Was: Re: [PEN-L] Why did the Soviet people produce so much Discussion of work and productivity too often starts from the misleading premise that the object of working is to produce. This premise is misleading because, from an evolutionary perspective, the connection between working and wealth is not one of necessity. It is useful, instead, to think of the product as the more or less "accidental" byproduct of industry, in the same sense that procreation usually occurs as the unintended consequence of sexual pleasure. Such a perspective may seem eccentric until one becomes aware of the abundance of mysteries it clears up.
Or, think of the evolution of language. Does anyone believe that language -- and the physiological capabilities that enable speech -- evolved for the purpose of communicating information or ideas? Yet that is what we typically, perhaps unreflectively, assume that language is "for". I would rather view language as the pure expression of certain human characteristics with meaning occuring as a side effect of the expressive impulse. Capitalism enshrines the notion that the object of work is not only to produce but to produce superfluously. Going from a regime of surplus value to one of production for use may sound like an advance, but it is actually a retreat that seeks to imitate the effects of commodity fetishism using more primitive techniques and materials. It is to capitalism what "folk art" is to technology -- a jet plane hand-carved from a block of wood. The real advance is not to go from production of one kind of value to production of value of another kind but to "establish play as the canonical form of non-exploitive work." In saying this, I want to stress that there persists a residue of play even in the most oppressive drudgery, lest the laborers perish. In cases where every last residue of "joy in work" is extinguished, the activity ceases to be work and can only be understood as a crude method of extermination. -- Sandwichman
