It always amuses me when I hear from a Marxist. I suspect that it is the same amusement that comes when a physician hears from a phrenologist or a chemist hears from an alchemist. We can excuse the ignorance of past ages because they just didn't know. Members of future generations will look on our own errors and laugh. But this is where we are.
Marxism, communism, and socialism and the like are lies. We know this from the empirical data we have gained from historical example. Communism has been inflicted on the countries of the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. The result is that those countries suffered from material deprivation. They did not go on to better and glorious things. They either collapsed, adopted free market reforms, or continue to live by economic subsidy from the West. Other countries that adopt certain features of socialism face huge gaping holes in their budgets as we see social democracies like Greece, Portugal, and the like facing economic turmoil. Here in the USA, Medicare and Social Security face a very uncertain future. In short, the Marxist experiments show that Marxism is a failure.
Free market capitalism has shown the reverse. Today, poor people in the USA enjoy a standard of living that royalty did not enjoy a century ago. If capitalism is so detrimental to the working classes, why are the working classes so well off? Why are they driving gas guzzling Fords, listening to their country music, while yammering at their wives on their cellphones to gas up the 4-wheeler so they can go mudding? To argue that the working classes are worse off is absurd. It is so absurd that many Marxists have simply changed their argument in favor of the "environment." We need to save the planet. Christ in a shithouse.
A reader of the C-blog directs us to Bertrand Russell's famous essay In Praise of Idleness. Reading this in light of history shows just how badly Russell got it. Check out this prediction:
In Russia, owing to more economic justice and central control over production, the problem will have to be differently solved. The rational solution would be, as soon as the necessaries and elementary comforts can be provided for all, to reduce the hours of labor gradually, allowing a popular vote to decide, at each stage, whether more leisure or more goods were to be preferred. But, having taught the supreme virtue of hard work, it is difficult to see how the authorities can aim at a paradise in which there will be much leisure and little work. It seems more likely that they will find continually fresh schemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed to future productivity. I read recently of an ingenious plan put forward by Russian engineers, for making the White Sea and the northern coasts of Siberia warm, by putting a dam across the Kara Sea. An admirable project, but liable to postpone proletarian comfort for a generation, while the nobility of toil is being displayed amid the ice-fields and snowstorms of the Arctic Ocean. This sort of thing, if it happens, will be the result of regarding the virtue of hard work as an end in itself, rather than as a means to a state of affairs in which it is no longer needed.
Proletarian comfort? Popular vote? The one thing Bertrand Russell got right is that idleness did come to the USSR. It came from workers sloshed on vodka who sat around doing nothing. I do not condemn this behavior. In that context, I praise it. The result was the collapse of the USSR. I'll drink to that.
Then we have The Right to Be Lazy written by Paul Lafargue in 1883 which is a condemnation of capitalism for "forcing" workers into wage slavery. Those poor bastards. I bet things were so bad that they even considered quitting. Yet, they didn't. Why? This question never gets answered. The rest is one long diatribe about the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. Typical Marxist horseshit. My favorite part is at the beginning:
A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which for two centuries have tortured sad humanity. This delusion is the love of work. . .
You know the rest--sweatshops, child labor, robber barons, etc. Blah blah blah. I can say this because there are two things I know. The first is that these people were not slaves. They wanted to work, and they did. If life outside of the factories was so great, they would have pursued this. But they didn't. This brings us to the second thing. They did work. A LOT. And their lives were improved because no Marxist ever compares that life of work to the alternative--tilling the fields. Industry was an improvement over agriculture.
The great crime for the Marxist is to have to work in order to get paid. They don't understand why they must give in order to get. They castigate greedy capitalists not realizing the early years when many of them chose to save instead of consume and chose to work instead of loaf. Once they had amassed the fruits of their labors and the rewards of their risks, along come the Marxists who want to redistribute the fruits of these labors and risks in the name of "social justice." That is rich. Let us rob from the hard working and give to the lazy. This is the truth behind "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The result of that motto is that everyone loses the ability to work.
Unless someone puts a gun to your head, it isn't slavery. Sorry, folks. Some of you probably have cushy jobs and spend the bulk of your days reading Facebook and whining about your jobs and how bad you have it. But you choose to work there. You choose to work. People may counter that they have to work to live. Well, that is not the fault of the capitalist. That is the fault of a universe that doesn't give a damn about you and gives you the options to work or to return to inert matter. Capitalism is to be praised because poverty is the default setting for humanity. You need do nothing to be poor. If you want to be rich, somebody has to work. Anyone who says differently is looking to rob somebody.
Karl Marx was a failure and a mooch who concocted this philosophy to spare him the indignity of having to work. This was a monstrous injustice. How dare someone like him have to get off his ass and earn a living? Well, I have to ask the other side of the question. How dare he ask me to give him a living from my earnings? Is this not slavery?
And what about leisure? Why do we have to work so much? You don't. Part with your cellphones and your internet and whatever else you have, and you can enjoy a Brady Bunch standard of living for about half what you earn now. People work more because they wish to consume more or because they wish to save more. If you want to work less, there are plenty of employers who will oblige you. There are plenty of part time and temporary work positions out there. You literally can work as little as possible and still enjoy a high standard of living here in the USA even in this recession. But for some reason, there are laws that restrain me from working more. To work more, I have to find a second job or start a business. I really hate this.
The one thing I don't share with the minimalist movement is their aversion to work. Leo Babauta once worked two jobs, but guys like Everett Bogue are just bums. Go ahead and quit your job and try to live off blogging. See where that takes you. I love to blog but even if I made money from this gig I would still work a job.
My way is what I call "blue collar simplicity." I will need to put together a page in the sidebar talking about that. Basically, I believe in hard work and simple living. The maximalists believe in hard work and living large. They make a lot, but they spend even more than they make. Minimalists hate work, so they live like paupers to escape work. I just see these two paths as being stupid. Why not work and save? Why not find happiness in that work? Why not put that extra money in your investments and build yourself a fortune to give you the freedom to choose what work you want to do in the future or give your children an education or what have you?
If you want to know why I am like this, the answer is simple. I don't think life should be about consumption. Both Marxism and consumerism share this fundamental trait. Life is ultimately about food, water, clothing, and shelter. To me, these things are simply problems to deal with in living your life. I don't want the end of my life to be reduced to how much I ate and what kind of clothes I wore. The goal is to not think about these things, and I don't.
I don't work for free, but I don't work for money either. I want to get paid, and I want to make as much as I can. But ultimately, I want to love what I do, and I do. Because people are miserable, they don't understand my love of work. They don't grasp it so they assume I am either insane or stupid.
For me, material abundance is the byproduct of working. The work itself is what produces happiness. The first caveman who decided to kill a second deer immediately after killing the first deer understood this. Since the activity had to have a purpose beyond the mere pleasure of doing this, he reasoned that he could trade the extra meat to someone who could make him a better outfit from the skin of the deer. You might laugh at this, but you do precisely this on your job when you don't immediately spend your paycheck but save it instead. You don't know how you will spend that money, but you keep working. Save enough money, and you realize that you aren't working anymore to fill your needs but for some other reason. Entrepreneurs understand this. Everyone else doesn't. To them, it is work to spend with a preference for not working. They will never fathom the passion of a guy like Steve Jobs.
But to each his own. I don't care how other people live. Just don't ask me to pay your bills for you. I'm also not going to envy the lazy whether they are rich or poor. This is because there is no happiness in idleness. But how can there be happiness in work especially dull repetitive work?
As I have pointed out, all work can be reduced to dull repetitive boring tasks. Science is one great example of this. Learning science is fun. You just read a book, listen to a lecture, or watch Discovery. Doing science is damn tedious and boring. Even on Mythbusters they go through a lot to pull off the stuff they are doing. What you learn is that a guy like Adam Savage just loves to build stuff. Why is it fun when Adam Savage builds a contraption for a show versus when a carpenter builds a deck for the back of your home? What is the difference?
My most creative endeavor is writing this blog. Watching me do it is not pretty. I usually have a caffeinated beverage handy and a bunch of notes and scribbled paperwork around me. There are often four or five windows open on my browser as I consult various sources for quotes and/or pics of hot babes. I just tap away at the keys. Then, there is formatting and revision. But I enjoy the activity. When I publish something, I feel a bit of satisfaction. I will look over the post on the blog and feel that afterglow. Five minutes later, I am working on the next project. When I need time to think, I go wash dishes, tend to my chores, or whatnot. My entire day is one endless orgy of activity. When I am at work, it is no different. I lose myself in what I am doing. I measure myself between the twin poles of quality and production hitting the sweet spot between the two. And I pepper my coworkers all day long with the kind of wit you read here.
I can't identify with the people who hate their work. That is all laziness is--the hatred of work. They work out of obligation and not love. Because it is an obligation for them, they become slaves. What hellish life that must be. But this hell is a hell of the mind. They created it for themselves because they feel they have no choice and no freedom. But there is plenty of freedom. They want freedom without responsibility or consequences. There is no such thing.
The ultimate refuge for these slackers is in the parasite class. Like the shamans of old, they con their way into not having to do real work. They provide "leadership" which amounts to not taking responsibility for anything. They "govern" and "regulate." They keep things going so we can live. How is this any different from what the pagan priests did in accepting sacrificial offerings to keep the gods happy and from killing us all? It is one big con job. Anyone who wants such a job is automatically a piece of shit in my book. They should slash their own throats, bleed out, and fucking die. By doing this, they would make a true offering that would benefit humanity. Or they could do something even better such as grabbing the business end of a broom and sweeping up the place. Spending all day crafting mission statements and filling out useless reports benefits no one.
Enjoying downtime, vacations, retirement, and all that is also a waste. It is fine to rest and recharge the batteries. But I've talked to people who have retired, and every one of them has told me the same thing. It is damn boring. The golf and the hunting don't cut it for them. I know how they feel because this is how I am on days off. It absolutely sucks. I might feel differently if I had a family. But I don't. Forced out of work, I turn to the blog as a substitute for work. I have to stay in the state of flow as much as possible. This requires work.
I don't want to live any other way. I have to move, work, create, or do something. What else is there? Drinking Jim Beam? Watching Oprah? This brings us to what I always ask the Marxist--Compared to what? Work sucks compared to what? What else can you show me that is going to do so much for my life? What better drug is there? Why not just take a sleeping pill and just doze all day? Or why not take the whole bottle and sleep forever? I am happy working, so it must work. The question I must ask the idler is this. How does idleness bring happiness? How does doing nothing make you a happy person? I have never received an answer that didn't involve the doing of something even if it was just reading books. No one just sits there breathing. Even some Indian ascetic will spend time picking the lice out of his beard. Ultimately, they say "hobbies." A hobby is just work that you aren't paid to do. If you think working for money is dumb, then working for free is even dumber.
Go read Mark Twain on this. I read that shit in elementary school, and it changed my life. Work is found in the obligation. I don't feel obliged to work because I can always choose to stop living. I choose to live, so I choose to work. Because I chose it, I am not a slave. Because I am not a slave, I enjoy every bit of what I do.
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