Prometheus is Sad

 “The Double Shift – Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work” by Jason Read, 2024

This book is about the effect of work in the political, cultural and personal worlds.  Read’s contention is that work bridges the somewhat clunky and static Marxist concept of base and superstructure which implies the relationship is more like an Egyptian pyramid than a dynamic interaction.  His contention is that work under capitalism is the basis of economics but also infuses politics, ideology, culture and emotions.  Read’s method of understanding how this functions is to add an analysis of movies, perhaps because he’s spent too much time reading Zizek.  But there it is. He bases his insight on a quote from Marx in Capital, Vol. 3, that partly says: “The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of domination and servitude, as this grows directly out of production itself…in short, the specific form of the state.”

All in all the book breaks new theoretical ground, which is rare in a leftist book.  One of his skills is to descend from extra-theoretical terminology to more comprehensible language, commonalities and facts. This is something Marx himself did. The book is not strictly logical, as its theoretical fixations wobble, are extended or ignored and sometimes categories and terminology shift around.

Not sure the movies prove his points but they also ground the narrative and provide some touches of reality. He looks at Office Space, Fight Club, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Compliance, The Assistant and Sorry to Bother You.  Most of these except the last depict real but flawed reactions to work, devolving into crime, lumpenism, resignation, deep ecology, job changes or obedience in the face of evil. After all, ‘crime is work!’ Read is a philosophy professor at Southern Maine and sees labor mostly through the lens of theory.  He sees these films as reflections of popular attitudes towards work.

As both Marx and Spinoza attest, the practical activities of work are the basis of human existence and consciousness.  Work has two sides – alienation, exhaustion, damage and humiliation - but also is a source of pride, of overcoming difficulties, of individual strength and skills. The ruling class uses these latter facts to normalize and naturalize capitalism, enforce individualism and prevent collective action.  He christens this process ‘negative solidarity,’ an attitude hostile to those who don’t seem to work.  Work produces not just commodities or services but also consciousness.  It is not just a method of survival or a way to buy things but also a measure of individual worth no matter what class you are in.  “Work” becomes the measure of all things. 

Those who do not ‘work’ normally – those on welfare, on Social Security, those who receive benefits from the state; immigrants who get grants; or workers who get ‘unfair’ benefits from a labor union - are looked down upon by individualist bootstrap politics based on ‘work.’  This is a huge source of reactionary resentment.  So christening what a woman does in the home as ‘housework,’ a prostitute does as ‘sex work’ a service worker does as ‘emotional labor’ or calling exercise a ‘workout’ makes the labor legitimate in the public dialog.  This right-wing attitude embraces suffering and the deficits of any job as a form of individual heroism ... and wants it applied to others. So ‘bah’ to government regulations around workers in high heat conditions! Why capitalists, who earn millions more for their work day, or inherited their wealth, are not subject to the distain of these reactionaries is evidently because they are ‘self-made men’ who deserve their fortunes.  "How I Built This" on NPR is a perfect example. Their market is seen as a necessity and a natural force not to be trifled with.  It's 'normal.'  This ‘negative solidarity’ is what class conflict comes to when the real class struggle itself is weak. It's perhaps the class struggle of fools. The film Sorry To Bother You overcomes this problem, breaking with individualism for collective action … but it’s a movie. 

A Successful Tele-Marketer in Sorry to Bother You

Read sees this in 3 relationships or ‘double shifts’ between the base and superstructure – 1, economics and politics; 2, ideology and emotions; and 3, praxis (action) and poiesis (production).  He shows how Spinoza’s theories on labor dovetail and complement some of Marx’s.  His introduction of Spinoza into the dialog seems marginal and unnecessary, though Spinoza was also an anti-religious materialist.  Spinoza emphasized the idea of the emotions connected to work, specifically imagination, superstition, affect and desires.  He asked why humans embrace their wage slavery and this book has a clue to that.   

The first contradiction Read looks at is that between concrete and abstract labor, which includes mental and manual labor.  Abstract labor (the potential for labor across all skills, i.e. the labor power commodity of humans under capital) promotes the idea that all workers are equal as long as they work.  Concrete labor (specific skills) promotes the idea that there is a hierarchy of ‘natural’ talents which might also justify a social hierarchy, a ‘meritocracy.’ 

The second contradiction looks at the relationship between ideas and physical reality, especially emotions.  Marx maintained that all work has a mental component, so the artificial division between mental and manual labor is just that.  He maintained that all work is social and cooperative, though this is not always apparent. The ‘affective component of labor’ is highlighted by corporations now, as the nonsense about ‘flair’ in the film Office Space showed. This also relates to the performative nature of job interviews. Without emotional intelligence, workers in some fields are doomed. Now the human resources’ drones speak of ‘human capital’ as a thing, a group of talents, interests, physical appearance and skills to be commodified by them.   

The third contradiction Read brings up is that between action (politics) and production, which both play upon each other. He notes that there is no such thing as a total automatic, apolitical ‘administration of things.’  All production is social, hence political, there is no production process of ‘pure reason’ even under AI.  Read seems to think that it is a failure of the imagination to not see the arbitrary nature of the present economy and society.  But that might just be the function of work ‘realism.’ 

This is just an outline of the major points it makes.  I’ll leave you with a few random ideas from the book: 

*Marx’s ‘religion of everyday life’ involves work, capital and money.

* Like Graeber Read has a confused idea of what a ‘bullshit’ job is. 

*Capitalists know they need to incorporate ‘popular’ ideas to justify their own rule, whether they believe them or not.  Religion is the first candidate, patriotism a second, anti-intellectualism a third, charity a fourth and so on. 

* The illusion of free will is necessary for the goal of obedience. 

* Archaic ideas are the realm of fascism.

* The role of bourgeois politicians is to take the blame for the capitalists when things go wrong, as they always do.

All in all a useful book looking at what most people do for most of their lives, giving it the central place in consciousness it deserves.  Work!

Prior blog reviews that deal with this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Assistant,” “Bullshit Jobs” (Graeber); “Better Call Saul,” “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” “Patriarchy of the Wage” (Federici); “In Letters of Fire and Blood” (Caffentzis); “Work, Work, Work” (Yates); "Mute Compulsion," 'Better Call Saul," "The Assistant," "Sorry to Bother You." 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / July 6, 2024