JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

In the past, from St. Paul (”If any would not work, neither shall he eat”) through Thomas Carlyle (”Labour is Life”) to Gordon Brown (”Work is the … ethical basis [of the state]“), thinkers and politicians have asserted that man must earn his place at the communal table through his labor. This has served, like religion and statism before it, as a means of social control; of preserving structural inequality, vaguely glossed over by notions of self-reliance and the unfairness of charity.

Gordon Brown, the most vocal New Labour reformer has trumpeted a “return to the work ethic” that will be “the great socializer” where “social cohesion” and “economic dynamism” will be reconciled by a return to (overt) stratification based on work and job where “everyone has their contended place”. The particular mish-mash of Christian Socialism, discredited evolutionary psychology and Foucault worshipping anti-humanism that makes up the “third way” of New Labour, and across the ocean, of “compassionate conservatism”, makes virtues of disloyalty and paranoia.

As Richard Sennet asked in The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism; “How can long-term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to the short term?” Yes, what is the point of speaking or even thinking, about the future in a society where Immediatism has sprung up as the new national religion (just in time to replace anti-communism)? Is it any longer possible to be the “authors of our lives”, given the constant disloyalty and paranoia fed to us as “flexibility” and “dynamism”?

Henry Ford famously asked “Why do I get a human being when all I want is a pair of hands?”, and in the process set the tone, ethically and intellectually, for twentieth century industry. Workers, in this view, are nought but “capacity”. Only when productivity and subjectivity coincide do the objective conditions of the workplace improve.

Now, however, I believe that the tables are turning, and Capital can no longer consider itself to be in possession of the means of production, to use Marx’s terms for it. When all of the tools and means of production exist inside the heads of people, Capital is in no position to dictate terms any longer, and people are slowly waking up to this reality. Excess, asymetry, and redundancy, once the bugaboos of managers everywhere are now becoming prerequisites for the “knowledge worker” to “do their thing”.

The whole concept of work/life balance is, in these circumstances, such an outdated concept; it is not suprising that the majority of those who talk about it come from more traditional conceptions of “serious work”. They are stteped in the mythos of presenteeism, dress codes and chains of command, which they have tried to cover up with vague statements about “flec-time” and paternity leave. They do not realize that by doing so, they have condemned themselves to a modality that is being rejected by more and more of the very people they hope to employ. As Eric Hoffer pointed out “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.”

Almost every aspect of our lives in the first world is becoming more connected, more interdependant on the other aspects. The thick tangle of postmodern life (to use Pat Kane’s phrase) ism in a very profound way, the point of the whole thing. Our networks, both telecommunication and social/personal, are blending together all aspects of our humanity and blurring all traditional lines between them. To misunderstand that as a “work/life balance” is going to be business suicide.

Businesses cannot respond to this new interconnectedness by remaining aloof and cut off from the rest of our lives - our messy, unregimented, dangerous lives, unless of course it wishes to be ignored and forgotten. Contrary to what my critics have accused me of saying, I believe that here is a place in this new, embyronic world we are building for all sorts of commerce and private enterprise. However, that place is only there for those businesses, like individuals, who get off their asses and join in - truly join in, not just paying lip service to it in order to lure workers into their fiefdom. It is deeply unsophisticated to believe that a company can use all of the interactivity and openness of our newfound networks, can hire those adroit at navigating or creating or tweaking those networks, and not realize that they too will have to become interconnected and open. it is the price of participation, and business will have to become more humane and caring if they expect us to care about them.