So, I love Rammstein. I don't discuss it on here unless it's political, but yep, I have another one of those articles coming. Someone posted this really old interview of theirs from 1997 discussing their origins, and I felt a need to discuss it, given it intersects with much of what I've been talking about with jobs and the like lately.
So, for those of you guys who don't know, Rammstein's band members all grew up in East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain. And for all of the talk of them being Nazis because they are loud angry German people who make loud music (literally listening to Links 234 as I type this), they're actually anything but. If anything, they were brainwashed into communism as children and Till Lindemann, the singer, used to believe that it was his job to destroy the west. Instead, he now plays awesome music for them, with some songs still having themes critical of the west, but nothing too offputting.
A lot of what I have to talk about has to do with their early days, and this background in the GDR. And in particular, I want to take aim at the idea of a job having dignity or being related to one's purpose. You see, in communist countries, and this was mentioned in the video above, it was illegal to NOT have a job. Communists believed jobs were a sacred duty that no one could shirk, and everyone was required to work and contribute to the system. Those who didn't were often arrested, and you know how unpleasant that is in communist countries.
This, actually did make it hard for fledgling musicians in communist countries like East Germany to get off the ground. Something that the members talked about in the interview. They had to juggle part time jobs with their music ambitions. The only people allowed to work on music formally full time were educated musicians, ie, people who were basically in privileged positions that allowed them to train for such things from birth. Most people were just expected to work a normal job. It's maddening how communist countries, which tried so hard to achieve equality, ended up basically creating a nobility connected to the political establishment, while everyone else was just expected to work a hard job to survive. Reminds me of capitalism, or feudalism. Either way it's evidence that these kinds of systems don't really work very well.
In some ways, capitalism coming as the berlin wall fell actually freed them and allowed them to grow into the success that they are today. They were allowed to work for their success in the music scene, and have achieved worldwide fame and notoriety. Heck, they just finished touring North America this past week, and I actually got to see them back in August when they came to Philadelphia. In some ways, it's a capitalist success story. And I do think there is something to be said in that interview i covered last week when the libertarians asked what if you want to be left alone to do your own thing. Well, Rammstein did, and they succeeded. And their show is amazing, and something that would not have happened in communist countries. I mean, look at most art in communist countries, if you're not explicitly singing glory for the motherland, you're likely not doing art. Most art is state approved, with pro-state messages. Rammstein, on the other hand, is edgy and subversive, but in a left wing way. They sing about sex, really screwed up sex, coca cola and sometimes war (politics), and dark tales that read like they came from a really messed up person. Bands like this would always have limited success under communist rule. it wasn't until they had capitalism that they succeeded.
But...let's be honest, while they were successful, capitalism is often not much different than communism in this sense. How many artists have day jobs? I mean, unless you really make it big, most of them in my experience. And many are suppressed from pursuing art at all due to financial restrictions. The term "starving artist" didn't come out of nowhere.
In the kinds of circles I run in, many have tried to start podcasts. I mean, you always had talk radio and some people being able to focus on it full time, but most people who do podcasts...don't. I'm actually friends with the people who ran the Cellar Door Skeptic podcast for a while. They have jobs. The Atheist Experience people like Matt Dillahunty, someone who I looked up to and respected highly after leaving Christianity. He has a job outside of the atheist experience.
But, let's face it, for many of these kinds of people, are jobs really so great and dignified? Not really. If anything they get in the way of people creating things. How many people lack the energy to create because they're so beaten down just surviving our neoliberal capitalist hellscape that they have no energy to do so? How many like the podcasters I mentioned or other artists have their creative initiative stifled by mind numbing repetitive work? Let's stop acting like this stuff has dignity.
But but, you say, someone has to do it right? Well, sure, but I'm also not the guy trying to create a mcjob for every able bodied adult in the country. I'm not fetishizing growth to such an extent that I insist we constantly create new businesses that employ millions of people needlessly. Are such things nice? Yes. Should we be chained to them? No. Would life go on without them? To a large extent, yes.
And maybe, just maybe, instead of creating jobs, we should make robots do the work. yes, let's get rid of cashiers with touch screens. Let's get rid of people who do boring mundane tasks for minimal money with robots that can do such things far better and faster than we can. That's how societal progress is really made. Yes, more stuff is nice, but what we also need is to offload as much work as possible on robots so we humans don't have to do it any more.
And let's give people money. Let's have that UBI I wanted, where people can choose to do whatever work is available if they want, but they can also forge their own path doing other things. It's been wondered by basic income advocates before how many artists spend their lives working mundane jobs isntead of creating. How many Mozarts are languishing in factories, or wal marts, or amazon warehouses? How many Thomas Edisons? How many Steve Jobses? We're wasting our creative potential on BS jobs that dont provide the fulfillment and dignity we brainwash people into doing. What if Rammstein never took off, because these people were stuck working in factories and the like for the motherland in the GDR? it could have happened, had history gone differently.
This is a condemnation of both capitalism and socialism. Both systems suck, because both of them glorify work. But, at the same time, both have benefits. Capitalism has the freedom, at least on paper to survive and thrive, but people are often not in a state to pursue it because they need to work to survive. Communism has the equality and social justice, but at the cost of freedom of the individual, and people are once again chained to jobs and not allowed to pursue their potential. Let's dispense with the notion that jobs are peoples' purposes. We often here from the job worshippers that jobs are more than just a paycheck. Joe Biden said the same. So did Bernie Sanders. But to me, and to the members of Rammstein it seemed back in the 80s and 90s, jobs were just that paycheck. Their real purpose was their music. And while we can argue they eventually made their own jobs going into music, that's precisely the world that we should be pursuing. Instead of glorifying employment for its own sake, we should be letting people figure out what their own purpose is. There's nothing special about jobs or work. Jobs as we know them are a relatively recent invention, it's not like our hundreds of thousands of years of evolution made us where we wanted to flip burgers or stare at a screen for 8 hours a day in an office. We made this. And we can change it if we want.
The goal here is to harness the advantages of both capitalism and socialism, while avoiding the flaws. A system with the freedom of capitalism, but the stability of socialism. Again, capitalism is great in some ways, despite its flaws. It does give people maximal freedom. It just has a really dark and ugly downside as the freedom cascades into a system in which most are forced to work for others merely to survive. Socialism has the economic stability that people need in their lives but socialism on its own has had...a less than stellar track record. So bad it actually makes capitalism look good again.
So...we need capitalism, but with a socialist ethos, which is what I wanted in the first place. Social democracy is a good start, but even that is too jobist, we need a libertarian social democracy organized by the principles of ideologies like indepentarianism, real libertarianism, and human centered capitalism. We need a UBI, medicare for all, and peoples; basic needs taken care of. But other than that, markets are cool. As I think it was Paul Landers once said on the current Rammstein tour to the fans at one show this year, "you give us money, we build crap like this", while pointing at the monstrosity of a stage. We need to stop trying to impose purpose and the like on people, but let them figure out what they wanna do. Maybe some will squander their potential and just sit home playing video games. But maybe some of them will do something cool like build a 100+ foot high stage to play music on while fire shoots out everywhere. You gotta let people figure that crap out for themselves. The point is, we shouldnt try to tell people what their purpose is. And that applies across systems. Both capitalism and socialism have a problem with worshipping jobs and work, and I feel like this is creepy and dystopian and robs people of their souls. And I think a lot of this leads to dysfunction which is actually one of the reasons society seems to be coming apart at the seams right now. Because no one is happy, society isnt living up to its potential, people seem to realize it, but theres a huge push by the elites to keep everything the same, leading to people pulling in all of these different directions, some good, some bad, but if we don't find a positive outlet for all of this angst, it's going to be a disaster for society as a whole.
At least that's my take. Some may disagree. Even Rammstein. In the interview, they brought up the word unemployment and asked what their reactions to it were. Here were the responses:
Christoph: An illness without a cure
Richard: For five years
Till: Thankfully no more
Two of them seemed to focus mostly on the sense of their jobs as musicians allowing them not to be unemployed any more, but one said an illness without a cure.
To be honest, I'm not sure of what to make about this. What is their stance on jobs and employment? Like many they seem supportive of it, but at the same time, I dont think they liked how the GDR forced them to be employed in jobs they didn't have an interest in.
Still, I guess that I honestly ain't opposed to all employment, just involuntary employment. Which I guess they are too. I just have an expanded idea of what that is. My idea isnt to force everyone to not work, it's to give everyone what they want. For some, it's employment, for some, unemployment, and for artists, I think UBI would allow them to pursue their art. Imagine how many more Rammsteins we would have if we allowed everyone do pursue what they wanted without coercion. Think about it.
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