I was reading a new book put out by Gegenstandpunkt and came across a passage that I figured this forum could appreciate:
“Everyone needs work — many people cannot find any. One would be in the best of company if one judged this to be a social problem and imagined that “promoting employment”[i] was the appropriate solution. One might call for government measures to create jobs and reduce non-wage labor costs, for more pressure on the unemployed with Hartz IV[ii] and other welfare state regulations, for the wealth tax to be done away with and the “scarce commodity” of work redistributed by reducing working hours, for the “creation of new jobs” through part-time and temporary work, or whatever. However, this would mean overlooking a certain absurdity: if there is not so much to do anymore, if what is required can be done by fewer people in less time — why does everyone need work, and especially so many tightly packed working hours, in order to be able to live? Shouldn’t less work mean saved effort? Why doesn’t the equation hold?
The fact that so many people need work and can’t find any is due to an economic problem and everyone knows this. Work does not happen if it is not profitable, i.e., if it does not bring in enough for the company having it done; not enough return, that is, to withstand the competition, which is “global.” But if this is so — if work only takes place if and so long as it is profitable — then it takes place only because it provides a company with monetary returns. Profitability is the economic purpose for which it takes place. Work is supposed to be done; for no other reason than because work pays off; with no other goal than the never-ending task of being profitable and bringing in money; so the more, the better. The best thing would be to supply the whole world, to build subways for the Chinese and to equip the oil sheikhdoms with air conditioners, in order to monopolize everyone’s buying power with the work done. Work because it makes money: this categorical imperative dominates the prevailing conditions so totally that everyone today must follow it to be able to live, and needs work, no matter which kind. And that is the only reason why work does not happen; it would not make enough money. And this is evidently more and more often the case the more progress is made increasing the profitability of the work done. The economic objective that is totally and exclusively decisive in the so-called market economy evidently requires “full employment” and “structural unemployment.” There can’t be enough work because work makes companies rich; and at the same time companies make sure that less and less work meets this requirement.”