Feast or Famine?

“The Hedonism Handbook – Mastering the Lost Arts of Leisure and Pleasure,” by Michael Flocker, (2004)

The author’s name reminds me of a movie.  “Hey, Flocker!” 

At any rate, the reason I read this book is to answer the question, is this the new “Right to Be Lazy” that was written by Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law so long ago?  Or the new manifesto from the Situationist Internationale? Or just some middle-class comedic fantasy?  Lafargue’s book was written in 1883.  It addressed workers as to the benefits of a ‘slow-down’ in the work process and for them to turn to socialism.  Even in the 1800s, labor was constantly under the whip of long, long hours, hammering assembly lines, child labor and tyrannical bosses.  This was the period of the ‘Protestant’ work ethic utilized by capital, which meant that the only good worker was an exhausted worker. 

The Middle or Upper Class Version

Today, as the U.S. has become the most workaholic society on the globe, the issue remains the same.  Short or no vacations, high-intensity labor, consistent short-staffing, digital connectivity 16 hours a day, the need to work overtime to make more money, or the need to work 2-3 jobs – it all adds up to a tiring shit-storm.  Many white collar workers are slaves to software and hardware, which controls their work pace.  Then there is the possibly long, ugly commute home.  And if you go home and take care of children?  The second unpaid shift starts. No time, as they say.  No time at all. 

Hedonism Handbook

Flocker is the New York-based author of the “Metrosexual Guide to Style,” and at one time did red-carpet events and celebrity interviews - all of which should produce suspicion.  But he’s a funny tongue-in-cheek writer, making whoopee out of our over-worked society in clever and insouciant ways.   He’s sort of a junior Tom Wolfe, though he aspires to be Gore Vidal. The succinct description of this book is ‘Ape the rich, but not too much!”  You see, he’s a ‘Great Gatsby’ kind of guy. He uses Aveda hair control paste, if you must know.

As he doesn’t know, different classes have to ‘relax’ in different ways.  He does have a section on the working stiffs in cubes and workplaces, advocating doing the essential and not everything.   But I suspect this section is mostly aimed at harried managers.  He is especially an opponent of perfectionism – the idea that you have to be perfectly good, which is perfectly stupid.  Behind this is the dim understanding that your work is not your life – it’s a job, you are being used, so stop trusting the outfit you work for.  Do what you need to get the job done. The impact of the book goes beyond setting up one room in your house as an ‘Oriental’ opium boudoir smacking of French Colonial rule, which he suggests – perhaps with his tongue stuck right through his cheek.  Reading the book might get a regular ol’ wage worker to back-off and jack-down the hurry and laugh instead.

The Original Thing

RIGHT TO BE LAZY

Lafargue on the other hand wasn’t advising the tired corporate manager, factory owner, businessman or land lord to sleep past noon, drink more champagne, visit his mistress or contemplate the natural marvels of his suburban McMansion, as Flocker does for the modern ‘lords.’ Lafargue wrote his essay against the ‘right to work’ idea pushed on wage workers, which was a dialectical corrective to the worship of work pushed by the capitalists of the time and even by some leftists.  Lafargue spoke against the ‘dogma of work’ which made humans into ‘machine slaves.’ 

Lafargue enjoined workers to ‘enjoy,’ not to suffer like the Christian parsons encouraged.  Work was supposedly a cure for sin and vices according the capitalists and the church.  Hunger was even embraced by a priest of the Anglican Church as a boon to work. Holidays were suppressed.  Ultimately this love of suffering led to drained human beings and physical damage.  Lafargue opposed bourgeois moralism and set against it the Cooperative Commonwealth, where “human passions will have free play.” 

Flocker also notices the repressive and hectoring spirit of religion, especially the role of Christianity in the U.S., still a promoter of workaholism.  But he does not name the sprite behind it all, capital.  After all, the enthusiastic pats on the back might stop if he took that tack.  At this point in developed capitalist societies there is so much food, possible luxury, commodities, entertainment, booze and drugs that 'hedonism' has become the subtext of the whole consumer culture. 

The overwhelming misery of factory and associated work in Lafargue’s time was christened ‘progress.’  And indeed it was – for some.  So while Marx and Engels understood that labor actually created human beings, Lafargue added that too much labor results in destruction.  The point of communism shared by them all was to abolish overwork and to use the technology and science developed by capital to reduce working hours to a rational minimum.  Lafargue figured about 3 hours a day, with the rest reserved for ‘leisure and feasting’ instead of the ‘religion of abstinence.’ 

Of course, not every class was working that much.  As Lafargue notes: 

“The women of fashion live a life of martyrdom, in trying on and showing off the fairy-like toilets which the seamstresses die in making.”  

And:

“To fulfill his double social function of non-producer and over-consumer, the capitalist was not only obliged to violate his modest taste, to lose his laborious habits of two centuries ago and to give himself up to unbounded luxury, spicy indigestibles and syphilitic debauches, but also to withdraw from productive labor an enormous mass of men in order to enlist them as his assistants.”

Things have not changed that much.  But his point is that we should not let the upper classes ‘own’ time.

As can be seen in the U.S., capitalist automation, artificial intelligence, cybernetics and computerization result in overwork for the employed.  For displaced wage workers they now have to get 2-3 jobs, hipsterly called ‘gigs’ or ‘side hustles.’  (Oooh!  How cool!)  This is an obvious contradiction that is worrying the policy wonks of capital even now, so they have come up with the warehousing placebo, the Universal Basic Income (UBI). 

The working class has little alternative but to work in order to survive.  However, we should raise our heads above the grindstone and see who created this situation and why it shouldn’t continue.

Other reviews on this topic: ‘In Letters of Fire and Blood,’ ‘Shop Class as Soulcraft,’ ‘Time Wars,’ ‘Marxism and the Oppression of Women,’ ‘The Precariat,’ ‘Modern De Facto Slavery,’ ‘Marxism is Abolitionism,’ ‘Factory Days / Office Lights,’ ‘New Dark Age.’  Use blog search box, upper left.

And I got it at the library!

The Kulture Kommissar

February 12, 2019