No Fun

Capitalism vs Fun

It seems appropriate that this next section should fall on a holiday, not only because we associate holidays with fun but also because this is part of my fun, something I can't do at work. We live in a culture that tries to engineer employee attitudes with various kinds of workplace "fun"--from the chants at the beginning of the Wal-Mart day, to employee retreats, casual Fridays and birthday celebrations. But none of these things make up for the fact that we are laboring for an abstraction that we half suspect, until we actually learn it, will be used against us.

I struggle with this contradiction as a teacher. The saving grace is that I can actually teach a tool I know, at least to the best of my abilities. But the school setting is not "fun," and most efforts to make it more "fun" are simply distractions from the reminders that we are working in a school setting. Part of why there's a sense of "no fun" hanging over every school hour is the rightful sense, on the part of students, that this institutionalized form of education is probably not the best way to learn anything, that it's a hoop to jump to get out into the real world and really learn a thing or two. Part of why there's a sense of "no fun" is that the teacher has to be delusional not to recognize the truth in that perception. Part of why there's a sense of "no fun" is that both teacher and student know the hoop jumping that's being done guarantees nothing out in a work world where the worker's labor power is being driven down to zero.

So, instead of pretending to have fun, I try to opt for realism and the best parts of humanity--compassion and respect, two things I am not paid to offer my students. But these two things actually do offer me (and I hope my students) some sense of fun in the classroom because acknowledging the ugly realities and the myths of education allows us to conspire in subversive behavior. No doubt, as Lebowitz describes below, the system will conspire to take this wiggle room out of the equation. I can already see where the potential for such honesty will diminish with the online classroom, where every comment is put down in writing.

How do you see the trends Lebowitz describes here where you work or in places where you have worked?

Lebowitz writes:

Why producing under capitalism isn’t fun

54. In other words, it’s not an accident that most of us find the workplace a place of misery—the process of capitalist production cripples us as human beings. But, why can’t workers simply struggle against this? Why can’t they turn the capitalist production process into a place consistent with human development?

55. Again, remember the logic of capital: if human development made profits for capital, it would have introduced changes that supported it. But capital isn’t interested in whether the technology chosen permits producers to grow or to find any pleasure and satisfaction in their work. Nor does it care what happens to people who are displaced when new technology and new machines are introduced. If your skills are destroyed, if your job disappears, so be it. Capital gains, you lose. Marx’s comment was that “within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productivity of labor are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker.” The logic of capital is the enemy of all-round human development.

56. So, if workers do succeed in making gains here (and elsewhere) through their struggles, capital finds ways to respond. And, it has the weapons it needs. Through its ownership of the means of production, its control of production, and its power to decide the nature and direction of investment, capital ultimately can do what it needs to do in order to increase the degree of exploitation of workers and expand the production of surplus value. While it may face opposition from workers, capital drives beyond barriers to its growth in the sphere of production. Capital rules in the sphere of production.