Jason Read and Jeremy Gilbert on Marx, Spinoza, Work, and Breaking Bad
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- čas přidán 17. 05. 2024
- Even as the rewards of work decline and its demands on us increase, many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery-working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle. To paraphrase Spinoza, why do people fight to be exploited as if it were liberation?
Jason Read's book - The Double Shift - turns to the intersection of Marx and Spinoza and examines contemporary ideologies and the modern phenomena of work-motivational meetings at Apple Stores, the culture of Silicon Valley, as well as film and television, from Office Space to Better Call Saul-to argue for the transformation of our collective imagination and attachment to work.
Here he is interviewed by Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural & Political Theory at the University of East London, and co-author (with Alex Williams) of Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back) www.versobooks.com/products/4...
Jason Read is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. The Double Shift:
Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work is out now www.versobooks.com/en-gb/prod...
00:00 Intro
00:56 Why Spinoza and Marx?
03:22 Why Work?
11:35 The Ideology of Work
15:15 The Psychology of Work
20:57 Freedom
28:21 Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul
42:07 ‘Seeing the better and doing the worse’
44:49 Negative Solidarity - Sorry to Bother You
51:23 The Future of Work
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We should stop using the word "work" as though it's synonymous with going to our job. When we clean the house it's work. When we more the lawn it's work. When we reside a bike it's work. When we go to our job we are selling our ability to work in a very particular way to someone who gives us as little money as possible to do the thing they need done. The difference use important. My job is at night, and so I spend all day working on things that matter to me, and at a predetermined time I have to stop doing that and go to my job.
Roger that. Only 10 mins in but this chap’s language feels a bit unspecific and diffuse…
Well said. We don't dislike 'work' or 'working' - we dislike capitalists profiting from our labour!
Jason is correct to identify 'precarity' as an issue, a defining issue in social structure.
this is 🔥
What a great conversation.
Spinoza and Marx??? You had me right there.
Extremely intelligent commentary
A massive point about the "alienation" of labor that Marx talks about extends to the actual intrinsic joy we get from labor.
This was great
I wouldnt place them together like this. Sure , they can help embellish the other, and they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but they are kind of different for very different reasons. Maybe because im British, we tend away from european philosophy and rely on our own sociology to understand how they all fit in the box.
Precariousness for instance as a class in its own right is primarily from the work carried out in the Manchester class study by les back i think 🤔 , sociology doing its thing.
Maybe not les back (he does race studies, but maybe it was someone else)
Working for the profit of some corporate beast is not the best use of our humanity.
' many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery-working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle' - because they need to eat and pay a mortgage or rent, and for energy to keep warm.
Yes, of course, but hustle culture and embracing the grind are only one strategy for doing so, it is also possible for people to organize and improve their conditions collectively.
@@unemployednegativity Yes, but Jason, it's the language, 'embracing the grind' or 'doubling down' implies an active choice in a direction, when the reality for many is that the additional paid work may be the only option to eat that week, or pay rent. The possibility to organize is not an alternative strategy to eating and paying the bills it must run in parallel. But I haven't read your book, so it is likely I'm misunderstanding at this point.
One of the things I try to think about in the book is the way in which the "mute compulsion" of economic relations, the necessity of working more just to live, intersects with ideological or even affective investments in work. You are right that there is no real choice, but many people embrace hustle culture as if it was a choice, seeing work not just as something they have to do in order to live, but in something that defines their sense of self and sense of worth. @@kr050
Please stop "apologizing" for talking about "two dead white guys." We are grown ups, and not triggered by white men.
Film American
Footbal
Has this Jason chap ever had a non academic job?
Why would that matter?
we all know the answer to this after 30 secs in the vid.
Let us see I have been a busboy, a dishwasher, a camp counselor, a mail clerk at a law firm, worked in an animal shelter for many years as an adoption counselor, was a production assistant for television. That is just to name a few.
exactly and looks like a good book, congrats on the publication @@unemployednegativity
@@unemployednegativityexactly, congrats on the publication