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
