Own your own time

"But I also know that I get to do what I want to do and that's rare in our world...In our society, I feel like what has happened is...business has taken ownership of people's time. So people don't feel like they own their own time. And that is criminal...That from 8 til 6, or whatever--and now beyond that given the devices--that they just don't own their own time. And I feel really strongly that...I believe in the idea that people own their own time. And even my staff--it's their time and I feel like that's really, really important."

-Ian MacKaye (co-founder, Dischord Records) in conversation with Steve Albini (owner, Electrical Audio)

The relationship between artists and society

"The way that society tends to classify us scares me. I am a historian. I don’t want to be just a historian, but society puts us into a discipline. Yes, disciplines us: you’re a historian, you’re a businessman, you’re an engineer. You’re this or you’re that. The first thing someone asks you at a party is, “What do you do?” That means, “How are you categorized?” The problem is that people begin to think that’s all they are. They’re professionals in something. You hear the word professionalism being used often. People say, “You have to be professional.” Whenever I hear the word, I get a little scared, because that limits human beings to working within the confines set by their profession." 

-Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War

Quitting Your Job to Pursue Your Passion is Bullshit

By Janelle Quibuyen

Two years ago, I quit my full-time, salaried with benefits job to pursue self-employment as an independent freelance graphic designer. (This is maybe the most cliche statement to read online these days.)

I am no more brave than the migrant worker picking your strawberries to send remittances to family in their home country. I am no more courageous than the recently-graduated millennial who works in a cubicle 9 hours a day to pay off massive student loans. I am no more of a boss than the working class mother with three jobs who feeds her children. 

Quitting your job to pursue your passion is bullshit. This messaging is only beneficial for privileged people and very dangerous for working class people.

Since then, the reactions I’ve received have all been pretty similar. People marveled at the fact that I took this big, life-changing leap. I’ve gotten messages like “Wow you’re so brave and courageous” and “That’s so great you’re pursuing your passion” and “I wish I could be my own boss”.

At first I didn’t know what to think of it. There were other personal things going on at the time that impacted me enough to quit my full-time job. But after getting the same reaction plenty of times, and reading the same “I-quit-my-job-and-started-my-own-business!” overnight success stories online everywhere — I started to accept it. Believe it for myself. It became a part of my story.

It became easy to identify with a lot of things young entrepreneurial people were saying. I hustle my ass off to work enough contracts in a month to make ends meet. I deal with fear and anxiety of the instability every day. I battle constant future-tripping, wondering how long I can realistically sustain myself on this route. But I also get paid to do something I love (which is supposed to outshine anything else apparently). Not gonna front, it's been fun and fulfilling. I was proud to be pursuing my passion and I pat myself on the back for making it work. But then another part of me couldn’t disagree more with the sentiment. Being your own boss is tough as shit. You have no one to blame but yourself if things go awry. It's not always what it's cracked up to be. But what bothers me most is how we prop up the entrepreneurial class to be inherently brave and courageous. Let's set the record straight.

Nowadays we are bombarded with messages that life could only be meaningful if we do what we love (which is subjective anyway). Quitting full-time jobs to travel the world. Giving up everything to be your own boss. Leaving routine to build something from scratch. We are offered online classes, webinars, books and podcasts of advice from professionals. We are marketed to with apps that promise the ease of starting your own business. We are told that the sacrifice will be hard but it will all be worth it. You just have to quit your job, give it your all, buy my e-book of advice for $20, and have the passion to persevere.

We praise people that are “courageous” enough to quit their 9-to-5 and dive into the deep end of the exciting unknown. We idealize and romanticize the idea of being our own boss and being in charge of our own schedule. To take a risk and reap the bountiful benefits. Yet no one talks about the real sustainability or self-sufficiency of this formula when the playing field is never even.

The statement alone reeks of privilege. It confirms you had a full-time job to begin with. It confirms you had time to develop a passion (that you can capitalize off of, enough to meet your cost of living). It confirms you had the option to pursue something different because you feel like it. There are more challenges to being self-employed than just mental perseverance and grit. We are predatorily luring working class people into an entrepreneur lifestyle as the answer to living a meaningful life and loads of money. It’s the new American Dream...

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Read this essay in its entirety at Janelle Quibuyen's blog HERE.

Introducing...(Beyond) Passions and Survival

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of my graduate thesis "Beyond Passions and Survival: The Prospects for Meaningful Work, Livelihood, and Radical Social Transformation in the Cracks of Capitalism." Enjoy and let me know what you think... -MD

As a teenage punk rocker in the late 1990s, I found myself walking around town one day with a high school friend who was upset about the recent news that a band he liked had signed to a major record label. “They're called Chumbawamba,” he told me. “And they used to be part of the anarcho-punk scene in the UK, but now they've sold out. I'm pretty bummed about it.” This was the first time I had ever heard of them. A few months later, the oldies station on the local FM dial was transitioning to a Top 40 pop station and for an entire week they played the number one hit song at that time on loop. When you tuned into 93.5 that week you were guaranteed to hear either the boisterous “Coming soon!” 15 second promo for the new station or, more likely, the infectious chorus of that song: I get knocked down. But I get up again. You're never gonna keep me down. Soon, Chumbawamba was performing live on late night television, touring the globe, and their catchy anthem “Tumbthumping” began appearing in advertisements and Hollywood movies. All of this firmly establishing their legacy in music history as a “one hit wonder.”

At the height of “Tubthumping's” commercial popularity, the long-running underground punk magazine Maximum Rock n' Roll re-printed an excerpt from its 1984 interview with Chumbawamba. The quote referenced their boycott of EMI—the corporate record label that had owned shares in the weapons manufacturing industry. By reprinting this, MRR sought to expose the hypocrisy of the group's decision, after years of putting out records independently, to sign to that very major label they had once militantly protested with others in the UK anarcho-punk community.

Reading the old interview, and learning about the full extent of this hypocrisy that had initially enraged my friend, inspired me to contact Chumbawamba directly and let them know what I thought about it. I sent them a message from my first-ever e-mail account, informing them about “recently discovering” this old interview and detailing how I felt about their recent popularity with “the ignorant MTV generation.” To my surprise, Chumbawamba responded. Their response was thoughtful and disarmingly intelligent. In addition to explaining why it is dangerously problematic to generalize about an entire generation of people, they pointed toward the shifting nature of the lives and beliefs of everyone affected by the economic realities of the system. And they named that system: “capitalism.”

Capitalism.

Coming of age during the end of the Cold War, I was familiar with this word. But even as a self-righteous, politically-conscious teenage punk, this e-mail from Chumbawamba made me realize that I actually did not understand what it meant. What is capitalism? I reached for my dictionary, and read a relatively unhelpful definition about “the private ownership of the means of production.” What did that mean? I was still confused. Over time, after starting to overcome my ignorance of its meaning, I realized that simply naming capitalism can often be a radical act.

Despite the fact that we are socialized to take it for granted like gravity, or the air we breathe, capitalism is not a law of nature or physics. In fact, when one takes into consideration the full history of human societies, it is a relatively new mode of production and social organization. As Cynthia Kaufman writes in her new book Getting Past Capitalism, “When capitalism comes to dominate society, when all other ways of meeting our needs come to be devalued and pushed out, when governments operate to serve the interests of privately owned capital rather than the needs of people, we have a serious problem.” She adds, “That problem is capitalism.”

For me, this level of analysis didn't develop until my third year in college. That was when I began thinking more deeply about alternatives to capitalism. I was inspired by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel's vision of Participatory Economics (Parecon) as a better kind of economy; one based on equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management. Their ideas were exciting to me because they went beyond critique and towards confidently declaring that another type of economy—one with vastly different values—truly was possible.

I was so inspired by Parecon that I decided to write my senior project about it. My research focused on three worker-owned collectives (presciently prefiguring my current study) in Winnipeg that all incorporated aspects of the vision into their workplace structures, and explored the challenges and potentials of those projects within the constraints of capitalism.

That inspiration really began after seeing Michael Albert speak about Parecon and the importance of developing radical vision, I decided that I wasn’t interested in contributing to the long list of merely documenting what is wrong with the world. I decided that I would focus on highlighting visionary efforts, of people who were putting transformative theory into practice and planting seeds of a new world. In doing so, I hoped to document that there are possible alternatives to the dominant structures of the current society, and to encourage the expansion of such efforts everywhere.

This decision, of course, was not to discount the important work that radical academics, journalists, and activists are doing to expose injustice and oppression across the world. I believed, and still do today, that all of it is necessary. It’s just a matter of how I want to make my own contribution, because I can’t do it all; none of us can. Additionally, as Albert pointed out, there are not enough people articulating new visions and if we are only documenting the horrors of the world, then we will likely be immobilized by powerlessness and then we won’t have anything to offer to replace all the bad stuff with—if we ever do get to that point.

All of this brings me, finally, to the present, to my current research at Goddard. Instead of focusing on the evils of capitalist society I have decided to continue to highlight the visionary efforts of those who are developing and practicing new ways of being and doing, against all odds. In my new research I have chosen, once again, to document three collectives—these groups of people who have come together to create alternatives. In doing so, I continue to sustain my own dedication and desire for social transformation; against hopelessness, against powerlessness.

                                                                    * * *                                                                                                          

This is the story of how I began thinking about capitalism. And then how I came to engage in the critique of it and, furthermore, how I eventually began to participate in the imagining and celebration of alternatives to it. Exploring the complex realities of daily life under capitalism (particularly for activists and artists) is the drum I have been beating all these years, with an evolving, increasingly collective beat.

In this thesis, I revisit and expand upon the central question that I tirelessly grappled with during my years following college a decade ago: The dilemma facing activists and artists to follow their passions while surviving under capitalism—the question of “passions and survival.”

As this dilemma began defining my daily reality, I decided that I would take it on as an investigative project, but with the larger goal of collective liberation beyond capitalist society. What initially started as a potential book idea would evolve into a weekly radio program with the title Passions and Survival. That project eventually ended, but I have continued to grapple with new ways of thinking and navigating these issues, of the economic imperatives of survival. So, while I’ve returned to my generative question, I’ve done so in hopes of going beyond “passions and survival”—transcending both the limitations of my previous project and the structures of capitalist society that persist in our lives.

My central question remains: How does the dilemma of surviving under capitalism affect the potential for radical activists and cultural producers in the United States to follow their passions and prefigure a new society?

The continued pursuit of this study is rooted in my own life experience and struggles in capitalist society as an activist and writer working a variety of wage jobs to support myself over the past decade. The choice of this subject springs from two interrelated desires: to support a vibrant community of artists and activists, and for social transformation centered on meaningful work and livelihood.

One of the limitations of my radio project was that I was only speaking with individuals about their personal experiences. The implicit point I was attempting to illustrate was that we all (well, most of us) must sell our labor to survive in the current society, that we are all affected by and also dependent on the system we are trying to transform or dismantle. But I think this point was partially obscured by the individualistic nature of the one-on-one interview format.

Here, at this point in my exploration, I have chosen to investigate the following premise: It is important, and arguably necessary, for activists and artists to join together collectively with others to work toward transcending this fundamental dilemma of capitalism and to attempt to provide themselves a means of survival, but in ways that strive to undermine the logic of capital and prefigure new possibilities.

                                                             * * *

Matt Dineen is a graduate student at Goddard College and lives in Philadelphia. 

Meaningful work: an appeal to the young

By Scott Nappolos

An article about choosing meaning in employment. 

From the time I was a child, I was told to follow my dreams and do something I truly loved. Granted I rarely met an adult who was passionate about their work, but they seemed sincere in their desire for others to take that path. The advice of course usually had a piece of bitterness attached to it. As I came of age, the terrain didn’t look pretty. Most of my personal passions were deserts for employment. Nor did I really know anyone who was living the dream, so to speak, at work. My path began from leaving that advice behind.

Society is littered with talk of meaningful work. The creative class, jobs that means something, doing something with one’s life, work that matters, helping people; we’re inundated with phrases, words, and images that describe our poverty and the future that we are supposed to aspire to.

It’s actually worse for people who commit themselves to making radical change in society. A confluence of pressures pushes down on them year after year through family wondering when they will grow up, friends perpetually moving on to something better, and a gnawing sense of wasted potential. Why bother with the endless meetings, the mindless work, and for what?

Unless you’re born into a situation where work is unnecessary, nearly everyone experiences the modern workplace. Service work in particular serves as a stark reminder of reality and alternatives. The unending drudgery of task after task slinging fatty coffee that literally poisons people’s health, selling useless items created on the backs of abused workers elsewhere, cardboard boxes rolling down the line that just keep coming and coming, forcing a smile when we are cursed at or harassed; Nearly everyone has been forced to participate in the bitterness of having our time stolen. It’s perhaps harder to bare for those who know the widest extent of the misery of humanity and understand how preventable it all is.

The sense of meaninglessness in jobs is a strong current in society. Tv shows, films, music, and other forms of pop culture repeat the comedy, frustration, and depression of spending one’s time on tasks that seem pointless. This isn’t to say that people’s jobs don’t make a difference. Many things we do keep society running and contributes to the social good. The meaninglessness of work in today’s society arises out of the reflection of workers that their time is not really benefiting the people they serve or advancing them as people. As a healthcare worker I can see both sides of this. Obviously healthcare is crucial for societies. At the same time any hospital worker can recognize how it is that the healthcare system not only harms people, but also in general contributes to people staying sick. Meaning is something deeper than just keeping the gears moving and helping our fellow human beings. Meaning is about where we are headed and who we are. This is where youth get squeezed and falter.

Modern capitalism with its base of debt makes everything seem possible. The compulsion to put food on the table is softened by easy credit. We can go back to school, live on credit cards, travel to cheap places, and find means to delay work enough to get by. Young people accumulate useless degrees and insane debts while deferring the future and often slipping into the delusions of jobs that simply do not exist. Choosing what to do with our lives takes on the characteristic of other more banal decisions. We are shopping for an ethical product. Validation stands at the core of this, and plays off the fear of a wasted life, idle efforts, and ending up trapped chasing false ideals. What to tell worried parents who watched their child squander what chances they had for material success? It is better to say that one is employed fighting poverty, educating the youth, or some other remix of Mother Theresa, Gandhi, or perhaps Bono.

The problem is that there is no escape. Professors spend decades moving town to town as itinerant adjuncts teaching the most bland classes, writing mechanical essays in desperation to stay published, and constantly struggling for something more stable. Even at it’s best, University life leaves less time for liberatory thought and action than the part time service worker. Union organizers spend seventy or eighty hour weeks at the service of hostile bureaucracies, and too often find themselves in the position of pimping the Democratic party and selling backroom deals with management to disillusioned workers. NGO staff share the same fate, bending to the will of the funders and forced to represent the interests of the powerful under false flags of social change. Self-employment and cooperatives turn activist efforts into business efforts, and consume more time than any capitalist could ever demand from a job. Good people find themselves lost there, tired of all the worn appearances that hide a rotten structure, yearning to escape too their work and get back to something more authentic.

We need to question and even condemn the pressure on youth to find meaningful work. As long as we live in capitalism, its deep wells will poison all the streams flowing into our cities. With capitalist work, even the most holy pursuit will end up in mindlessness, subservience to stupid management, and in fighting the current trying to make some good out of a hostile situation that constantly tries to undo our efforts. This isn’t to say that some don’t enjoy their jobs. Some do. Yet on the balance, the vast majority can’t find employment that will engage them, and those who do generally must sacrifice the rest of their lives for the privilege. The real question to be raised isn’t whether you should enjoy your job or not, but whether you should dedicate your life to work. Or better, what is the relation of living to working?

This logic should be turned on its head. It’s not what we’re employed doing that should define, validate, or give meaning to our lives; it’s our life itself that does. How much brighter does the future look to liberate oneself from the oppressive concept of boundless sacrifice to meaningful jobs? Why shouldn’t youth seek to maximize their lives against this work? There are other roads open to us. We can work, as we must, but can struggle to find the most time for ourselves and our causes. Better we write, protest, organize, and gather in our workplaces on time off, than to cement that relationship into employment or worse into our identities.

Our lives are defined by what we do, not who writes our paychecks. A political life is an attempt to regain a meaningful life. It is a task for all of society, and not monopolized by a special class employed as professional politicians, bureaucrats, and humanitarians. Meaning is not at work, but in the beauty of daily living, in struggling for a better world, and whatever path your desires take you towards. Our joy is not found in simply imposing our will onto the world, but in the happiness that can only be found in fighting for a more just and beautiful world around us. Dedicating oneself to the struggles of others changes you. Within, we must fight to constantly overcome ourselves against the current, a process that can be deeply enriching. The commitment and work of liberation makes all of society our classroom, our workplaces gymnasiums, and our neighborhoods galleries...

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Originally published on Libcom,org. Read the article in its entirety HERE.

In the Name of Love

“Do what you love” is the mantra for today’s worker. Why should we assert our class interests if, according to DWYL elites like Steve Jobs, there’s no such thing as work? 

by Miya Tokumitsu 

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers. Superficially, DWYL is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who is the audience for this dictum? Who is not? By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation, but an act of self-love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace... 
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Excerpted from The Jacobin Magazine

The problem is capitalism

"Capitalism is a problem because it allows those with resources to use them without regard for the needs of others. That disregard leads to the destruction of communities, to millions of people around the world not having access to the basic things they need to live healthy lives, and to environmental degradation. Capitalism is one of the most important forces responsible for the fact that people do not have time to do what they love...

But how do we un-do capitalism, a system that has been developing and growing for more than five-hundred years? By this point, capitalism has become a central part of the fabric of most of the societies we inhabit. How can we dismantle the capitalist home we live in when our activities every day effectively shore it up?...No matter how anti-capitalist you are, if you live in a society dominated by capitalism you probably need to work for a wage. Most of us spend many of our waking hours doing paid work and much of our leisure time shopping or otherwise consuming commercial culture. Capitalism even structures our intimate interactions with people. We often express love by buying things for people. We may judge people by the products they use.

When capitalism comes to dominate society, when all other ways of meeting our needs come to be devalued and pushed out, when governments operate to serve the interests of privately owned capital rather than the needs of people, we have a serious problem. That problem is capitalism."

-Cynthia Kaufman, Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope