[p2p-research] Fwd: Missing Productivity and the Rise of Social Production

[Stan Rhodes]

Kevin, I think Yglesias' ironic portrayal of the hard-working American
mindset reveals a deeper and more meaningful critique. Many Americans really
do see working hard as a virtue*, and market-value production as the goal.
The American corporate hero works hard and plays hard, and if he can't do
that, he buys a Dilbert calendar and grins and bears it.  Another day,
another dollar.

The pervasive corporate mindset may include brown-nosing, but is more
accurately seen as a competitive mindset.  Workers attempt to signal their
"workaholicness" and productivity across corporate organizations, competing
for very high and real stakes--the difference in income that allows an
employee to send her kids to private school, or in this economy, keep her
job.

Yglesias' alludes to the mental model of the American corporate worker
implicitly defining "play hard" as not being productive.  If playing is
productive, it creates market value, which is actually work.  Playing hard
is not productive at all, and SHOULDN'T be, because if playing was
productive, it would be work.  Play isn't productive; play isn't USEFUL.  In
the American corporate mindset, work and play (as verbs) are mutually
exclusive.  One can play at work, but that's fooling around; that's not
productivity, that's Dilbert.  As I'm sure you've noticed, one of the
"paradigm shifts" hitting the corporate world is attempting to break the
work-or-play dichotomy, but of course, only for the "creative class," who
need to provide innovation to increase corporate productivity.

Yglesias' also alludes to the problem of this mindset: the mentality
ingrained in the "work hard, play hard" American maxim creates obstacles on
the road to an "information age," where not everything is measured in USD
and GDP.  Including, of course, productivity.  Industrial age thinking
becomes "productivity block" in the information age.

Not a single recent discussion or policy recommendation about the American
economy has touched this issue, nor do I think any will.  The mental model
of work and play runs too deep for most of the American public.  The
industrial age mentality will be undermined until the youth of today,
mature, and playing and producing in a very different economic world, look
at the corporate propaganda of today much as we view the black-and-white
cigarette ads of yesteryear, and wonder why America so thoroughly and
willingly accepted something so obviously harmful and silly.

-- Stan

* I'd argue a further classic split in stereotypes here: the positive "just
do it" worker / negative "git 'er done" bubba versus the positive "work
smarter" professional / negative aloof "poindexter."   Essentially, gross
stereotypes of blue and white collar American workers.

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/4/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > By the way, you have to look at the extraodinary productivity of dutch
> workers, not at the myth that there 'barely working' at all ...
> >
>
> I think Yglesias was actually alluding to that in an ironic
> way--tipping his hat to the conventional perception that they were
> "barely working" and yet somehow were not starving.  The idea that you
> should actually get your work done and then go home and do what you
> want, instead of getting brownie points (brown-nose points?) for being
> the last out of the office, is distinctly unamerican.
>
> Best,
> Kevin
>
>
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