TIMENERGY: The solution is not capitalism, but it's not communism either
Traditional grand narratives (“communism” and “capitalism”) won’t help us here
Traditional grand narratives (“communism” and “capitalism”) won’t help us here
Karl Marx, the father of communism, thought the worst thing was the commodification of labor power. More than most theorists before him, Marx was keen on the problems that stem from workers competing against one another for lower wages while their employers always had an incentive to overwork and underpay as a way of gaining profit. What Marx did not see was how Stalinism later, in an attempt to “de-commodify labor power” still exploited timenergy and reduced it to labor power.
Not only did many in the USSR experience still having to work, in some cases they had to work more—when your country is at war with the rest of the capitalist countries, “war communism” goes on forever, so the communist state and its reigning bureaucracy has ample cause to indefinitely defer freeing up timenergy for all. We will have to come back to this later. I only bring it up for now so that those who see me using the term “labor power” and talking about its commodification do not then suppose I am more sympathetic of communism than capitalism. The actually-existing versions of both are not something worth defending, and the ideal theoretical versions pave no realistic way forward wherein we could have our timenergy.
I can be sympathetic to arguments on both sides of the communism vs. capitalism divide, but those are old words belonging to a previous century’s struggles. If we have learned anything it is that no social change that comes from above or below, by means of revolution or reform, has a chance of making positive long-lasting and broad changes for the good of all if it does not have a thoroughly fleshed out understanding of timenergy that gets centered and prioritized. For now, no existing political movement or ideology has a monopoly on solutions related to this.
Political struggle and economic scarcity and competition bend all technological developments to the beck and whim of the war machine and private profit-focused ends. So we keep working ourselves into the ground as our families grow distant and the communal fabric of every locale rips apart.
Eat, sleep, work and the repetition of these activities take priority or we are made to regret it. We consequently collapse into burnout under the weight of our own expectations.[1] How often we burnout, how we treat ourselves and others when burnt, and how fast we bounce back, develop the primary character disorders and personality dispositions that define us in a burnout society.
We can get addicted to the results of this lifestyle if we are able to find meaning in it, but many are not. Those who can make this lifestyle work for themselves are like addicts. Addicts love company, so we are always being sold on this or that lifestyle fad (job) that offers to make a virtue out of the necessity imposed on a work-centric social order.
[1] Byung Chul Han’s The Burnout Society develops the burnout phenomenon, and does so in relation to time, but he has not thought the structural relation between time, energy, and labor power. One of my friends in Mexico thinks Han doesn’t understand or care about the experience of regular workers and instead wrote The Burnout Society for silicon valley PMCs. I say they matter too though, and Han’s work is nonetheless a forever classic.
This post was an excerpt from TIMENERGY: Why You Have No Time or Energy. Enjoy it serially here for free. If you prefer a physical copy, orders within the U.S. can get it at a discount here. Otherwise, I recommend getting it from Amazon. Or just follow this Substack and read it serially over time! Also, stay tuned for the Audible version of this - in production now!
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the way forward: cooperatives & citizens assemblies based on bio-regions
I mean, the solution seems kinda clear to me - decentralisation. The tech is mostly there. Just it's so radical compared to how the world is currently being run, that anyone in the existing power structure, left or right, feels threatened and finds a way to push back.