«What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.» 1/3
«He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.» 2/3
«External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.» 3/4
«Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.»
– Estranged Labour, in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx
As heard on Thinking Allowed, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b2kpm0
I don’t work for the love of it and earn something on the side, as if by lucky accident. I do it for the money.
And to think that we should love work is to think along the lines of Big Brother in 1984 by George Orwell. You don’t only get punished but you must want it, too.
Now, of course I am happy to have found a job that seems better to me than all the others given the money I earn, the people I work with, the flexibilities I am granted – but I am still alienated. This is not me.
And for those of you that want to read the rest, here’s the link which I forgot to add to the quote. Sorry!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm
@kensanata Marx was a precise observer of the situation of individuals in an industrialised society.
In most IT jobs today, even if we like the work, we're disowned of the results.
Don't know a way out. Without the funds available to the organisation I work for, and the collaboration with others working there, I know I wouldn't be able to build things at that scale.
And self-employment is not an answer either, since it would force me to do all the administrative work associated to that myself.
@galaxis My current answer is to simple work as little as possible. My job allows me to work 60% over the year and while that isn’t close to Keynes’ 15h, my 24h work week is pretty good already. Not everybody can afford that, of course, but I think that’s what we as a society should want. Except for the substitution effect where rich people are more likely to work longer hours. 🙄 http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hours-workweek-2015-8
@kensanata @bob Well aware of that. I'm doing network and virtualization infrastructure... But, for example, I didn't participate in a Hadoop project we did, in parts because I didn't like the business model of the customer (analytics for online games)...
@kensanata
I volounteered to take care of $X as a sysadmin, because it sounded like a lot of fun. It's for a non-profit foundation. I didn't expect to get any money for doing it. Only after I started, I learned I would be getting some money for it. It changed nothing. I'd still be doing it, even if I was to do it for free.
Also, I feel like those are my servers. Sure, I don't own them, but I also don't pay the bills. Otherwise, it's as if I was doing it for myself.
Is it work?
@Wolf480pl sounds perfect!
@kensanata I think there is room for some gradation here. Sure, my work is not all fun and play, but I do get to learn interesting things, and I approve of the overall goal of what we are doing, so it's not just the salary. Plus, there is the satisfaction of a job well done.
@kensanata And at the same time, my hobbies have reached a semi-professional level, where I actually sell the things that I made and could make money off that, while still having fun building them.
@deshipu Definitely a plus! Generally speaking I fear that money will poison the joy, though: if you sell it for enough money to make a decent living, there will be customers complaining, faulty products to return, competitors to worry about. Even if you are self-employed in an activity you call your hobby, the need for money will sour it. But that’s just my suspicion. It’s why I ask for no money for hobby stuff. I don’t want to deal with demands because that feels like work.
@kensanata That is probably true, and that's why I currently sell it for a price that covers the cost of the materials plus a small margin for replacements — I'm not actually earning anything on it, or even getting compensated for my time.
@kensanata On the other hand, if there was something like the universal income covering my basic needs, I could actually do it as my main occupation, and still not treat it as a job.
@deshipu @kensanata That's how I always did it too. As soon as I declared something as a hobby, I would never take money for the results.
There's just one major problem with that approach: other people.
If the output of the hobby is something that others rely on, they mostly don't care if you do it for the money or not. And you might find yourself in a position competing with others who rely on being paid for the work you're doing for free, creating conflicts.
@kensanata @galaxis I was very afraid of this happening, but so far people have been overwhelmingly positive and understanding, even when I was at fault (using wrong shipping method, having a bug in the library code, or once even having bad solder joints). It might be because I have only sold to around 200 people so far, or it may be specificity of Tindie where everyone are hobbyists — hard to say. I suppose sooner or later I will run into a "customer from hell", but that didn't happen yet.
@kensanata I'm countering this with a quote from the famous Zen Buddhist Sengcan:
"The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease."
@steckerhalter Now you've alienated yourself from both work and leisure! 😂
@kensanata I've transcended it 😆
@kensanata That's the typical alienation from work argument by Marx. You can read more about it in Das Kapital if you can get past the totally dull presented theory of value...
@ckeen I never got past the dull part! 😢
@megfault @kensanata Yes I can recommend this!
@ckeen @megfault I didn’t find it very convincing. It argues convincingly that we work too much (bullshit jobs and all of that), and that part I agree with. But «and I think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure — we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes» has to work for so much of civil society!
@kensanata @megfault To be honest, a lot of things just need to get done. But I think that it is different thing altogether to do it because you are convinced it needs doing rather than because someone has told you so.
There's no need for gamification of nursing, garbage collecting and so on...
@ckeen @megfault I’m thinking dentists, doctors, insurance, building – I want to benefit of the fruit of increased productivity, I don’t want to go back to an agricultural society. That’s why I’d like to focus more on small, incremental changes. Let us start by reducing working hours. Let us start handing out a universal basic income in order to share the fruits of our labor more fairly.
Apparently this already happens with older professionals in Germany, a middle aged friend of mine (alas, no longer alive) ended up remotely supporting Deutsche Bahn signalling and telecoms for Bavaria via a VPN and his home PC in Cambridge, as everyone else there who had the specialist skills plus sufficient knowledge of German *and* English had already retired, and as a freelancer he hated to turn down work (another problem is disparities across countries)
I also notice middle aged and seniors in Germany seem to have a *lot* more spare time than those of a similar age in UK, especially during the important period between late middle age and old age (before anything too bad goes wrong with them and they are admitted to the care facilities).
In UK many people are still working or have been handed a grandchild to look after (due to their adult offspring working long hours).
(maybe there are less children in DE?)
@vfrmedia @kensanata @megfault statistically 1.3 per couple...
1.82 in UK, although this figure appears to be decreasing in spite of migration, and could become worse after Brexit (young couples understandably don't want to raise kids in "hostile environments", and many of those who are from other countries (including work colleagues) are already planning to take their kids back home (where their govts want the families back anyway as ageing populations are a problem across Europe..)
@kensanata @ckeen @megfault @vfrmedia I would imagine that rather than "fewer children" this is more "better work/life balance across age groups" but I'm not familiar enough with German demographics to say.
Every job my spouse has had since I've known him has required him to waive the EU working time directive. (Requiring this is illegal, but basically unenforced.)
@kensanata Yeah. And he gets paid a day rate, so it's not like the extra hours are compensated :-(
@artsyhonker Uuugh. ☹️
@artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia German demographics are a catastrophy. People are too old. We would need about 400K new young people per year to be able to do the same jobs in the future. But things are bad already...
@ckeen @artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault
its not just ageing but it seems the young people who are currently in Germany are put under immense pressure to "work hard" - i.e a first degree isn't enough, they all need a masters now etc, and understandably these young people might not want to start families of their own (also becoming a big problem in SE Asia)
@vfrmedia @artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault Working in academia induces a lot of insecurity due to short term contracts (often ~6 months only).
The state is one of the worst employers here...
@kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia @ckeen I didn't mean "fewer children now compared to previous generations"; rather, I'm not certain there are fewer children in DE than UK just because of @vfrmedia 's observation that older people in UK are often looking after grandchildren.
@kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia @ckeen Fewer children relative to previous generations is probably true in many places. My spouse regularly works uncompensated overtime on 6-month contracts to *stay employed at all* and he's in his 50s and works in tech.
@artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia In
In 2016 there have been 792 131 new humans in Germany. There were 695,233 live births in England and Wales in 2014, a decrease of 0.5% from 698,512 in 2013.
@artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia So about equal...
@artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia There were 696,271 live births in England and Wales in 2016, a decrease of 0.2% from 2015.
@kensanata @megfault @vfrmedia @ckeen Right, Germany does have a higher overall population too, but as you say it's roughly equivalent. So: grandparents looking after grandkids in the UK must be due to something other than the existence of more grandchildren here.
@artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault @ckeen
From what I see on German TV and documentaries (admittedly from the public service broadcasters and the Catholic K-TV station, both of which are carefully curated to put across a positive image of the country, the rôle of grandparents is highly valued, but I'm not sure if they end up always financially contributing to raising the grandchildren which is common in UK (maybe they do..) >>
@vfrmedia @artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault From my own experience, grandparents are quite involved, if not by donating time, almost always financially. But the work issue is separate I think.
@ckeen @artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault
what I do also see is that people in late middle age in Germany (and their neighbours in NL and CH) really do seem to have much more spare time for their hobbies (electronics, restoring old computers, amateur radio, building elaborate toys for cats and dogs, wildlife spotting and wandering in the woods etc..), this generation are also (admirably) keeping their independent websites/blogs very much alive and active..
@vfrmedia @artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault Or...they can just goof off more at work...
@ckeen @artsyhonker @kensanata @megfault
I'd always thought this was /harder/ in Germany than the UK, but have noticed in many cases the hobbies are in some ways related to their work, so maybe its tolerated (or these people are senior managers/owners of the company so can afford to take the time off).
@elomatreb @vfrmedia @megfault @kensanata @artsyhonker
Is the UK that different?
@elomatreb @megfault @kensanata @artsyhonker @ckeen
coincidentally I have been watching "Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl", but from there got the idea that the Stammtisch was for mostly older people in some village to sit round and drink beer and eat lots 😆, but I could see they were all from the skilled trades of the Munich suburb the TV show is set in (was it really still like that in late 1980s?)
@vfrmedia @elomatreb @kensanata @artsyhonker @ckeen haha yes older people drinking beer ^^
here is a younger and more modern stammtisch: https://pystada.github.io/
@vfrmedia @elomatreb @megfault @kensanata @artsyhonker Well yes, and it is still happening :)
@kensanata
"I never managed to read much of Marx except for the communist manifest(o)" #humblebrag 😋
@bremner In German, of course... #humpelbrack
Problem still unsolved. Sadly, I had never heard of this passage before. That’s because I never managed to read much of Marx except for the communist manifest. But that quote totally resonates with me. And it’s inversion is what we see a lot of these days: people telling each other to do the things they love to do, to find a job that agrees with them. As if such a thing existed! If people do it for love, they’ll do it for free. That’s not work.