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CounterPunch
September
25, 2002
The Life of
a Bum:
Against the Work Ethic
by ANIS SHIVANI
At Henry Chinaski's job at a magazine publishers'
distributing house, he notices that "the work was easy and
dull but the clerks were in a constant state of turmoil."
"Look," I said, "these
books aren't worth reading let alone arguing about."
"All right," one of the women
said, "we know you think you're too good for this job."
"Too good?"
"Yes, your attitude. You think we
didn't notice it?"
That's when I first learned that it wasn't
enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it,
even a passion for it.
This is from Charles Bukowski's best
novel, Factotum
(Black Sparrow Press, 1975).
You won't find Bukowski on most English
professors' reading lists, because Bukowski writes too clearly.
It isn't possible to fudge his message to make bourgeois life
look all right, after all.
Chinaski shows utter disrespect for the
work ethic. During and after WWII, he moves from job to job around
the country but mainly in Los Angeles--some twenty odd jobs,
not one lasting for long. He doesn't worry about taking his jobs
seriously, or getting fired. He has understood the sham that
is modern work, and responds in the only way that makes sense
to him: refusal to work. Even when he gets a "good"
job, he refuses to work.
This book is a radical statement about
modern work, far outstripping the merely liberal concern about
making work better--pleading for fewer hours, better wages, more
benefits, greater respect. These all turn out to be delusions
in the end.
Are improvements in working conditions
supposed to strengthen capitalism, so that in the end it may
come up with more efficient ways to suck the life out of the
worker? Is it possible to bridge the inherent alienation between
the worker and his work in the capitalist system?
The only answer that makes sense is Chinaski's
unbending disrespect for the whole system of production: refusal
to work, under any conditions, even when organizations appear
to be catering to workers' desire to belong.
Not long ago, Barbara Ehrenreich went
famously slumming, and wrote about it in Nickel
and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Metropolitan
Books, 2001). She wanted to prove that at the lower end of the
wage scale, it is barely possible to survive. These jobs try
hard to make you feel you belong: Wal-Mart inculcates the work
ethic by calling you an "associate." You're supposed
to work overtime without being paid; your life belongs to your
employer. Ehrenreich took jobs as waitress, maid, Wal-Mart clerk,
and other situations where the overwhelming number of those who
didn't participate in the "new economy" actually held
jobs. Of course, now the new economy has been shown to be a mirage,
but Ehrenreich wanted to reveal how the other half lived even
during the so-called boom years. At all her jobs, she had a hard
time meeting basic expenses like food and shelter.
Ehrenreich's critique is fine as far
as it goes, and she writes movingly of the impossibility of surviving
under the current wage bargain for the non-elite, but the denunciation
of work itself isn't there. She would want what? A living wage?
An end to degrading rituals like mandatory training (propaganda)
sessions, and ubiquitous aptitude (and attitude) testing?
Ben Cheever, a more resigned type, went
slumming too during the boom years. He writes about his jobs
as computer huckster, auto salesman, sandwich artist, and security
guard in Selling
Ben Cheever: Back to Square One in a Service Economy
(Bloomsbury, 2001). As the title suggests, the way to get and
keep a job in America today is by constantly selling yourself;
as Chinaski was told, keeping a good attitude. Cheever too notes
how annihilation of any sense of self apart from work has become
standard practice in even the least challenging of jobs: the
illusion that you're being weeded out from the real morons by
rigorous testing and questioning; the constant surveillance to
make sure that you don't have thoughts unrelated to organizational
dominance at any moment of your (voluntarily donated) slave time.
Cheever does his sincere best to speed things up, to work as
well as his more committed co-workers. Cheever has no real complaints;
he accepts his fate sweetly, and does what he can to please his
employers.
Back to Chinaski for some real insight
into the humiliating rituals of work:
Even during World War II when there was
supposed to be a manpower shortage there were four or five applicants
for each job. (At least for the menial jobs.) We waited with
our application forms filled out. Born? Single? Married? Draft
status? Last job? Last jobs? Why did you leave? I had filled
out so many job forms that long ago I had memorized the right
answers.
When this employer asks him what he does,
Chinaski reveals that he is a "writer" but then appeases
the interrogator by saying that the title of his novel is "The
Leaky Faucet of My Doom." This soothes the interrogator.
Chinaski says that he wants to work in a ladies' dress shop because
he's "always liked ladies in ladies' dresses."
The interrogation rituals, which are
not limited to hiring but extend indefinitely until you're fired,
are a not inconsequential part of the degradation.
Chinaski knows that capitalism is a vast
machinery to keep us busy, never let us have time to think about
why the rulers should have the right to rule us:
The problem, as it was in those days
during the war, was overtime . . .You gave the boss eight hours,
and he always asked for more. He never sent you home after six
hours, for example. You might have time to think.
Juliet Schor, in The
Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure
(Basic Books, 1991), has made much of how Americans have been
working more and more hours (more than any others in Western
democracies) since the gains of the labor movement in the early
twentieth century. Despite popular misconception, we now work
harder than we did in the ruthless nineteenth century. Employees
are so fatigued after (over)work that they have no time to think
for themselves; mindless entertainment is about all they can
muster energy for.
Schor notes that incentive structures
in capitalism ensure longer working hours. The eighty-hour work
week in the nineteenth century was terrible (although we're now
returning to something like it) but this is the worst standard
against which to measure current working conditions. The worker
in the middle ages spent considerably less time working: "Steady
employment, for fifty-two weeks a year is a modern invention.
Before the nineteenth--and, in many cases, the twentieth--century,
labor patterns were seasonal, intermittent, and irregular."
But here is the flaw in Schor's thinking:
"Work, too, can be pleasurable; and leisure may or may not
be." No, work under capitalism (when you sell your labor
to an employer) is by definition degrading; it can't be joyful.
And the very term "leisure" implies, to the Puritan
mind, a negative quality of slacking off, not pulling one's weight.
One reason why Schor thinks we feel overworked
is the plethora of consumer choices; we try hard to keep up with
others, never getting off the treadmill. Schor talks about capitalism's
"squirrel cage," the work-and-spend middle-class affliction
instilled by capitalism, but in the end she doubts whether this
cycle can be radically disrupted. That's because of the "social
nature" of work-and-spend: individuals alone, if they make
the choice not to participate in the upscale consumer market,
can't do it. Schor mentions in passing the "'Zen' path to
happiness," keeping desire low to limit work hours.
The problem with liberal critics of capitalism
(if that's what they are criticizing) is that they don't want
to mess with the foundations of the system. Maybe a bit of tinkering
at the edges, but that's all. So having established that present
work conditions are worse than in the middle ages and getting
close to those in the abysmal nineteenth-century, Schor offers
only the following changes: "altering employers' incentives;
improving wages for the lowest-paid; creating gender equality;
pre-empting the automatic spiraling of consumption; and throughout,
establishing time's value independent of its price, so that it
can no longer be readily substituted for money."
It is a given in liberal circles that
the more dire the diagnosis, the more pallid the prescription.
In Schor's framework, there is no need to give up ambition to
get ahead in the capitalist world. You need only "balance"
your work and private needs. In Schor's analysis, if you work
a little less, would this be to maintain the psychological balance
necessary to be a more efficient machine? Chinaski drinks and
fucks without any sense of balance; it is his implicit answer
to those "reformers" who would want more space for
the worker to express his unique self--in measured quantities,
of course. "Overwork" suggests that it's the "over"
that's the problem, not work itself.
Like Schor, Robert Reich also sees no
real way out of the bind. In The
Future of Success (Knopf, 2001), he glorifies the new
economy, calling it "The Age of the Terrific Deal,"
and handles the ever-expanding encroachment into workers' leisure
time as only a matter of striking the right balance. Reich says
that we "are benefiting mightily from the new economy, "reaping
the gains of its new inventions, its lower prices, its fierce
competition." None of this is worth giving up, regardless
of what "neo-Luddites . . . isolationsits and xenophobes"
might say. The price of the terrific deal, the new bounty of
choices, is that we feel overworked and insecure. The age of
permanent employment has ended, and loyalty doesn't matter. If
we're smart, we'll know how to conduct the "sale of the
self" to the highest bidder at any given time. There are
only two tracks, the fast and the slow. Since we can't be expected
to give up our appetite for goods, the best we can hope for is
some cushioning against the worst economic shocks, and mitigating
the worst effects of capitalism's efficient "sorting out"
of those on the fast and slow tracks. Reich makes no suggestion
that work itself might be the problem.
It is no accident that Factotum was published
in 1975. In the early seventies, Americans openly expressed dissatisfaction
with work. Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello's Common Sense for
Hard Times (South End Press, 1976) has as its thesis the unjustified
control of capitalists over "the time of our lives."
Nineteenth century workers were more rebellious; they clearly
saw "working for a daily wage" as "equivalent
to slavery." Only in the twentieth century have Americans
become habituated to the concept that they should spend the major
part of their lives working for someone else. But the "work
stoppages, sitdowns, and wildcat strikes" proposed by Brecher
and Costello can only return a little control for a time to workers.
Besides, even this type of resistance has mostly disappeared
after the seventies.
Lloyd Zimpel's Man Against Work (Eerdmans,
1974) presents practical strategies to increase worker "satisfaction,"
anticipating Schor and Reich's approach. The essays collected
in Zimpel's work suggest that different forms of alienation can
be overcome by methods of job enrichment. The work ethic itself
is not under attack; more participation can effectively challenge
authoritarian means of management. But Brecher and Costello have
shown how worker participation is yet another divide and rule
tactic to enhance employer control.
Harry Braverman, in Labor
and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
Century (Monthly Review Press, 1974), comprehends more
clearly how capitalism works. Scientific management controls
workers by withholding from them knowledge of different steps
in the labor process--deskilling them, in other words. The worker
deludes himself if he thinks that he can sharply separate work
and free time. The marketplace extends into all areas of life,
including leisure time, and institutions like schools and hospitals
that we think function in a spirit of community exist only to
clear out all but the most productive from the marketplace.
Freedom won't come from marginal changes.
Chinaski is wise to this:
Bums and indolents, all of us working
there [at a bicycle warehouse] realized our days were numbered.
So we relaxed and waited for them to find out how inept we were.
Meanwhile, we lived with the system, gave them a few honest hours,
and drank together at night.
Is it really that Chinaski and his fellow
workers are inept? Or is that you can never measure up to capitalism's
standards? So why not one-up the system in the only way possible,
by actually acting ineptly, by being irresponsible? Moreover,
if you're really "dumb" in the capitalist system, that
means you're not in on the take. You're only making as much as
the "rules" of the "free-market economy"
say you should. Why not radically distance yourself from the
crooks, present in every capitalist enterprise, by being dumb?
At least that way you can't be charged with being a thief in
addition to being a slave. Hired as a janitor at the Times Building,
Chinaski sleeps most of the time on the "sofas and chairs"
in the "ladies crapper."
Unlike Ehrenreich, Cheever, Schor, and
Reich, Chinaski offers the radical alternative of being against
capitalist ambition itself. Here's how he calmly accepts being
fired from the bicycle warehouse (just as he refuses to protest
after every sacking):
"Chinaski," he [Mr. Hansen,
the manager] barked. I knew the sound: it was over for me.
. . ."Yes?" I asked.
"I'm going to have to let you go."
"O.K."
"You're a damned good clerk but
I'm going to have to let you go."
I was embarrassed for him.
"You've been showing up for work
at 10:30 for 5 or 6 days now. How do you think the other workers
feel about this? They work an eight hour day."
"Its all right. Relax."
"Listen, when I was a kid I was
a tough guy too. I used to show up for work with a black eye
three or four times a month. But I made it into the job every
day. On time. I worked my way up."
I didn't answer.
Chinaski makes us feel sorry for the
capitalist class and its minions, even though he's the one being
put out of work. In the above episode, Chinaski is the dignified
one, trying to lend humanity to the employer. And yet, wasn't
he the one showing up late to work every day? This stubbornness
lets others equally enslaved feel superior. This is Chinaski's
act of mercy.
When Chinaski gets a job at an auto parts
warehouse, he gets into the habit of playing the horses, rushing
off from work a little before 5 p.m. to make it to Hollywood
Park in time to place the bets. At work, he starts doing "less
and less." This is what happens at the inevitable firing
scene:
"You knew we were going to let you
go?"
"Bosses are never hard to fathom."
"Chinaski, you haven't been pulling
your weight for a month and you know it."
"A guy busts his damned ass and
you don't appreciate it."
"You haven't been busting your ass,
Chinaski."
I stared down at my shoes for some time.
I didn't know what to say. Then I looked at him. "I've given
you my time. It's all I've got to give--it's all any man has.
And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour."
"Remember you begged for this job.
You said your job was your second home."
" . . .my time so that you can live
in your big house on the hill and have all the things that go
with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this arrangement
. . .I've been the loser. Do you understand?"
He's right. Your time is the only thing
worth having. Why should any system that demands a worthless
bargain, where you give up most of your time, your most precious
(your only) possession, for the right to be able to eat and sleep
under a roof, be worth defending? It's slow death, and we accept
it. After getting fired from this job, Chinaski demands unemployment:
we need to be paid not to work, now that the link between labor
and value has been broken in the post-scarcity era.
Does serious protest lend any kind of
dignity to the worker? If all work under capitalism is demeaning,
why not perform poorly, even though you're smart enough to do
the job well? Is any other response rational, dignified?
In capitalism, we're all "extra
ball-bearings." We're all "faceless, sexless, sacrificial,"
despite the fancy propaganda. How long can you make the next
job last? And if you can make it last a long time, is that the
ultimate defeat?
Refusal of work means that you have given
up the deceptive fight to ameliorate its conditions. The Fordist
model--mechanization of work--is no longer limited to the industrial
proletariat. The work ethic itself is the problem. In Marcuse's
terms, Chinaski is overturning the "performance principle"
through which the current system of domination works. Nothing
less will do.
Anis Shivani
studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels,
The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist. He welcomes comments
at: Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu
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