The Job

The job has become central to much of the global unrest. Joblessness was a primary force in the Egyptian revolution. Greeks have to emigrate to find jobs. The Portuguese government has advised the jobless to do likewise. The want of jobs has caused large riots in France and England. And job creation keeps being a focus of American politics, albeit a very fuzzy ineffective one. Most importantly, the massive movements of people from poor rural areas to urban areas, creating enormous slums, is occurring because people are seeking jobs.

The global impact of joblessness may lead one to think of the job as an economic entity. But what is the job? It is more than a system for distributing the gross domestic product, radically unequal though that is. It functions heavily in providing self identity. One of the most common questions we ask of each other is, "What do you do for a living?" The job dominates a large part of our lives as we perform the duties for which we are paid. We rely on it to provide the wherewithal to accomplish whatever else is of prime importance to us. The job often positions us in society. With a job you are somebody, without it you are nobody. My father, an auto mechanic, was proud that he never "went on the dole" during the Great Depression even though on occasion, he earned less than a WPA worker on relief. When joblessness rises so do the divorce and suicide rates. Once we realize the burden we have placed on the job we can begin to appreciate its significance in contemporary society.

In capitalist societies we have left this crucial sociological element in the hands of those who have no fundamental interest in it other than to minimize the number of them to increase profit. Is there not a glaring contradiction between the fundamental necessity of jobs for humanity placed in the hands of those who see them as a liability? This is compounded by the fact that the companies that provide jobs are themselves pawns in the financial world of arbitrage and to the rumor-driven greed that can alter that company's stock value and the employment of thousands overnight. This is no foundation for as fundamental a purpose as the job is supposed to fulfill.

Work was not always in the form of a job as we now know it. The job as we understand it is a rather recent invention dating roughly from the 18^th century. In his book The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870 Robert Steinfeld describes the emergence of so called "free labor" from the feudal environment in England. He is at pains to demonstrate that much of this labor was not free because of English legal restrictions on the worker. He also stresses that a contract between an employee and an employer does not constitute free labor, e.g. indentured servitude. In general things were heavily weighted in favor of the employer. They still are despite the union movement to try to balance the relationship by pitting numbers of workers against ownership wealth.

We thus have, in addition to the above noted liabilities, a system that is inherently unfair to workers. With all these liabilities, what are the remedies?

In an article by Frank Joyce titled Is It Possible To Build An Economy Without Jobs?  to be found on Alternet at

http://www.alternet.org/visions/155186/is_it_possible_to_build_an_economy_without_jobs_?page=entire, the remedy for the unfairness of the employer/employee relationship is to be found in employee owned cooperatives. The examples offered by Joyce are small to medium sized businesses, although some are international in scope. This size range indicates to me that this form of business organization may require a level of interaction not available to large organizations such Bechtel, a major infrastructure builder or an Alcoa aluminum plant. It also does not change other onerous features of the capitalist system, e.g. uncontrolled speculation.

Others, including FDR in his Four Freedoms speech, which included a freedom from want as a right and Jefferson in his desire for an America of small farmers see economic security as a necessary condition for democracy. Robert Theobald in his 1966 book titled The Guaranteed Income: Next Step in Economic Evolution? saw that democracy's requirement for an independent citizenry made economic independence a prerequisite for democracy's existence. Without this economic support the capitalist system will progressively move wealth and the power it generates into fewer and fewer hands. Plato long ago delineated this progression from democracy to oligarchy to tyranny. In the end the job, as currently understood, cannot be the economic basis for democracy.

 

In the current debate about jobs progressives should make a large issue of the requirement of democracy for an adequate  income for citizen independence. It is not a question of whether people do or do not deserve it, but whether democracy will be made viable. Along with all the other reasons for an adequate distribution of the gross domestic product, e.g. crime reduction, family wellbeing, adequate food, etc., the viability of our democracy should figure importantly in a progressive push for a guaranteed citizen income. We need to articulate a well developed plan and then push it. The political right senses this need, which is why they have tried to make "entitlement" a dirty word and why, at root, they are enemies of democracy.

 

Bob Newhard