putting the interests of society first, rather than of business or the economy in itself.