Thursday, May 05, 2011

Thug life

Even where professionalization filters some anti-social tendencies out, it's only doing so for the purpose of capital accumulation. There is a utility in having people behave decently toward one another, at least while they are at work, because it minimizes disruption. Maybe your job is not all about profit in a direct way, but our overall economy is, and that impacts everything -- including how you get your funding, no matter what you do.

The other point we have made is that we as individuals may endorse professional norms for our own reasons, if only because we believe people should behave decently toward one another in any context. Within the social life of the United States, that doesn't happen with as much organized consistency anywhere as it does within professional structures, where there is a cost associated with non-compliance. The problem in most confrontations outside of work is that people don't perceive any comparable cost -- for example, to the social whole -- and so look to maximize personal advantage in every encounter: we race other drivers, ignore the homeless, harass service-sector workers, anonymously bully others online, and so on. Even as a boss, our capacity to act any way we like is restricted at work; whatever abuse we dole out must be codified in a way that puts our employer's interests first.

When we talk about poor and working class cultures, on one hand we observe relative independence from what is coercive about professional culture. If we begin from the anarchist idea that "all authority is wrong unless it can prove that it isn't wrong" -- i.e. that it isn't, in fact, authority but one or another mode of responsibility -- this is something we should support. We should want to support people who reject capitalist professionalism for the specific reason that it tries to tell people what to do, or how to think about themselves, for a purpose that excludes their own welfare.

At the same time, autonomous social culture must be constituted to transcend what is decent about capitalist professionalism; which is to say, it will include some of the same elements: specifically, those which people regard as worthwhile irrespective of whether these also prove useful to power at a given moment. Every social instinct inherited from our more communal past has atrophied under the assault of contemporary industrial culture, conditioned as we have become to a war of each against all. But we find in working class non-compliance an autonomy without the organized consistency which could sustain the kind of values that go well beyond the forced decency of indecent relations.

3 comments:

Brian M said...

I'm just not sure I see this, jr. "working class" culture may not have the kinds of capitalist oppressions that you write about here. But...the toxic religiosity, parochialism, vehemently defended gender and family roles, and frequent reliance upon tribalisms can be as oppressive-or more so.

As an individual who does not "fit into" the mores of traditional "working class" culture, I'm afraid I might still prefer the evils of capitalist professionalisms. :)

Justin said...

"The problem in most confrontations outside of work is that people don't perceive any comparable cost -- for example, to the social whole -- and so look to maximize personal advantage in every encounter: we race other drivers, ignore the homeless, harass service-sector workers, anonymously bully others online, and so on."

I suppose it depends on how you define 'confrontations'.

Recently, I lived with my ex-girlfriend and a roommate. She dumped me and moved out, the other roommate got a sudden job offer and moved to another state. I was left with the choice of moving or looking for new roommates. I chose to find new roommates.

There was an interesting thing that happened here. My roommate that was moving soon helped me find new roommates. She suggested that I, as the person with the lease and who pays the landlord, should charge the new roommates a disproportionate share of the rent. She said that this kind of kick back thing happens all the time, so that I shouldn't think it was wrong.

I felt this would be a very dishonest thing to do. I fully disclosed how much the rent for the total apartment was, how the values of the three rooms are divided based on factors like noise, closet space and square footage. I also told them that I make no territorial claims over how the furniture or decor is in the shared living spaces, and that they have as much say as I do on that stuff upon paying rent.

This was a confrontation in the sense that I could have tried to chisel my new roommates by withholding information, or I could try to be fair and open. Instead of racing them on the street, I waved them into the lane.

I don't think I am a particularly fair or honest person. My guess is that in confrontations over resource sharing, it is just as common to race as it is to cooperate willingly. The roommate situation is both a social and economic arrangement.

Peter Ward said...

I feel like 'decency' is here being used as a euphamism for polite. Being a professsion practically means by definition a single-minded fixation on advancing one's 'career' at all other costs. The apparent cooperativity and niceness to each other disolving when one takes more than a superficial look.

I for one would prefer the indecency of a boss who told me stait up he/she hates me and I fires me to one who has the dencency to schedule an interview with the HR lawyer in which I'm told, in measured tones, I'm not a good fit and that we should part ways without animosity.