Disclaimer: I had written all of this at random while on a road trip, so please forgive the jumbled nature of these reflections. This is my first entry on this site, a sort of test trial. Also, I realize I make plenty of assumptions about capitalism and parts of the financial industry while making my points, ones which you may not hold to be true. My hope is that I potentially can motivate some of you to take on a different perspective on these matters. If not in this entry, then maybe in others.
As yet another lost soul who went through all the troubles of attaining a bachelor’s degree, I just want to do something that matters. As I will discuss, one’s job or career choice is not only important for one’s personal life, but it also matters from a moral standpoint. Knowing what I know, I take it to be a responsibility to choose a profession that’s in some sense honourable and socially valuable, like my mother and grandmother did for example (going into nursing and teaching respectively).
It’s a shame how a capitalist mode of production has influenced the way people tend to view ‘labour’. Due to the coercion inherent to the transactions made between capital owners and desperate workers, people have become so alienated from the work they do, from other people, and even from themselves. So much so that many simply perceive labour as a means to an end, a way to simply survive, as opposed to an end in itself.
Human beings are creative creatures, who long to use and develop their talents that contribute to their world and their own personal fulfillment. A society ought to recognize that and structure an economy that’s conducive to the realization of those truths.
I don’t wish to fall into the same hyperconsumerist, riches-obsessed mindset that late-stage capitalism has induced in so many people today. I haven’t fallen into that trap yet, as I do recognize that the desire to increase one’s income and/or wealth in an economy is often never-ending and doesn’t provide real happiness to a person.
Some people say that a constant fixation on accumulating money is important. One doesn’t really need to enjoy their job, for its primary purpose is to provide you with the financial means to do things outside your job that you would like. While this is often descriptively true, I find the values that underlie this claim to be quite disturbing for at least two reasons.
Firstly, it is dismissing the value that work has in itself. What gives a human’s life meaning is the activities that they willingly choose to engage in and the fulfillment they derive from them.
Work consumes a huge part of our lives, for most adults, it’s about a third of it. There’s no good reason to think it’s impossible for people to have work that’s fulfilling and worthwhile for its own sake, especially considering that there are some people who are fortunate enough that they do in fact enjoy their work.
I firmly believe, and I do with good reason, that those who say that one doesn’t need to enjoy their job, say that as a coping mechanism of sorts. They themselves don’t find fulfillment in their job so they minimize the value of meaningful work in order to feel they are not wasting their own time working. It’s quite sad really.
Secondly, and I take this to be very important, this common mindset wrongly suggests that work has no moral dimension to it, that certain work can’t be considered more socially valuable than others. Hyperindividualism has made people lose sight of the fact that wealth accumulation is not simply the result of individual merit, but it is largely due to the work of others, and those who achieve financial success often get it off the backs of the less fortunate.
This is particularly evident when we consider the trade relationships between developing countries and developed countries, but also the economic and often exploitative relationship between the upper class and the working class. This is all to say that the place one holds in our economy has material effects on other people, and that is subject to moral scrutiny.
For example, an executive or committed worker in the fossil fuel industry who maintains a form of energy production that continues to destroy our planet and possibly engages in lobbying efforts in order to enrich themselves, all while harming the futures of others, particularly those in poor urban areas.
A corporate worker in the finance industry who perpetuates a system where predatory lending occurs, who works to take advantage of people’s stagnant wages, the rising cost of living, and the lack of adequate social safety nets in order to attain money for themselves.
This worker may prey on people’s financial securities in order to market interest-generating loans to those who consequently end up incurring even more debt in the long term in our increasingly debt-based economy. Instead of genuinely working to empower the less fortunate, such as by operating on a nonprofit basis or advocating for political change, they perpetuate the subordination of the lower classes for their own benefit.
This worker may also trade securities and assets in the financial markets and push for deregulation out of greed and their own private interests, which ultimately lead to financial crashes that hurt the most vulnerable.
There is also the business owner who dominates over the lives of their employees, controls their livelihoods, and exploits their labour while barely giving them enough money to survive. They say such a business owner works hard and takes risks, but the biggest risk they take is potentially losing capital to become a laborer once again, which is the position of most people. But they know how business owners treat their workers, and they’d rather be the ones dominating over others. It is a very cyclical system.
Those who are able to get ahead in these financial pursuits acquire the means to engage in hobbies and other activities. But they can do this only because of the work of other people and of their exploitation of an economy that does not adequately support the less fortunate.
Also, it is possible that a person like this may feel bad as they perform their work, as they may recognize how exploitative and unfair the economic game really is. This may show that they do in fact possess a decent moral conscious.
Nevertheless, they are still choosing a line of work that perpetuates economic forces that reinforce inequality and forms of exploitation. They are still dedicating a significant amount of their time and energy to the maintenance of capitalist exploitation for their own benefit. They work to generate revenue for these businesses that are morally questionable in their structure and practices, and they enrich themselves with said revenue. Despite what one’s perspective is on their work, it still has the same material effects on people’s lives.
If anything, a self-conscious worker or owner should know better, and perhaps should be held even more responsible for not making better choices.
These are all things that I think about when trying to figure out what work I should seek and what career path I should set for myself. I don’t want to simply sell myself to be a clog in the amoral capitalist machine, especially as someone who recognizes our economic system for what it is.
It is deeply unfair for those unfortunate enough to own capital, it depends on an underclass with financial insecurities in order to continue, and it generates stark inequalities that lead to greater social ills. It encourages social atomization, destroys collective spirit, prevents the disadvantaged from realizing their potential, and is corrosive to our democracy.
Me being aware of these facts (as I can argue for each of these points individually), I feel as though I have a responsibility to pursue a career where I can challenge or work to change our social structures or, at the very least, not take jobs where I would be working primarily to preserve the subordination of the unfortunate.
As I said previously, people are mostly concerned with how much money they can make when making their life plans, which is understandable for many due to the financial hardship they have and continue to experience. However, there is a meaningful distinction between the market value people provide and their social value.
The market value simply states your satisfaction of market demand in numerical terms, or how much someone is willing to pay you for your work. And that all depends merely on the time and place you live in. The technology that is available, the new industries that happen to be formed, the changing tastes and demands of the consumer base, the skills employers want to utilize, the government regulations in place, etc. They are all as relative and arbitrary as the times we choose to eat.
One’s market value has no bearing on what the character of the person is like, and whether or not they are having a positive impact on the world. Violent drug dealers and plantation owners may have a lot of market value attributed to them, but it would be very difficult to argue that they have a net positive impact on society.
This is why we have to look at social value, the impact they are materially having on people’s lives and society as a whole, as we establish what they to do to be morally admirable or not. This is the main concern of mine when finding a career to pursue.
I am committed to occupying positions where I would be working to acquire/share more knowledge about the world, to enable people to be treated as equals, to permit them to be free to realize themselves, and allow them to be happy.
In doing so, I would be able to have the ‘work’ part of my life be fulfilling to me, which is what is really important. Everyone should have the effective freedom to realize their potential and give back to humanity in a way that’s socially positive and meaningful to them. It’s really sad that a hypercapitalistic culture has made some people think otherwise.
I know that most people do not share my views on the nature of work and on capitalism in general. I honestly consider myself lucky in that regard, since I’m able to see our current hegemonic ideology for what it is, a way to naturalize forms of oppression under capitalism. I know that political and economic change is very much possible, as it has been throughout history, and also surely needed.
But who knows, maybe people’s minds will in fact be changed. I hope to live long enough to see that.
My Sporadic Thoughts 
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