[Marxism] More from Carl Remick

[Louis Proyect]

(This afternoon I forwarded an item that Carl Remick had posted to 
lbo-talk. After doing some googling, I found a more exemplary item--a 
letter written to the Guardian on March 24, 2003 in response to a 
Madeleine Bunting article on balancing work and non-work lives. It is 
Carl at his best.)

Dear Ms Bunting,

Having a (rare!) idle moment, I would like to commend you on your 
continuing concern with the importance of achieving a work-life balance.

I believe the cult-like devotion to work that swallows whole lives 
these days is yet another nasty idea of US origin - and I say that as 
an American.

I am 53 and have spent my most of my working life, as a corporate 
writer, noting a steady decline in the quality of working conditions. 
Any number of things have combined to make the workplace the hellish 
place it is now.

a) The shift from a manufacturing to a service economy

b) The leveraged buy-outs of the 1980s and "outsourcing" of the 1990s 
that created "lean, mean" companies, permanently wiping out tiers of 
middle management and corporate staff

c) The globalisation of commerce and advent of the PC/internet/cell 
phone that cleared the way for 24/7 feats of Stakhanovite excess

d) Above all, the rise of the "winner-take-all" society, where CEOs 
and suchlike are seen as entitled to live large at everyone else's expense.

What amazes and depresses me is how readily over the years my 
colleagues have acceded to their exploitation. When cell phones and 
pagers first erupted in the workplace, my coworkers fairly burbled 
with delight at the prospect of being equipped with such symbols of 
importance, oblivious to these devices' obvious potential as 
electronic shackles. Yet, I will admit that - as seems to be the 
point of your investigations - it is impossible to escape the 
gravitational pull of today's work-maddened society, even for someone 
as inclined toward dolce far niente as I am:

a) Working for a PR firm in New York during the 1990s, I never for a 
moment imagined I was participating in the creation of a "New 
Economy"; even at the time the decade seemed no more than a steady 
succession of harebrained schemes. Nevertheless, I was up at all 
hours with everyone else, attending to urgent-urgent-urgent (but 
always nonsensical) document revisions. Of course, a PR firm, like a 
law firm, imposes its own special tyranny: billable hours. Billing by 
the hour - around as much of the clock as inhumanely possible - makes 
coffee machines as key to office productivity as computer printers.

b) That, however, was the 90s. Now I'm my own boss - meaning: I got 
chucked out of my job. I foolishly assumed that staying with one 
employer for 12 years would give me some protection from the 
inevitable major downturn, but quite the contrary. I was one of the 
first laid off at my firm, right at the start of the US recession in 
April 2001. Ever since, what with endless futile chases after a 
fulltime job combined with fitful periods of freelance work - again, 
often at crazy hours - I find have less control over my time than ever.

But enough lamentation about the woeful state of the States. May I 
end simply by wishing you the best with your project. I regret to say 
that the UK - via the awful example set by Margaret Thatcher in 
everything - made its own contribution to the decayed condition of 
American society today; nevertheless, the UK has something the US 
entirely lacks - a leftist political tradition that amounts to 
something - that, just possibly, could prove inspirational to the US 
in the correct way. I earnestly hope you do find ways to turn 
Workcamp UK into a more gemutlich place. Here in the US there's a lot 
riding on your success.

Yours,

Carl Remick