To my Marxist friends: Something that has always bugged me is that American workers, since they have no class consciousness, either take the bosses point of view directly or they take the point of view that what they are asked to do is just, even when other people, who may be workers or poor people, are ill affected by it and it would be not difficult to notice that if they do not. It seems to me that a problem is posed by the fact that today most workers are not producing commodities but services and information, and that means many are in administrative, managerial, or policing (guard-type) positions, or have policing functions as among their duties (social workers, nurses, doctors, teachers). I think that among the latter, the importance of managerial and policing function has increased as we have moved into a zero tolerance society. Indeed, it often seems to me that the only place you can really escape this at all is in the world of the arts. Which I think are the last bastion of liberalism in the true sense of the word, as opposed the corporate-bureaucratic policing ideologies that are wielded by people with aristocratic charity and improve-the-world-for-the-unfortunate ideologies in the pretense of protecting minorities from criticisms, which are all attributed to prejudice in a manner management is happy to endorse. Workers in managerial or policing jobs would be in a problematic position if they acceded to a real class consciousness or an understanding of the repressive qualities of the work they are asked to do. First, this would create cognitive dissonance, as we all prefer to identify with the work we do, since that gives us a feeling of importance and enjoyment that otherwise would be problematic. Secondly, a worker in such a job who wants to act on behalf of the public he deals with is of course rarely going to be allowed to do so by his boss, and that means if he does he can be fired. All my life I could never understand why people who are workers and not shareholders or upper level management identify with the company and with what they are doing. Of course, conservative trade unions promote this by promoting a quasi-fascist workerism. There are certainly some signs of this changing and we dont need to rebuild the old unions but to create new ones that are militant (fighting). (Note for the NSA person reading this: While I am not interested in proving loyalty to a confused idea of America, worker militancy does not mean civil war, and more than the militancy of the Civil Rights movement did. Additionally, no liberals were harmed in the production of this Facebook post). My question is, what should our attitude be to these people? I think that the negotiating principle of separate the people from the problem might be useful, as is the Christian idea that this surely stems from of criticizing the sin and not the sinner. The thing is, I experience class conflict whenever I am dealing with administrative personnel. Many of these people make it very difficult to communicate with them merely to get what you want. That customer service rep or debt collector may fight for control of the conversation and wielding bullying tactics. What do you do, what do you say? And the same with security guards, or nurses when they like them, etc. How I wish there would be associations or unions of professionals that were truly concerned about the ethics of what they do. Taking up the problem I am posing here as one of their own. It is possible. One facilitating factor might be that nurses, doctors, teachers, and others might realize as some do that they are able to use their talents and professional skills in a more effective and satisfying manner with less management constraining them to act unethically. Because of course this is something they pass down. If you want to hire someone as a torturer, deprive him, make him suffer just enough that he will do it to others. If you want him to instill fear in others, instill fear in him. There are things I dislike about the idea of society, mainly that it is invoked like a name of God by a state apparatus claiming to represent it. But it may be that what we need is an idea of solidarity whereby workers feel that their principle allegiance is to something like the people, including those they serve, or should serve but rule, rather than to an institutional bureaucracy with its particular mission, goals, and rules. On the other hand, I wonder if cognitive dissonance is such a bad thing. Nothing like a little catastrophe for sorting things out, says David Hemmings in Antonionis Blow-Up.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 05:40:40 +0000
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