» A Letter To My Cousin
My cousin is an economist working for a hedge fund. We’ve been sharing ideas about the collapse of the economy and what it means to us personally.
She sent me an email with a bunch of business and creative ideas and asked for my input. I thought she was ready for it, so I gave her both barrels of my personal economic philosophy.
Point blank: Bosses are idiots. I’ve run into two or three that I respect in 10 years of “career”. Now that everything looks bleak more people are waking up to the absurdity of it all.
But still, somehow, most people just refuse to wake up to their situations, our friends especially. Everyone is still trying to work hard for 40 years and retire on pension. I’m not interested in that, I want freedom now.
This site called No Media Kings did a comic called “Time Management For Anarchists” that’s on-point. It’s free online at http://ia310832.us.archive.org/3/items/TimeManagementForAnarchists1/tmfa-advance.pdf, or just www.TimeManagementForAnarchists.com if you want the flash slide show
You have an advantage the comic points out is necessary: You’re actually self-motivated (most people just claim to be).
Okay, on to your ideas:
[snip]
…your piece of the economic pie is the piece you bake…
[snip]
“Attach your own oxygen mask, then assist the passenger beside you.”
[snip]
I’m slowly spreading my own mutant form of militantly socialist capitalism. “Their System must be replaced with Ours, no matter how many kindness bombs it takes!”
I’m in ur bastions, freeing ur capitalists.
What could be more Capitalist than being an entrepreneur? Your cousin is not currently a Capitalist, she’s a tool of the Capitalists: used to oppress the proletariat by stealing their mortgages, savings and pensions.
And how is any of this socialist?
Jared
23 Mar 09 at 9:11 am
I’m less into terminology than practical freedom.
I assume that capitalism has inescapably permeated our lives and that employment is slavery. Socialist utopia is the eventual (mythical?) goal, but period-point-blank “freedom” means economic freedom.
I can use the “politics is for the rich” argument from Poli Sci 101, but I like observations that are more immediate: If your boss tells you when to eat, sleep, and think, and you have to listen to him because you need that cheque, in what sense are you free?
In my experience people who are direct tools of capitalism are easier to wake up than Normals. Maybe its because I speak their language (“overtime extracts economic rent on employment”) — It turns out the master’s tools are good at dismantling the master’s house. But I like to think Tool People are easier to startle into awareness because the mechanisms of oppression aren’t theoretical to them, they’re immediate: The “wow, my client shouldn’t be allowed to do this” feeling.
Last, I assume “The System” can’t be overthrown (by definition). I take for granted it will absorb successful dissent, implying a poison pill strategy when facing it: Dissent such that when The System eats you it mutates. Start a successful company that chops income equitably with employees, give people 10 weeks vacation, free dental, create non-economic activities and spaces, go green, reshape reality however you like.
The idea is to make socialist activity an economic advantage. Use socialist ideas to make people’s lives better, practically. Detonate kindness bombs. This is why I call the idea a “mutant form of militantly socialist capitalism” — like co-operatives.
Again, I’m talking about practicality rather than ideology. It seems to be the case that capitalism permeates even its own dissent (cf. The Rebel Sell‘s analysis of Adbusters sneakers). An ideologically pure revolution would be nice, but ideology seems to fail the challenge of everyday freedom.
Jack
23 Mar 09 at 11:09 am
Also, check out that comic: “Just because they’ve systematized something doesn’t mean it’s theirs.” I’m talking about directly profiting from the product of your labor. The most efficient way of doing that is the corporate form.
@ “Your cousin is not currently a Capitalist, she’s a tool of the Capitalists”:
Good point. I suppose I mean she’s “philosophically capitalist”. Though in a sense the fractional-reserve banking system makes us all capitalist oppressors of each other, and she is allowed to invest in her hedge fund directly (as all her bosses do) — this is partly that “permeation of capitalism into everything” that I’m talking about.
Jack
23 Mar 09 at 12:12 pm
I fail to see how one person moving from Tool to Capitalist does anything at all besides unseat a Capitalist or two.
Starbucks is a company that is fair with its workers (from baristas to farmers), and yet activists usually hold it up as an example of pure evil.
Can you speak about these ideas a little more concretely?
Jared
23 Mar 09 at 12:24 pm
Broadly, I’m thinking in terms of microbrands, virtual companies, and the ownership of labor.
The move isn’t from Tool to Capitalist, it’s a transfer of ownership. The change is from someone else owning the product of our labor to each of us owning it outright — a distributed dictatorship of the proletariat.
Starbucks might explode into a competitive market under this freedom-pressure, if its executives woke up and actually took ownership of their labor. They should all be consultants working for a portfolio of clients: Starbucks, Blenz, Artigianos, new companies, etc. Better, the heads of the different business segments should start competing, standalone business segments people can mix-n-match — If a bookstore wants beans without the brands they should just be able to talk to an import consultant, etc.
That way we get the allocation efficiency of a free market without the psychic baggage of individual decades of slavery, combined with a kind of reputation economy. But that’s all castles in the sky. I’m talking about practical freedom, which doesn’t exist separate from economic freedom.
Concretely, I convinced a graphic designer to quit working for other people and become a professional photographer. Now that she owns the product of her labor she’s economically free, a lot closer to politically free, and she’s actually happy at work.
Jack
23 Mar 09 at 1:04 pm
Oh, the everyone’s-a-consultant economy. Yeah, I remember when everyone thought that was the future. What happened?
Jared
23 Mar 09 at 2:25 pm
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