Now, I realize that any such argument, as has been presented here, is going to run into immediate objections, such as: "who are you to say what jobs are really "necessary'? What's "necessary' anyway? You're an anthropology professor; what's the "need' for that?" (Indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true.
Therefore I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those millions who are themselves convinced that their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn't seen since I was 12. Once a fine poet and musician, he's now a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He is the first to admit that his job is utterly meaningless, contributes nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not exist.
There's a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with: What does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if a very privileged 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, then what we call "the market" will of course reflect what they think is most useful and important, and not what most everyone else thinks is useful or important.)
I've never met a corporate lawyer who didn't think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new service "industries" mentioned earlier. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid discussing their line of work. Give them a few drinks, though, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.
There is a profound psychological violence going on in the lives of these people
How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labor when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep (if repressed) rage and resentment? And it is the peculiar genius of our ruling class that has allowed them to figure out a way to ensure that this rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems to be a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen if this entire class of workers were to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it's obvious that were they all to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in dire straits.
However, it's not at all clear how humanity would suffer were all private-equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect that the world would markedly improve.)
Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense among those who cow-tow to the ruling class that the current arrangement is the way things should be. And this fact is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see the truth of this when tabloids whip up resentment against mass transit workers for paralyzing a large city during contract disputes: the very fact that such workers can paralyze a city shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys many people. In this way, Republicans in the USA have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers -- and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers (who actually cause the problems) -- for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It's as if they are being told "but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and high-quality health care? How dare you!"
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
