Chinese whispers a siren song

Some surprise has been expressed by the discovery that the wealth that has been generated by Chinese workers making goods to sell to wealthy Westerners has become concentrated in a few hands. Even in an avowedly communist country, 'development' has led inevitably to inequality.

Or perhaps the surprise is rather that the government in China is concerned about this and is devising policies to deal with it. Because, aside from economists who create an increasingly unconvincing litany of metaphors involving water trickling down or raising boats, the reality is that inequality is an inherent part of capitalism.

Without the inspiration of the super-rich and the fear of joining the lumpenproles why would any of us reluctantly climb back onto the treadmill of work - so especially grim at this time of year and following the extended break most of us took with such alacrity (including this blogger!).

Unfortunately, it would appear that the Chinese are under pressure from the UN to follow entirely the wrong route. The problem is being framed in terms of inequality between the urban and rural areas. Urban incomes are three times as high as rural incomes, leading to suggestions from economists that farmers should become more efficient and China should abandon its policy of self-sufficiency in food.

The comparative figures are, of course, utterly misleading. Like all output figures they only measure what is bought and sold and innumerated in cash. Rural peasants in China do not need much income because they mainly rely on self-provisioning and mutual aid. Just as peasants in our own country did until a hundred years ago or so. The benefit or marketisation will not accrue to them and is more likely to increase real inequality.

More on a couple of programmes from the BBC documenting growing inequality here. Tweet

Is it all worth it for two weeks in the sun?

Something has gone very wrong in the workplace. For many, their work is so distressing that they spend most of the year dreaming of their two weeks in the sun and the retirement to follow. I offer as evidence of this desperately inefficient time-management strategy an advert for Thomson holidays during which we watch a lone, poolside sunbather repeatedly shifting his sun-lounger to catch every possible ray, while we are informed that ‘for every afternoon in the sun you have to work three weeks and two days’. This advert was used to sell summer jet-propelled summer breaks a couple of years back.

There are a number of points about the image conveyed by this advert that are both symbolic and deeply troubling. First, the man is on his own. Are we to assume that he prefers spending his holidays alone, that his perfect escape is to a place where there is only his own company? Second, he is sitting by a swimming pool and yet he never swims. Like so many lives, the really enjoyable activity is missed because the central character, economic man, is distracted by the sun-lounger or his drink or the shadow, or whatever. But most importantly, he is enjoying not being at work because he does not like his work. His holiday represents an escape from his life, which is made unpleasant because of work he undertakes from pressure rather than from choice.

This is the greatest offence that capitalism does to a species who has as one of its central psychological drives the need to carry out useful work in conjunction with others. Again we are persuaded to miss the point, to spend our lives working for holidays and retirement rather than demanding employment that is intrinsically rewarding. I have written about this at great length elsewhere (follow this link to download Arbeit Macht Frei and other Lies About Work), so I am starting this a new strand on the blog which I will come back to from time to time. Please also add your own comments.

A couple of times while applying for funding for research into mining in the South Wales Valleys I was made aware of the ignorance of the nature of working people’s lives by the middle class people who make decisions about them, and the complacency they have when considering the work of others. The shock they feel when their cosy work structures are removed by the new management practices is the only good that I have to say for them. One application for a funding grant was rejected on the basis that ‘Whilst the idea of "participatory employment policy-making" is quite interesting, it is open to the accusation of being somewhat utopian’. In my response I pointed out that even in Medieval Europe, according to a Muttenberg ordinance, ‘every one must be pleased with his work’. According to Kropotkin:

We are laughed at when we say that work must be pleasant, but "every one must be pleased with his work", a medieval Muttenberg ordinance says, "and no one shall, while doing nothing appropriate for himself what others have produced by application and work, because laws must be a shield for application and work."’

My own writing about work is guided by the belief that ‘everyone must be pleased with her/his work’. If that principle is not followed in an economy then the economy is not working properly. We can, and should, do better than an economy where miserable people work in pointless occupations for three weeks and two days just to spend a lonely afternoon by a swimming pool.

Work as it is constituted within capitalism is not only economically inefficient and socially destructive, it is also spiritually offensive. As Schumacher put it, ‘Soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and . . . no amount of "bread and circuses" can compensate for the damage done’, was how Schumacher made this point. Tweet

Space is Money

At school we all hated geography. History teachers were always glamorous and exciting; their tweed jackets and cravats suggested hidden knowledge. Geography teachers always seemed to be part-time games teachers and brought their robust approach back into the class room. This link between geography and sports mysteriously persists in my children's schools. Perhaps it is something to do with the physical.

Whatever our school-era prejudices the time has come when we have to tangle with geography, because whether we are thinking about climate change or globalisation issues of place and space are of key importance in building a sustainable future. For an idea of the excellent work being done by radical geographers listen again to the essay from the esteemed Doreen Massey offered as part of the Today programme for new year's day. (Douglas Coker has kindly made a transcript of this that is posted below.)

The presenters of the Today programme were a bunch of listeners who feel that geography does not receive its due weight. You might characterise this complaint as the victory of history over geography in the classroom or the dominance in our culture of time over space. We are obsessed by a fear of growing old, by failing to make our mark before it is too late, by accumulating money and prestige as quickly as possible. Even fame itself is marked out in intervals of 15 minutes.

In another post you will notice my revulsion from the capitalist mantra that time is money. This is the pernicious nonsense that was brought to us by the factory system where profits were maximised by making as many widgets as possible as quickly as possible. It is the thinking that has led to the loss of joy in work, the loss of quality in what we make and is leading to the death of the planet. It also distracts us from the fact that, in reality, space is money since if we owned land to live on and grow our food on we would have no need to sell ourselves, or as it is euphemistically described, our time, in order to survive.

It is a difficult but interesting exercise to try to think yourself out of the era of clock time, which is relatively short-lived in terms of our human history. Barely more than 300 years ago time was governed by the seasons. Most people worked on the land and could not afford artificial light and so the amount of activity differed hugely depending on the time of year. Time itself was related to significant agricultural or astronomical processes. It was experienced and observed rather than being measured. As clock time has torn us away from this natural relationship with the planet so we can start to rebuild that connection by undermining our obsessive grasp of the 'timepiece' and substituting an awareness of the natural cycle of the year. We can do this in community through celebrating the annual festivals of time, such as the winter and summer solstices, and those of the seasons, such as the midwinter festival that has just passed and the spring festivals that will be with us as the light returns.

So, how about that for a new year resolution? Every time you find yourself being driven by our culture's obsession with time try to rethink the problem in terms of space instead? Or perhaps try throwing away your watch? Or not wearing it on Sunday? Why not make 2007 the year you thought more about space and less about time?

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