The work ethic and its discontents
by Tom Walker
Anis Shivani extols Charles Bukowski's _Factotum_ as offering "the only
answer that makes sense" to "the sham that is modern work" ("The Life of a
Bum: Against the Work Ethic," http://www.counterpunch.org/shivani0925.html).
Henri Chinaski, Bukowski's alter ego in that novel, "shows utter disrespect
for the work ethic."
"The problem with liberal critics of capitalism," Shivani argues, "is that
they don't want to mess with the foundations of the system." His answer to
this faintheartedness? "Refusal of work means that you have given up the
deceptive fight to ameliorate its conditions."
Of course, not all anti-work dissidents have the perserverence to drink,
fuck, goof-off and get fired like Henri Chinaski, let alone write like
Charles Bukowski. A handful of Bukowski acolytes may write a novel or two. A
few more pick up a degree in literature. Most probably end in something more
dependable like advertising or journalism.
Robert Frost wrote that he "never dared to be radical when young for fear it
would make me conservative when old." That's a fear worth attending to.
This is not to disparage Bukowski, only the notion of Bukowski as a beacon
of revolt against the work ethic. The catch is that a little youthful
rebellion never brought down a regime. Nearly forty years ago, Timothy Leary
invited youth to "turn on, tune in and drop out." Somehow the work ethic has
weathered both Henri Chinowski's picaresque contempt and Leary's pixelated
pied-pipering.
Shivani is right that today's work ethic is an abomination. Modern work is a
sham -- not all work, mind you, but all too much of it. It is highly
improbable that a bit of tinkering can set things right. So where does that
leave us? Can't live with it, can't live without it and can't reform it?
Can't get over it, can't get under it and can't get around it?
Not quite. The work ethic and the refusal to work are the two poles of an
axis. Amelioration of working conditions also lies on that axis, located
somewhere between the two poles. But there is another dimension at stake
that forms its own axis, an axis that intersects the work ethic one.
That other dimension is time. Unless the word "time" brings to mind such
names as Marcel Proust, Henri Bergson or Walter Benjamin, it may not be what
you think it is.
In his preface to _Time and Free Will_, Bergson asked, "whether the
insurmountable difficulties presented by certain philosophical problems do
not arise from our placing side by side in space phenomena [namely the
experience of time] which do not occupy space..." It may be worth asking if
the insurmountable difficulties presented by work and the work ethic do not
arise from our acquiescence to an illegitimate quantification of time and to
the incoherent practical and moral consequences that flow from it. It is,
after all, discontent with such practical and moral incoherence that
motivates such an inquiry.
It does seem reasonable to wonder, as Freud did, whether people would
perform necessary work without coercion. It's another matter when a
political and economic elite insists on coercion for fundamentally aesthetic
reasons -- because it pleases them to see an increase in measured output
without regard to whether that output contributes to public welfare or
detracts from it. How does one distinguish between reasonable doubts about
the relationship between work and coercion and unreasonable certainties?
Shivani's glorification of the _Factotum_ lifestyle trivializes the Freudian
doubts, as did beat sensibility and 1960s counter-culture. Liberal proposals
for workplace reform enshrine those reasonable doubts to an extent that
paves the way for a return of the unreasonable certainties. It remains to be
shown that we are throwing virgins into the volcano, not because we believe
it will appease the volcano god and not only because we have been doing it
so long that it has become a habit but, most disturbingly, simply because we
can't think of anything else to do.
Not thinking of something else to do is a moral lapse that makes Henri
Chinaski's ennui positively heroic by comparison. But only by comparison.
The anti-hero's heroism is parasitic in that it depends on the complacency
of the squares. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But when
everybody tries to be a bum, goofing-off loses its cachet. Ultimately, the
work ethic returns stronger than ever as an indignant reaction to the beat
ethic -- no longer a true positive but a double negative. They're the worst
kind.
Work ethic? We don't got no work ethic.
This ungrammatical, double negative work ethic doesn't even have to stand on
its own two feet. It can lean against its own shadow. Its adherents believe
it is sufficient to proclaim "there is no alternative" to overrule any
objection. For crying out loud, there is an alternative. Those who deny it
are liars, cheats and embezzlers. The alternative is an affirmation of work
that is unequivocally subordinated to an affirmation of life and dignity.
The alternative makes distinctions.
The alternative is neither a work ethic nor its polar opposite. It is
definitely not the spectral refusal-of-a-refusal that passes for a
post-ethical work ethic - the topsy-turvy work and spend ethic. It is a time
ethic.
If one accepts, with Max Weber, that Benjamin Franklin's counsel, "time is
money," represented the epitome of the capitalist spirit, then it should
seem peculiar that custom and law in the most capitalist of all lands, the
United States, should blythely sanction the routine and wholesale
confiscation of this purest form of private property, a person's time. The
traditional employers' position with respect to working time is founded on
the hypocritical proposition that liberty of contract is realized by the
unrestricted right to offer one's time for sale but not by a corresponding
right to retain it.
In effect, the first abstract right is nullified by the absence of the
second concrete one. After all, the right to not work and to starve as a
consequence is no bargain. It may well reflect the situation in the state of
nature, but in that state of nature the politicians, central bankers and
self-appointed moralists who point with satisfaction to the lash of
necessity would be unceremoneously clubbed to pulp for their supercilious
arrogance. A.J. Liebling said, "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to
those who owned one." Conversely, the unrestrained right to work could only
be enjoyed by those who can afford not to work.
Instead of such a meaningless and abstract right, what if we were to turn
the tables and legislate a definite limit on the number of hours a day and
week that anyone could be employed by a single employer? Many people might
assume there is already such legislation in effect. There isn't in the U.S.
or Canada. There are overtime laws but no absolute limits. Theoretically, an
employer could compel an employee to work 168 hours a week, provided the
employer paid the given premium for overtime hours.
As a thought experiment, say we propose an absolute limit of 16 hours a day
and 96 hours a week after which no employee may be required or permitted to
work? This means that everyone would be guaranteed 8 hours off each day
and -- and a full day off after working the 16 hour maximum for six days in
a week. Positively Dickensian.
Some exemptions could apply, for example, where there was clear and
immediate danger to life or limb or, as in the case of hospital interns,
where round-the-clock hours served an explicit pedagogical or scientific
purpose. What employer could possibly object on practical grounds to such a
generous standard?
Now that we've established the principle of an absolute limit to the workday
and week, thin edge of the wedge wise, the next step is to initiate a public
dialogue on the practical scope of the limitation.
If establishing a principle and initiating a public dialogue sounds like yet
another pallid prescription rather than an answer that makes sense, my
excuse is that the goal is persuasion, not protest. As with any persuasion,
the primary audience is one's self -- if you can't get excited about your
own spiel, who will?
It comes down to zeal. It's easy to be cynical about the work ethic but it's
hard to be zealous about cynicism. Those who are enchanted by their
illusions have the advantage over those who are merely disenchanted.
Presumably what motivated Shivani's impatience with the pallid prescriptions
of the liberal critics was that they weren't inspirational. A heroic gesture
of refusal may be more inspiring in the short term, but it is not
sustainable. Hangovers, venereal disease and a glut in the small press book
market get in the way. A time ethic, such as I am suggesting here, is
sustainable in that it offers a seemless program for self-understanding and
for social intervention.
Dreaming up legislative principles and topics for public dialogue doesn't
exhaust the potential of a time ethic. Recall that such an ethic derives
from questioning whether philosophical problems arise from symbolically
"placing side by side in space phenomena which do not occupy space."
Economics, especially mathematical economics, relies heavily on just such a
procedure. By examining successive, artificially frozen states of the
economy side by side, it excludes from the analysis precisely what
constitutes economic "becoming".
Think of what fun it could be to tumbril the self-proclaimed queen of the
social sciences off for a haircut at Madame Guillotine's! "Just a little off
the top, please." On second thought, maybe that's getting a bit
over-zealous. Good economists have always been very much interested in the
becoming. John Maynard Keynes even talked about "animal spirits". And that
sounds suspiciously like Bergson's *elan vital* to me.
In his discussion of the work ethic, Max Weber lamented that care for the
accumulation of worldly goods had become an "iron cage" from which the
formative spirit of religious ascetism had escaped. Four decades later, the
words *arbeit macht frei* -- work liberates -- were wrought in iron above
the gates of the Nazi death camps. Asceticism had escaped but the modern
individual couldn't. That's the dark side of the problem of free will and
determinism.
In _Time and Free Will_, Henri Bergson sought to show that the problem of
free will and determinism was a false problem. He concluded:
"The problem of freedom has thus sprung from a misunderstanding: it has been
to the moderns what the paradoxes of the Eleatics were to the ancients, and,
like these paradoxes, it has its origin in the illusion through which we
confuse succession and simultaneity, duration and extensity, quality and
quantity."
Tom Walker
604 255 4812
