So, someone mentioned this topic to me again, pointing out how I'm not anti capitalist despite being anti work and blah blah blah. And for me, that's kind of the point. I've argued several times before that the two aren't the same thing, but this time I'm going to take a different direction with explaining this.
The left-right capitalist/anti capitalist divide is not a matter of work vs not work. They instead argue for two different modes of production. Capitalists want private property and privately owned means of production. Those on the right argue this is just because no one is explicitly forced to participate in these workplaces due to how markets work and therefore it doesn't matter that socialists see capitalist work environments as hierarchical and as wage slavery. What matters is that the choice to participate is voluntary. If anything socialism in practice, at least the forms in which the government owns the means of production, give workers a lot less freedom because they can't choose their job or who they work for, they are assigned a job by the state and that's that.
Leftist, anti capitalist sentiment generally comes from Marxism and a specific understanding of the capitalist mode of production. In the marxists' mind, capitalists have no right to own the means of production. It is the workers who generate wealth, and they are the rightful owners of the profits that are produced. They see property owners as squatters, people who claim ownership to something that they do not work for. They want to do away with a class of property owners who contribute little to nothing through their ownership and want the choices of how work is directed to be distributed among workers. Socialists are literally OBSESSED with workplace democracy. That is their goal. Not to abolish work, but to put the choices regarding work in the hands of the workers, or the community at large. This can take many forms ranging from worker cooperatives under market socialism to the government just deciding everything.
But note that nothing about this is against work itself. Marx was never anti work. Marx believed capitalism alienated people from their jobs, but his complaints were limited to the capitalist mode of production, not work as a whole. He just wanted work to operate under different principles.
And that right there is the disconnect. As Bob Black said, most of the old ideologies are basically pro work. What separates them is how they would organize work, and who would do what, and who would decide what, but no one actually wanted to take aim at work itself, work is actually a common thread between ideologies both on the left and the right, as well as in the reformist center. Our entire political discussion on economics over the last 200 years has been about how to organize work, not whether we should do work. And all believe at their core that people should be forced to work in one way or another.
Leftists are right when they point out that the "freedom" free market libertarians/capitalists offer is a false one. You dont really have a choice under capitalism to not work at all. Your choice is limited to a choice between different masters. The left isn't wrong on this. They're just wrong about where they go from there. They might try to pigeon hole all capitalists as pro work to try to argue that people who hate work are anti capitalists, but the left has a term for those who are anti work: "lumpen", as in "lumpenproletariat", as in, they're not really members of the working class but a lower class of people on par with vagrants and rifraf. To a leftist, those who are against work themselves are rif raf. Because you can't have marxism without work. The reason, as Bob Black pointed out, that the marxist left believes in work even more fiercely than everything else is because their entire ideology is basically based around a class struggle between the workers and the capitalist class, and they just can't get away with it. That's what their philosophy reasoned themselves into, and it will take a whole new ideology to reason themselves back out of it.
This isn't to say that there aren't some leftists who are anti work. But most aren't anti work. And while most capitalists are pro work as well, you can have capitalism that is anti work. It's just not pure capitalism. It's reformist capitalism. And let me just say no "pure" ideology is worth practicing.
My ideology is based on a certain subset of non marxist, non anarchist left wing philosophies. I wont call them "leftist" as in anti capitalist, I have opted for the term "social libertarianism" for a reason, to differ both from right libertarianism which is just propertarianism, and left libertarianism, which is anti capitalist in nature. One of the first significant authors in this field was phillipe van parijs. He was, himself, a former marxist. But he looked around in the 80s and 90s when capitalist realism was in full swing, and the whole "end of history" narrative was reigning supreme, and he understood the left needed another way forward. So he turned to libertarianism, and he argued, what, if anything, can justify capitalism? And he settled on the universal basic income. If we could give people a UBI and allow them to do as they wish with it, we would actually accomplish the kinds of freedom capitalism claims to be for in the first place. He recognized that leftism up to that point was stifling to the individual and their desire for freedom, which was the zeitgeist of the neoliberal era. So he gave it to them, but also did it from a framework that actually fixed what was actually wrong with capitalism.
Keep in mind, for me, the big problem with capitalism isnt that capitalists own the means of production, it's that people are effectively forced to work for capitalists. And Karl Widerquist, another philosopher who operates in this field of social libertarian philosophy argued that we need a basic income to justify any property rights arrangement. We need to give people their freedom as the power to say no, if we want a just system. He wanted a system where people would be able to be left alone and choose not to participate any more than absolutely necessary. And that's what own belief system is based on. This branch of libertarian philosophy.
By the way, Widerquist addressed Marxism and leftism in his essay, "the big casino". He said imagine if this casino capitalist system we have is replaced by a system of moral philosophers who then dictated that you had to participate under different terms. Rather than giving individuals the freedom to choose for themselves, leftists just force people to participate under their moral philosophy. They arent any better in Widerquist's mind. I might argue they're even worse since at least capitalism offers the vaneer of freedom whereas leftists typically get their way by pointing guns at people and not giving them a choice to refuse.
So....isnt capitalism actually, the more pro freedom ideology? It just doesnt deliver on that freedom without a universal basic income. Capitalism, to work as the philosophy intended, needs to give people an exit strategy. It cant say youre not forced to do something then forces you indirectly, it needs to actually respect your freedom to say no. And that's where I'm at. I'm pro capitalist, but I'm also pro freedom and for allowing people to not participate in work.
I'd even go further. Because I also have my own iteration of human centered capitalism, I would use such an idea to argue that instead of pursuing growth at all costs, we balance growth with leisure and try to actively work less. Anti capitalist leftists always talk about the extremes of capitalism, but never the nuance, believing all reformism is bad and only socialism will save us. But yes, I believe that we can turn capitalism away from growth at all costs with the right reforms, and we could choose to work less.
Would capitalism survive if we do away with work entirely? Perhaps not, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime, so that's not my problem, but a problem for the generations of the future. Let them figure that out when they come to it. But for the time being, yes, I'm pro capitalist, but I'm anti work. It's philosophically consistent, it works, and I hate leftist gatekeeping on this subject.
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