From the Sept-Oct 1949 issue of the Western Socialist
To a worker, a job is almost a matter of life and death, for he is dependent on it for his daily wants – food, clothes and a place to sleep. If he cannot find a job, or is without one for any length of time his situation become desperate and it has occasionally happened that protracted unemployment has led to suicide.
The alternatives the worker has to wage labor are few, if any, because the means by which he lives and propagates his species are owned and controlled by a few, who, by devious ways have acquired title to the fields and forests, the factories and the mines. He can, were he able to get sufficient funds or credit, go into business or farming in a small way. There have been those who by means of hard work, luck, and exploitation of their fellow men, succeeded in getting up in the world. This has become, for the most part, a thing of the past. The machine age of today has little use for the small capitalist who has a slim chance for survival as the records show. At best, long hours and a lot of worry is the price one pays for trying to stay away from a job.
He might join the army or navy if he is in good health but he is still a wage-earner dependent on his army pay and subsistence, subject to discipline of orders, engaged in defense of his masters’ interests. He might become a ward of charity if, after an investigation, he has been found worthy and receive his vittles grudgingly handed out – a humiliating way to get by. He could resort to a life of crime, no doubt a more exciting life than sticking bolts in holes day after day, a mere appendage to a machine. But the crime racket is not all sunshine for when he is not in jail, he is often furtively hiding from the police – the guardians of the possessing class.
Returning to our man looking for a job. What sort of thing is a job, what are its characteristics and its obligations?
When a worker and a prospective employer meet to consummate a contract, they seem to meet as equals – as buyer and seller. The worker sells his commodity labor power which has the peculiar property of adding value. THAT is what the capitalist is at the moment interested in buying. Has the commodity the possibility of profit to himself?
As they stand face to face, the worker hat in hand and ill at ease, he is given the once over and after a little preliminary talk about his qualifications for the particular job, he is asked to fill out an application. Among the questions are these: How old are you? Are you married? Where have you worked before and why did you leave? What is your race and religion? (It seems you must have a religion.) After these and other questions are satisfactorily answered, he must undergo a physical examination, he is measured and weighed, his chest thumped and his heart beats counted and he must be finger-printed and photographed. If his health is satisfactory and the question of hours and wages are settled, the contract is closed. The man has a job.
While discussing the proposed contractual relations, the worker does not inquire if the other party drinks, where does he live, does he adulterate his products or turn out poor products on account of his scruples, he has no choice, for Business is Business. Neither should he ask: Does the owner make much profit or has he a market for his goods? Such questions are unseemly and are none of his business. The contract agreed upon gives the worker full value of his commodity – the necessities of life in the standard prevailing in the particular part of the world he happens to be in – and the profits and losses are of no concern to him for he des not get a share of the profits and his wages come out of previously accumulated capital. In passing, it may be said that on the whole his relative wages in proportion to the products turned out are getting smaller and smaller and in the U.S. his wages are the lowest anywhere in that respect.
Some of our commentators and writers advise a worker to select a job that has a future, pick out a growing concern and work faithfully even if wages are low to start, work your way up and become part of the business.
Some of these concerns are great on promises. Spurred on by high hopes, the worker, like a Horatio Alger hero, is up and going all the time, a very zealot for work, but often he finds that just about the time he is due for a raise he is discharged – canned is the word, and another batch is hired at low wages to go through the same process.
Are jobs so plentiful that one can pick and choose? It is only rarely and for short periods that one can have much choice, he must take what jobs are on the market. The unions with the jurisdictional squabbles are a good example of the scarcity of work, for they are continually at work trying to get jobs for their members.
There are a few, a very few employers, who really have the welfare of the worker at heart. This happens occasionally if the capitalist has a part in the managing of the plant, which is seldom the case now. They try to make the conditions as good as possible (the worker not feeling the sting of his enslavement so much). Perhaps our nice capitalist makes greater profits this way, for satisfied workers may mean increased efficiency.
Does our man looking for a job really want one? The truth of the matter is the worker hates the idea of working for someone else, but the needs of existence is the compelling force making him seek one. A proof of this hatred of a job – not work – is to watch the worker when the whistle blows. Let that whistle blow a half minute late a few times and the most docile worker and union hater will start agitating. That is too much for any worker to put up with.
There are some workers who will accept less wages and work more hours for a slight taste of freedom – where if they are a couple of minutes late occasionally they are not docked and the hateful time clock is not in evidence, when they are allowed to smoke and talk, and even taking a drink is not frowned upon too much if the work does not suffer.
It is not work that the wage slave (a punctiliously correct term, for he is a slave of those who own the means of his livelihood) objects to, it is the conditions, the constant surveillance that he is under. This thing of being one of a herd, identified by a numbered badge which must be worn conspicuously, with the worker next to him perhaps being paid to report anything he says or does, and a prison-like atmosphere pervading the whole plant.
There is a vast difference between hatred of a job and hatred of work, for any healthy person likes to work at something or other. I have seen men away from a job and without pay, dig wells and ditches, swing heavy sledges, shovel iron ore, back-breaking work that they would hate to do for wages.
During the hours a day he works for wages, a worker’s energies belong to the buyer. His job is operated by body and brain, a wonderful mechanism of infinite capabilities, yet for the most part these potentialities are lost or atrophied because largely unused. He is in a rut, a rut that grows deeper day by day. At the tavern many congregate to try to forget their troubles after a day of turning out products they have no interest in. At home the talk revolves around the job, the greater part of his life devoted to piling up riches for people he has never seen, all he asks in return is that he be given sufficient for him and his family to live on. His forbears, the chattel slaves of ancient times, occasionally staged a revolt to try and free themselves. They know their status and unlike their modern descendents, they did not go on rampage for an extra pork chop like a wage slave, but wanted to be free.
The modernized slave can read and write, some travel a bit and they have many luxuries that even kings did not have in those early days. He has the impression that he is free. The constitution says so, Fourth of July orators will not let him forget it and it is taught in the schools, so he clings to his chains from which he could free himself if he would get together with his fellow workers. He is in the vast majority, and when he finds out how to free himself and get rid of insecurity and that hateful job he now clings to so tenaciously, the battle is over. He will come into his own.
We think we have the answer in our Declaration of Principles printed in another part of this paper. If you agree it is, why not join with us and together we could make the world fit for all of us to live in.
-Fred Jacobs
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