Prole Notes
Stan here. I’ve been AWOL at Insurgent American and racist initiatives of Representative John Sensenbrenner (R-WI).
It is a new hybrid culture that can be described structurally as well.
Our work is often slave-like in appearance. Six of us whacking away in a row with mattocks and shovels. Invisible to the owners of houses and yards so big and so manicured that the owners couldn’t care for them themselves even if they were so inclined.
When I made a mistake two days ago, I said “my bad” to the boss, and he got the last word by saying, “My time.” That hit home. Time, in life, is a non-renewable resource. He pays me… us… and he owns us for that period of time. Labor theory of value is fine stuff; but here is the real relation: we are rent-a-slaves. XXXX told me so himself. They get this.
The American Civil War was fought between two forces to settle the question of whether American development would proceed with slaves or rent-a-slaves. We are not paid for our work. We don’t have a list that says: $X for digging dead oak leaves out of someone’s azaleas, $Y for cutting the grass in neat lines, $Z for installing a French drain. What every minute on the clock has in common with every other minute is that we are available to obey.
These folks are proletarian and a subject nation and an emerging new nationality… and they are what Andrew MacKillop called “the dream of every reptile-minded capitalist: throwaway labor.” Hard work that requires flexible hours (based on weather and contracts) is best done with labor that is unlikely to go to the authorities when corners are cut.
Many days, we come together with other members of this throwaway proletarian nationality, at the little tienda-restaurants now dotting every town and spread throughout every city. Here is where they grab a taste of home for the 30 minutes they are given for lunch.
If anyone every wants to reach out with a subversive message to the maximum number of this class, just map the tiendas, prepare something on a CD, mix it with popular Latino music (discs reproduce really cheaply), and post the Spanish-speaking distributors at the tiendas from 11 AM through 2 PM every day for a week. Have the CD validate the experiences of those folks with interviews and-or commentary, and someone would have a beginning for building networks (I still think of that film, A Day Without a Mexican).
On another (but related) topic, this job never fails to remind me of what we are doing to the biosphere, and how these net effects on ecosystems conceal the core-periphery eco-relation. Every day, I thank Mark Jones (RIP) for putting me onto Alf Hornborg. We go to the grocery store and buy melons grown as monocrops in Sonora (where growers are subject to fewer environmental and labor protections, ergo we ship our production wastes into the periphery as we cream off the value from the periphery into the core.); then the very people who lost their land, when monocrops swallowed up small producers, are now building, painting, maintaining, and decorating our real estate.
This job gives you a whole new perspective on “beauty.” Beautiful places, even those of the “progressive” petit bourgeoisie in an academic haven like Durham, take on a different aspect when these beautiful houses and properties represent the work that makes them beautiful.
How related is the beauty myth of physical “property” to the beauty myth decried by feminists? How had do we (have someone) work to ensure that what we control and consume is simplified, manicured, idealized-and-subjugated?
Money is an entitlement to the energies of others. When you have a lot of money, you get a lot of entitlements. ABC, eh? Except that groups who are nationally dis-identified with the core have to give more for the same entitlement. Unequal exchange… Hornborg again. Only its inside our political boundaries now.
This has political implications, doncha think? But we may not know what they are yet. As we hypothetically send our missionaries over to the mom-an-pop loncherias, all that’s really needed is to raise consciousness of what folks have in common, and why, and to build the relationships. The Blanquist tendencies of many will convince them that “we” can organize actual programs and agendas.
This runs contrary to nature. Nature self-organizes. It does not attempt to read tea leaves. Raise the consciousness and make the relations. The system will provide the agenda and the program soon enough. Another Sensenbrenner outrage is gestating somewhere. Almost all the freshmen Democrats in the US House of Representatives campaigned last year against “illegal immigration.” Most of the Republicans are already there.
Rambling on here, these guys need these jobs. There is no reason they would leave their families back in Guanajuato if not to make the wages. Unequal exchange between Mexican workers and US workers has created a condition wherein these new friends of mine can take advantage of that unequal exchange by moving north and bargaining for the post-NAFTA in-between wage.
It is the existence of peripheries, as one pole of a relation with the core, that acts as a safety valve within the core. Contrary to the hoary notion that flipping the class script in the metropoles will open the door to a new future, we know now that the genuine independence of the peripheries is likely to precipitate the downfall of core power. We have to hack at tentacles.
Those in the core, and the working class itself, is trapped inside the contradiction of capital. It’s an unequal relation, this connection between worker and owner, but it is also mutually dependent.
“Tell no lies,” cautioned Amilcar Cabral. “Mask no difficulties.”
(The peripheral nations are only one periphery. We have layers of racial-national peripheries here inside the US; and let’s not forget the most universal micro-social core-periphery relation of all: gender.)
Right now, we are seeing — with the post-NAFTA migrations — as profound a demographic shift in the US as Reconstruction or the New Deal. What do we know about this? What can we know about this? What is… to be done?
So there are a few thoughts from my new proletarian job (which I need, even though it makes me dread every morning… yippee, I get to do backbreaking work to pretty up places for rich people to live!!!). I’m way past too old for this; and thank goodness it’s raining today. But if these random ruminations can provoke a discussion or two, it may be worthwhile after all.
Thorin:
Stan,
Thanks for a great post. Sorry to hear you got a crummy job, though.
Could you elaborate a little more about your statement that “these folks are proletarian and a subject nation and an emerging new nationality?”
I’m not sure who you mean by “these folks.” If you’re referring to the fact that the majority of landscape workers, at least in the South, are Latino, then yes, I agree. If, on the other hand, you’re referring to landscape workers or proletarians as a whole, then I must respectfully disagree. (Knowing you, I rather suspect the former.)
“Proletarian” denotes a special kind of class relationship, one in which money is the mitigating factor. You work as a “rent-a-slave,” the boss collects the capital from the value of the surplus labor value you provide.
National opression is different; it is not based on capital, but on a special type of oppression. The emerging Latino nation is overwhelmingly proletarian, but faces oppression that is a step above what white proletarians face. You may be a landscape worker, but La Migra isn’t going to come calling for you, you’re not going to face legal hurdles for minor things like getting a driver’s license, renting an apartment, or speaking a different language.
The difference between class oppression and national oppression is important, as you are well aware. Many comrades on the Left, such as the ISO, see the immigrant rights movement as a class struggle; they are correct, but it is also a national struggle. You will never see corporations openly back a miner, steel, airline, or other type of “white” strike, but watch how many Latino companies come out to back the immigrant general strikes and demonstrations. The Latino bourgeoisie is part of the emerging nation, and sees these events as being in its interest as well.
Within the movement, you see the class differences; the bourgeois forces are more willing to compromise, more willing to accept “solutions” like Bush’s “guest worker” (read: indentured servitude) program.
So in this sense, the immigrant (or should I say Latino) movement is simultaneously both a proletarian class movement and a national emancipation movement.
None of which is news to you, of course; your post describes the dynamics of capitalism quite succinctly. The “emerging nationality” bit kind of stuck out, and thought it could use some clarification.
11 April 2007, 3:42 pmHeide:
I’d lile to give you a taste of how this “rent-a-slave” system works for immigrant women whose lack of command of the English language (language is a powerful weapon!) dooms them to the most menial jobs–cleaning up other people’s messes.
An immigrant woman whose taxes I just filed makes a living for herself and her 3-year-old daughter by cleaning hotel rooms. She gets paid $3.00 per room plus tips–if she is lucky–no matter what condition the room is in. Needless to say, the biggest slobs are the lousiest tippers. Next time you are on the road and use a hotel/motel, think about the woman who will clean up after you. Leave the room in decent shape and please leave a tip that respects her work and dignity.
Heide
11 April 2007, 3:59 pmJosiah:
“My time”…Sounds like my boss. I get $7.65 an hour (after taxes) to work under a foreman in a warehouse packing crates of organic produced that are home-delivered to middle-and-upper-class consumers, who order from a website. Like the beautiful places in Durham you described, the organic vegetables we pack, while delicious and free of pesticides, are trucked from as much as far as Mexico (well over 3,000 miles from here) to ensure year-round access to goodies like avocadoes and kiwis. Aside from the petrol costs of cross-country trucking and home delivery, nobody in the lower income bracket can afford to order this stuff. So even if they buy produce, poor people have to eat pesticides, and they’ll probably eat junk food, which doesn’t help kids concentrate in school…etc. But I doubt our customers let these things trouble them when they get the big crate of fresh fruits and vegetables on the porches of their suburban houses every week.
Sorry, had to add my little after-work rant.
11 April 2007, 5:28 pmStan:
Hispano-Latina workers arriving since NAFTA.
Proletarian = wage worker with no access to means of production.
Subject nation = Mexico, in this case… subjected through dollar hegemony and neoliberalism.
Emerging nationality = Spanish-speaking, originating primarily in Mexico and Central America, distinguishable from their fellow citizens abroad by their experience in the US, and distinguishable from US citizens in all the ways we know. A nation (common culture, language, political situation, history) being forged in this common set of hybrid experiences.
***
Thanks to Josiah, btw. I hope others will share their experiences of work.
I don’t object to getting dirty or working hard. I do both here at home, especially in my garden, that I work without fossil energy now. But this is non-alienating. It has my own creativity in it. The work is not a means to an end-apart from what the work accomplishes (I could give a shit less whether these rich people’s yards are pretty… I show up for the money… small as it is… this is what Marx called the alienation of workers. We are alienated from the results of our own efforts. I am a mere extension for a shovel or a tiller.
This fundamental dreariness not only characterizes wage work, however. Most people here in the good ole US of A are doing shit they don’t like, pretending for the boss that they do like it, convincing themselves that there might be at least a little status perq (if it’s a salaried job with a sexy title), and dreading each day… yet believing that their lack of enthusiasm is a personal defect.
No one should aspire to be a proletarian. It is a form of slavery, a point taken up in great detail by Pateman’s discussion of “the contract.”
If we have any aspirations, in light of the critique of industrialism that exposes the errors and frauds of “development,” then it seems we should aspire to independence from the main contradiction of capital (the worker-owner dyad, domination and submission on an axis of mutual dependency).
At any rate, send more work stories. Come one, come all, to Feral Scholar, to publicly and collectively deconstruct your employment! (-:
And think about this new nation-forming-within-a-nation. Any more detailed treatments (Joaquin?) we can post over at Insurgent American.
12 April 2007, 5:57 amBob H:
I did this kind of work for a while in my early 20s in S. Florida; not sure I could hack it in my 40s, so a red salute for that.
The crew I worked with was all white, but was mostly guys who used to be skilled labor (carpentry, etc.) who were down on their luck or drank their paychecks away. One guy lived in a tent in the woods for a while because he couldn’t afford rent. Anyway it was a real eye opener both about the real proletariat and about the commodification of nature; I’ve never looked at manicured lawns the same way since.
12 April 2007, 9:20 amKim Sky:
wow. reading your site today so cheered me up !!*%$$
thank you.
my life has taken a sudden turn for the unknown, as in i’ve lost my job — very silently and slowly — as in, i’m not “fired” but i’m not being given any work to do, so that i can get paid. the owner, i’ve known since 1978. and the other two people i work with i’ve worked with them since 1988.
and, without a word, without a bonus, just a silent, oh you need money — TOO BAD. we’re going to maintain our punitive stance, like we have throughout the years — lowest salary in the company — i’m lucky if i make one-eight of what they make !!! (over the years i did quit some ten times and they would hire me back – they couldn’t find anyone else that could figure out that code and work for so little ). l was looking back over this last year and realized that i’d gotten cocky! no was longer maintaining the “holier than thou” — that without realizing it, i had completely slid out of that necessary reverent attitude where you are expected to constantly inform your employer just exactly how grateful you are for the job, and how you’re willing to die for your job.
ugh, i was hating my job more and more everyday.
wow. the sudden uncertainty, especially having to figure it out over a three month period — as before, sometimes a month or so would go by, but then there would be tons of work. this time, the time went by and no work. and so, i’m in debt … wow. looking for work like crazy. my daughter says, she can rent a room somewhere and if i move out, at least the bills won’t be getting worse and worse. wow. what all my friends were always afraid of, and why they clung to making money over saving their souls.
anyway, the idea of you making a huge garden look beautiful made me laugh !!! and it is some kind of an odd indicator that perhaps i too can get a job … thanx again !
12 April 2007, 9:40 amJonny:
Depending on the set-up in your town, being a cabbie can be a very good job, and one that allows for ample time for things such as writing and organizing. My brother got me into it, and it’s a cash job where you declare what you like. The company knows via dispatch where you pick up, but not where you drop off. Generally, one can earn on paper the minimum that avoids IRS or in my case Revenue Canada attention, while actually clocking some very generous coin. Although cabbing may not be an good option for at least half of us (of the hundred and fifty or so taxi drivers with my company,just three are women…..plus, cabbies have the highest job-related fatalities of any work sector, including cops), cab driving might be a good thing for you, Stan. On the physical tip, it won’t strain you physically except maybe a little sleep-dep resulting from (voluntary, you rent the car and clock on and off with the dispatcher at your whim)12 or 15 hour shifts, but you already know about that from your childcare experience.
12 April 2007, 11:32 amCabbies here can live on 3 shifts a week. Just a thought…
aud:
I spent the last two mornings working on a yard crew fixing lawns and picking up debris, but I’m not getting paid. I think it’s probably costing me close to $10 an hour. I might be going about this the wrong way, eh? I did get a hug from the landowner, though, and I suspect that’s far more rewarding than the paycheck.
The beauty we’ve found down here (in Buras, LA, still recovering from Katrina) is not manicured beauty. It’s a misspelled poem painted on the side of a crumbling cement wall, or a flowering vine growing over a boot stuck in the mud that none of us wants to tug on, because it’s next to the graveyard where bodies were floating up.
Not sure where I’m going with this, except that how you’ve been spending your days, Stan, parallels what I’m doing this week exactly – except that things here are self-organizing instead of controlled by money from above. Anna came in to get food from distribution, I ended up sitting with her at dinner, it came out that she couldn’t get a lawnmower through her yard. Luke tells us at the evening meeting, “Find work.†Talk to people, find out what they need, and do it. If they offer to pay, don’t do the job. Find a local who needs the money and pass it to them.
(No specific point in all that, but it makes a nice prelude to what’s important here at the moment: If anyone knows how to move a houseboat on pontoons across soft soil into the water a hundred or so yards away, without heavy equipment, please let me know.)
12 April 2007, 3:00 pmstacia:
When I was in my mid-twenties I made my living as a housecleaner. I was very good at it, and took a lot of pride in my work. It was hard, physical labor, but I never thought of myself as ‘unskilled.’ I actually thought of it as closer to witchcraft than anything else. When I was through with a house, it wasn’t just clean; it was awake, alive. The families I cleaned for depended on me. They felt like I made their houses bigger.
13 April 2007, 11:53 amI cleaned apartments in the city and houses in the suburbs. For the most part I came to their house once a week and had relationships with the people who lived there. It was usually a one-way relationship; I knew much more about them than they did about me. I was like the bartender. I was interested in them; they were not interested in me. I often explain my long stint as a housecleaner by saying ‘I worked my way through college as a housecleaner,’ but that’s not true. I was a housecleaner before I thought of going to college, and it was only the independence and the money that that work afforded me (which other jobs had not) that made it possible for me to think about going at all. I made more money 20+ years ago than Stan is making right now. So even though now as a middle-class person and even a role model I explain half-apologetically having done that job, I’m actually very grateful.
There was one customer I had who every week timed her grocery shopping to my appearance as her housecleaner. I’d show up, she’d take off for the grocery store, and be back with the week’s worth of food for her family for the week. She was a nice woman, a liberal, the wife of a psychiatrist, and she just hated bringing in her own groceries. I was to stop what I was doing, and carry in all the bags to the kitchen so she could put them away. This made me angrier than anything I had ever been asked to do as a housecleaner, but I couldn’t understand why. It didn’t bother me to scrape dried shit off the inside of her toilet with my thumbnail, so why did it bother me so much to bring in her fucking groceries? Week after week, I would try to talk myself out of it, but it didn’t work. I would wake up in the middle of the night and brood about it. I could not let it go. I started to hate her, hate her house, her kids, her dog, and the nicer she was to me, the more I hated her.
At that time, at the aforementioned college, I was taking a class in Marxist Theory. When I read about the alienation of labor, I almost fell out of my chair. There was my answer, in a text written a hundred years earlier. I had sold my time and my skill—my labor—but I had not sold myself.
The next time I went to the house where the lady wanted me to bring in her groceries, I explained to her why I didn’t want to do that any more. I was very gentle and patient. I knew that if it had taken me that long to figure it out, it wasn’t going to be any easier for her. I explained about the alienation of labor, and said that although as her friend, I would be very happy to help her bring in the groceries, I was not obliged to as that was not part of the job I had agreed to do. She didn’t get it at all. I tried again. I said, well, your husband, the psychiatrist, gets paid by the hour just like me. What if one of his patients said, Doc, for this hour instead of getting into transference and all that shit, how about for my mental health you go wash my car, or give me a backrub, or do my laundry. I’ll pay you exactly the same.
Then something happened that now seems very logical to me, although at the time it seemed very strange. She burst into tears. She told me about the pressure on her, about her mother-in-law who was coming to visit, her kids who were rude to her, her husband who didn’t understand, and the career that she gave up to be at home with her children (she was a psychiatrist, too). To her credit, she asked me if I was willing to help her with the groceries, and I was, although I’m sure she never really got what the problem was. Maybe she thought she had to humor me, just like the other people she had to deal with, or I’d go.
Charlie:
I am a medically retired veteran of the Iraq war as well as a writer. Stan was instrumental in my becomingt a writer and I am him a friend and mentor. I have not ventured much outside of militarism, however this piece touched me.
I go to school full time and work at a high end grocery store. While I make more than is common for the area, my wage is not a living wage. But, I shop there anyway and get a (low) discount as well as benefits. It’s not ideal, but it helps to pay the bills.
A few days ago, I was rining up a couple and asked, “What kind of work do you do?” This is a common question that I use as a conversation point. I was informed that the lady was in sales and the gentlemen (I use the term loosely) informed me that he was a stock broker. I nodded and was about to ask another question when he said, “We know what you do. You’re just the clerk at the XXXXX.”
I admit that for a split second, I calculated how long it would take me to stab him in the carotid artery with my pen and get to my car. After deciding that i would get aprehended first, I quipped, “You know, sir, without guys like me you would starve.” After that we had a pretty good conversation and he was unaware of the classist and patronizing nature of what he said. Yet, I oftren feel that my customers do not regard me or see me as worth less. Yet, ther are no unskilled jobs.
13 April 2007, 3:28 pmb:
The posts here have been very moving about people’s experience of work, especially those low-paid, low status jobs that keep everything else going. One of the worst fictions created over the last thirty years or so has been the idea that the rich are somehow the ‘wealth creators’ when not only their bank accounts but their whole existance is absolutely dependant on the people who have to rent themselves and their time out for a (often less than living) wage.
I’ve worked in a lot of different jobs, some physical, some using my head from the age of 12. The last fifteen years I have been on welfare, supplemented with various odd jobs I can get by dint of my education. At first it got me through a nervous breakdown, and later I decided that I didn’t want to work full-time mainly to pay for someone else to look after my child.
The welfare also gave me the time to organise with my community (an inner-city UK council estate with a lot of other welfare moms as well as people working long hours in jobs) to improve our immediate physical and social environment. It also has given me a great deal of independence from men, and meant that I didn’t have to poison my relationship with my ex-partner with demands for money, so that he could go out and get an education, and ultimately a fairly satisfying and well-paid job. Yet both socially outside my immediate community, and when I do go begging for regular work as I have been doing for the last couple years, I still have to cover over the fact that I’ve been on welfare, and many of the skills acquired in that time.
The government wants it both ways – on the one hand they want to push us out to jobs to save on the welfare bill (not counting of course the huge industries like oil and agribusiness run by their cronies whose ‘profits’ are entirely dependent on vastly larger hand-outs of corporate welfare, because actually their business is about real wealth destruction). On the other the whole system would break down if there weren’t ‘unemployed’ women like myself around to pick up the slack looking after ‘employed’ people’s kids during the times when paid-for childcare isn’t available, or after people made ill by their jobs and the degradation of the environment wrought by those so-called ‘wealth creators’.
In my experience job satisfaction has more to do with how much control you have over when and how you work than it does with the size of the paycheck, or the social status of the job.
A note on gardening: one of the reasons I live in a city is that I grew up having to do it in the suburbs and hating every minute. Now that our courtyard is a community garden instead of a parking lot, it has been interesting watching how people deal with it. A Bangladeshi woman has appropriated bits to grow potatoes, gourd vegetables and corriander; a Malaysian family grows tomatoes and carrots; Turkish, German, Afro-Caribbean and Portugese households grow flowers; a Libyan guy grows cooking herbs and geraniums. The English mainly use it for sunbathing, and do some watering every now and again. Various people make stabs at maintaining the mainly decorative plants originally put in by the local council. It’s been hopeless trying to co-ordinate the people who are into gardening into following an overall plan, or even times to work together, but somehow it doesn’t seem to matter.
Thanks for a great thread, and good luck with the wage-slavery -
14 April 2007, 6:03 amJames M:
Charlie’s comment reminds me of something that’s been aggravating me for a while, which is the way the affluent have co-opted the term “successful.†I see it everywhere – Donald Trump advertises for a real estate wealth-creating seminar “for people who want to be successful.†An online dating service exclusively for the $100k-and-above set promotes itself as a place for “successful singles to meet.†As if, to be successful, I have to model myself after a complete lowlife like Donald Trump, who has arguably never done a single thing to benefit his fellow human beings (despite whatever bullshit rationalizations he may make about his “wealth creation†– thanks to “bâ€, the previous commenter for that.) As if a person can’t be a successful teacher, or grocery bagger, or environmental activist, or any of a number of professions that don’t pay as well but provide far more of a benefit to humanity and / or the biosphere in general.
A lot of people make their career choices based not on love of the profession or even a particular aptitude for it, but strictly for its earning potential. I see no reason why those people deserve the label “successful†more than someone who takes a job out of a love for the work, or even out of economic necessity. I do believe I will be successful on my own terms, thank you very much, and screw anyone else’s fascist standards for what constitutes success.
14 April 2007, 1:48 pmMiike:
Stan,
20 April 2007, 12:03 pmI’m 33. I am an artist. I make drawings and sculpture. I pretty much make birdhouses and fridge magnets for a living. I rent from my mom on a sliding scale because she is a wonderful woman. Basically there is a pencil line and my mom’s big heart between me and being homeless. But you know what? I feel successful. Doing something I love everyday, being close to family and a few close friends is where its at. I do work like a farmer at things- from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep.
I survived cancer a few years ago and everything changed- like I got new eyes. Surviving is success. I’m not trying to lower the bar there- I should say doing something you love nnd surviving, having love, respect for others and yourself is success.
Working as a landscaper may have been my first push to the left.I’ve had alot of jobs and learned beyond the skill sets required to do the job. I learned that I really do love people and that racism and classicism are huge. Hippster-ism is huge too.
I don’t mean to open a can of worms or suggest that you revisit anything that you don’t want to. Given your background- what about teaching map reading/orienteering? Maybe hunter’s safety courses or firearms safety. I grew up hunting and fishing and still own a couple of firearms. It has been a point of departure and or friction with lefty friends-and actually a connection to right wing types as far as conversation goes.
Example: A close friend’s family: Her father is a former Marine, retired state trooper. Her grandfather was a tank destroyer in WWII. Because they are active in shooting sports- my knowledge of firearms was a common ground with them. Our politics are very much at odds.Her father asked her once, after looking through a sketchbook of mine, if I was a communist.
Truth be known, I haven’t sorted through my complex relationship with firearms. I’m curious about your thoughts. I know that the idea of only police and military having them sounds frightening to me. I guess I believe in an individuals right to food get. And if that is being done one should be as proficient as possible. I also see that a firearm can make for swift and violent ends. I should say that since cancer I can’t kill bugs in the house and have only pulled a trigger on paper targets. I do eat meat-another source of struggle with self.
I’m all over the place. I’m trying to say that there must be work for you that you won’t dread everyday. After reading how you were teaching special forces how to assess situations and respond to them with appropriate force or no force- I wish you could educate all police officers. I was so impressed with A hideous Dream. I found myself relating to you on more than one occassion. I seem to get pissed in a similar fashion.
If notheing else I liked being outside when I landscaped. Maybe you do too. I could have just written – I like and respect your work, think it is very important. Please don’t stop writing even if you just write about shoveling mulch.
Thanks
john steppling:
stan….geez, Im 55 too….56 in a few weeks. Ive done alienated labor most of my life…..and most of it physical (notwithstanding those years in Hollywood).
i see in Poland now that workers get something like 4 zloty an hour…thats about two bucks or so. And then they are taxed. Its slave labor but people are happy to get these gigs because without them they starve.
No health care to speak of…and no unemployment insurance.
But we live in a waste economy. Many jobs are pointless….so the alienation is palpable. I recall working as a security guard….and I got fired because I couldn’t bring myself to evict sleeping homeless guys from the construction site. They weren’t hurting anything, and werent at all dirty….but the boss refused to let them stay there. I wouldnt, couldnt, make them leave…..(this was a cold weather job).
I see in europe the endless temp jobs people clutch at….no security, and no benifits. Just long hours.
The Wobblies used to say, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who work and those who dont.
26 April 2007, 4:18 amJoe Ciarrocca:
Slavery is wonderful…the question, who drives the cost of living? It certainly isn’t the person making $6.50 an hour. So regardless of what kind of wage one makes, we must comply with a cost of living driven by the very wealthy and other considerations, I guess, that are also gauged on wealth.
Having a large pool of free/cheap labor is an inherent part of this corrupt, not for human consumption economic system. It is simply another aspect of this neanderthal society that we have normalized…the system for the wealthy…by the wealthy…defined by the wealthy and influential!…very medieval. Time has been overdue for change.
28 April 2007, 9:10 amJames M:
No one enjoys writing cover letters to prospective employers, so out of the kindness of my heart I decided to make one for all of you, to serve as a template. I hope you find this useful:
Dear Potential Employer,
I was recently made aware of an opening for XXXXX position at your company. I want you to know that I am exceedingly passionate (to the point of sexual arousal) about the opportunity to work for you, especially as the systematic destruction of the wild buffalo and fish stocks and the enclosure of once-communal land by White colonizers of this great country has made my preferred hunter-gatherer lifestyle untenable, and left me with wage slavery as the only option. But believe me, I am damn passionate and driven when it comes to this, my only option for subsistence.
A glance at my resume will reveal my eminent qualification for this position; you will see I possess the necessary skill-set. But most importantly, many years of mind-numbing, individuality-suffocating industrial education have shaped me into the subservient, unquestioning sycophant your company desires. I will perform services for you that I wouldn’t perform for even my most intimate lover, and with all the conspicuous enthusiasm I can muster. I will produce my best ideas for you to steal, and watch without complaint as the sweat of my labor is transformed into your BoTox treatments and a Mercedes for your sixteen-year-old. I am a perfect model of what The System is designed to produce, and as such, my obsequiousness knows no bounds.
Thank you for your consideration. I mean, please please please hire me. Did I mention how incredibly @&%$-ing passionate I am?
Sincerely,
Your name here
2 May 2007, 2:53 amEtc. etc.