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You know what?
When you get right down to it, the ultimate symbol of capitalism might just be the piss cup.
Now, I acknowledge that it's important to realize that prisoners are being forced to stitch lingerie and migrant laborers to pick fruit for pennies on the dollar. I know that climate change is real, I know that Coca-Cola and Nike have death squads in the global south. But consider the humble piss cup.
Those of us within the United States who have to take on hourly work are familiar with this particular vessel. We are required to pee in a cup to take on hourly wage that we don't want, but which we acknowledge to be better than starvation and homelessness.
Many of us are also aware that fellow employees who have gone through this ritual are often stoned out of their minds, because they only test you when you get the job. As I have often said “a thing is what it does,” and the piss up is a message. It tells an applicant that the manager has the power to tell them what to do with their own body; it subtly sends the message that “while you deal with me, I am the adult, and you are the child. I am the lord, and you are the subject.”
This is a subtle but ubiquitous example of what Michel Foucault called biopower. The social faculty to tell someone else how to live their life. Because one party in the transaction has something that they can use to coerce the other party, they do so.
The reason is simple: your job is a dictatorship, and you are the subject, the prole, the peasant. This is not new information, but I want to explore it for a moment.
Why are you required to put one of your bodily fluids in the cup?
Is it to make sure you're a good worker or exert dominance? Is there any difference?
Consider, as David Graeber does in the landmark book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, that the vast majority of workers are filling roles that don't need to be filled. Most of them occupy their position to stoke someone's ego, to allow them to say “I have thirty people working for me.”
This, I feel, is one of the key problems with Capitalism. It doesn't just fail to distribute resources effectively, it doesn't just atomize us and make us feel alone, it doesn't just fail to acknowledge that it's killing the planet, it doesn't just warp our perspectives to make us think that it's the only way. No, the problem is the end goal: it is doing these things solely to fulfill the desires of those at the top of the heap. It gives them license to set up their own private repressive regimes.
An analysis of this can be found in the Vox.com article “How bosses are (literally) like dictators” by Elizabeth Anderson. The thesis of this article is encapsulated in the statement:
How should we understand these sweeping powers that employers have to regulate their employees’ lives, both on and off duty? Most people don’t use the term in this context, but wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in some domain of life, that authority is a government.
In short, if something exercises control over your behavior, it is governing your actions. The state of contemporary work is that, oftentimes, this resembles a dictatorship. Anderson puts it succinctly: “Bosses are dictators, and workers are their subjects.” They control the flow of a necessary resource (capital) that employees need, and can encourage behavior by controlling access to workers, showering excesses upon favored workers and throttling the flow to unfavored workers.
To put this another way: is there any definitive difference between a silicon valley tech firm and the USSR other than the fact that the latter had an army?
I've been lucky enough to have a few employers that I was reasonably certain are invested in whatever the project of their business is to a reasonable degree and behaved accordingly. I have had other employers I was not so convinced by, because they seemed to wield the power they possess in arbitrary ways. Sometimes an explanation was given, at other times it wasn't. I'm sure that we all have.
This is what capitalism is: an engine for satisfying some desires and deferring others, while producing suffering, unemployment, and environmental collapse. It does this by convincing people that if they buy into it for just a bit longer, they'll get their slice of the pie.
So any Post-Capitalist system is going to have to take this into account, because the common interpretation of non-capitalist systems is that no one's desires will be satisfied. Our project, in trying to envision a viable post-capitalist system, isn't just to figure out a way to distribute resources equitably. We also have to figure out a substitute for the capitalist engine of desire. For the system to be more viable, this substitute is going to be key, because it needs to work better to draw people away from Capitalism.
And note: when I say “desires” I don't just mean the pleasure of a job well-done or seeing beautiful art or for a meaningless knick-knack or for sexual release – whatever engine of desire we come up with is going to have to touch on all of those things in its own way. I think, though, that there are ways forward: I have heard it said that everyone tolerates capitalism on the clock so that they can be socialists at home – ask anyone who cooks a gourmet meal they don't have to, or any game master slaving over a rule book to prep a session for their friends.
There are many reasons to do things other than to avoid starvation and exposure, and we would discover them if we had the chance to.
Except, perhaps, for pissing in cups. I'm going to guess that would happen less.
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New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post
New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2015/01/01/airasia-indonesia-conducting-advance-tests-grounded-pilot/
AirAsia Indonesia conducting advance tests on grounded pilot
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 1, 2015:
AirAsia Indonesia is currently fully cooperating with the Indonesian authorities who are performing further tests to confirm the results of a pilot whose urine test results found traces of morphine.
AirAsia Indonesia chief executive officer Sunu Widyatmoko clarified that while the airline understands that the initial test had come back positive for morphine, these tests often resulted in false positives, leading advanced tests to be conducted.
Sunu told The Rakyat Post through email that the last dosage of medication the pilot had consumed was at 2pm on Dec 31 after the latter was diagnosed and hospitalised for typhoid from Dec 26 to 29.
“He was on antibiotics, cough medicine and vitamins.
“He had provided this information, along with evidence of medicines, to the authorities prior to the test.
“As per industry standard, all of our pilots are required to perform biannual medical tests to qualify them to hold a licence to operate scheduled commercial flights.”
Sunu said the pilot has been with AirAsia since July 2005 and had a perfect record.
“In addition, AirAsia has continuously cooperated with the National Narcotics Agency to perform random substance abuse tests for our pilots, cabin crew and employees at least twice a year.”
The pilot was reportedly grounded after a urine test conducted on him indicated traces of morphine.
Indonesian news portal Tempo had reported today that the pilot was flying QZ7510 from Soekarno Hatta Airport in Jakarta to Ngurah Rai Airport in Bali after which a check was conducted when the flight landed today.
The portal quoted Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesman Hadi Mustofa Djuraid explaining that the findings on the pilot were discovered following checks conducted by the airline’s health staff.