The Laments of the Privileged
Before I go into complaining about global capitalism, I would like to congratulate our co-blogger Vijay on his marriage this weekend. It was of course great seeing everyone and I wish the couple many happy years together. Anyway, now on to the revolution:
This weekend we went to Chicago for Vijay’s wedding. On the way their we had a layover in Las Vegas. We sat for an hour next to some slot machines. I have never played slots, but I have always harbored a fantasy that the first time I did I would win some large amount of money. I figured this was my shot, so I went to the machines with a quarter in hand. Sadly, the machines only took bills and a dollar was a little more than I wanted to risk, so I just went back to my seat. A few minutes later some guy let out a whoop…he won $5,000. Which really would have been nice. So I spent the next few minutes wishing I had spent the dollar, because $5,000 would have been nice, really nice. We could have take a trip…or bought some new camera stuff…paid off some bills…
Anyway, today in the New York Times’ continuing series on how a million dollars isn’t what it used to be we learn about a new “working class” millionaire:
Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.
May I, on behalf of real working-class people (with their permission, I am certainly not part of the working class), say “fuck you” to these whiny assholes. Among the many insulting things about this article the idea of calling these people “working-class” pretty much takes the cake. Has the Times forgotten what working class means? These people are members of the professional class at best. They are more akin to landed gentry, with large net worth and high salaries they are insulated against the risks the rest of the middle and working classes face every day.
The aforementioned Mr. Steger has a net worth of around $3 million dollars, an amount that your average teacher in Oakland would have to work for 75 years to save up, assuming they didn’t spend money on rent or food. Sadly, in our system what the worshipers of the free market call “insentive” really starts to look like a sickness that causes wealthy people to work 80 hours a week to feel as wealthy as everyone else. With 3 million in the bank (and a house owned free and clear) Mr. Steger does not need to work. But somehow he is convinced that he must keep his “nose to the grindstone” in order to claw his way into the American aristocracy.
Silicon Valley, just like Hollywood, promises a short cut to super-wealth, to become Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison with jets and mega yachts. The sickness of our age is that there are more than a few people with net worths a thousand times the excessive sum that Mr Steger thinks isn’t enough. I hate to go hear, but in Marx’s time there was a super-wealthy aristocracy a bourgeoisie struggling to claw up a ladder that didn’t go all the way up and a vast proletariat make a tiny percentage of that. Without even considering the so-called global south the inequalities in this country have become insane again and I would have to agree with the Times that is a new gilded age, and just like then the empires of plutocrats are enabled by a codependent bourgeois, to busy trying to get rich than do anything to change the system they are trapped in.
I read somewhere, I forget where, that the reason it is so hard to get Americans to vote for social programs that would benefit them is that they all believe that they are going to be rich someday. This is affluenza, an obessions with making more, with being rich(er). Its a trick of course, but for every class and group there is a story of how they could become super-rich, how one day they will want to protect their assets from the government, or the “death tax”. They might become film directors or race car drivers. Sports star or rappers. Or for my class we are promised we might become millionaires in a start-up, or get promoted up to be executives. Maybe it happens to some, but just a few. Its just like the slot machines, intermittent reward. Just enough people become very wealthy to keep everyone working at it, but in the end the house always wins.
August 6th, 2007 10:18
Yes, I’m glad you posted about this article, because I was about to do so also. (I like that you gave a shout out to our homie Vijay who had a beautiful wedding this weekend. I was truly humbled and touched by how loving his family and friends are with each other. He and his ‘wifey’ (who is very cool herself) are already wealthy beyond measure thanks to their strong and healthy social network. I see a stark contrast between the deep, socially embedded happiness of our newly wedded friends and the superficial wealth of these anxious, rat-racing millionaires. My following comment is inspired by this contrast…) I like that you made the connection with class politics, and I think you’re right to be offended by their calling these “whiney assholes” part of the working class. But I’ll take your argument even further and say that it might not be helpful to see them as part of the bourgeois class either. In fact, given the changes in the dominant mode of production from industrial to immaterial labor (”immaterial”=information, communication, affect (including service)), the proletariat vs. bourgeois dichotomoy is not the appropropriate way for progressives to conceptualize class politics anymore (BTW, I’m drawing here on Empire and Multitude by Hardt and Negri). This article presents an excellent example of why not. These millionaires are working their asses off just like most other Americans, and they’re getting exploited just like other Americans. However, it’s hard to see how they are being exploited when we think of them as rich millionaires, because on the old view of exploitation, the bourgeoisie (capitalists) appropriate the surplus value produced by the workers (where surplus value is the value of the products produced by workers beyond their basic needs for living and reproduction - for a clear explanation of this, see Marx’s speech, “value, price, and profit”). In the old, industrial paradigm of production, value could be measured in terms of quantities of material products corresponding to quantities of labor devoted to their production. But in the new paradigm of production, value becomes immeasurable, because the products of labor are immaterial (communication, information, and affective and social relationships). In terms of these new sources of value, these millionaires in the NYT story are still getting exploited, despite the material wealth they have reaped from the internet boom. The labor that they have put into producing software or internet companies has given them lots of money relative to the rest of the world, but this money does not bring them happiness because money is not an appropriate measure of value anymore. You can’t put a price on good social knowledge and on healthy affective relationships with not only your friends and family but especially the rest of the world (e.g., can you put a price on the feeling of security that Americans could gain from healthy, peaceful social relationships with the persons in the global south who are now villified as ‘terrorists’?). You can see how these millionaires are still being exploited if you conceive of exploitation in terms of the expropriation of the common knowledge, information, and communication that they are producing. Who then is expropriating this common? Not one particular person but a political-economic system of capitalism and non-democratic politics, through which the creative energies of working people are wasted on the production and consumption of shit that people don’t really need (McMansions, cars, designer clothes, Coke-a-Cola, sitcoms, etc.). These whiney millionaires are caught up in this system of exploitation too, because even though they are at the top of the heap of creative production of the immaterial common (directly producing software and internet technologies), they are still allowing their products to be submitted to the competition of the ‘world market,’ and thereby they lose the potential to have democratic control over what is done with the common. They are being tricked by many ideologies into allowing themselves to be exploited in this way, and the NYT article points to some of these: the achievement ideology (”Silicon Valley offers an unusual twist on keeping up with the Joneses. The venture capitalist two doors down might own a Cessna Citation X private jet. The father of your 8-year-old’s best friend, who has not worked for two years, drives a bright yellow Ferrari. Temptations loom everywhere.”), along with the fetishization of commodities and conspicuous consumption (what Steve refers to as “affluenza”), and the ideology of competition for educational opportunities (e.g., paying a lot more for a house in an area with good schools). All of these ideologies are premised on a view that we are in competition with each other for a limited amount of value. That’s simply wrong. Value is now limitless - the value of social knowledge and relationships is infinite. If these millionaires and all of us could realize this, they and we would see that we can stop competing with each other over something for which their is enough to share with all, and that instead we should start cooperating with each other and start talking about how best to democratically organize the flows of communication, knowledge, and people throughout the world.
August 6th, 2007 21:27
Dude, that was an awesome comment. Actually made me sit and think about my life and priorities. If only people read our blog, because they should hear that.