36C3 - From Managerial Feudalism to the Revolt of the Caring Classes

36C3 preroll music

Herald: The next talk is by David Graeber,
and he's an author, activist and

anthropologist. And he will be speaking
about his talk "From managerial feudalism

to the revolt of the caring classes".
Please give him a great

round of applause
and welcome him to the stage.

Applause

David: Hello. Hi. It's great to be here. I
wanted to talk. I've been in a very bad

mood this last week owing to the results
of the election in the UK and I would

think very hard about what happened and
how to maintain hope. Ah, there we go.

Good, good. I don't usually use visual
aids, but actually assembled them. And the

thing is, what I want to talk about a
little bit is what seems to be happening

in the world politically, that we have
results like what just happened in the UK

and why there is nonetheless reason for
hope, which I really think there is. In a

way, this is very much a blip. Probably
the most... Um, and but there is a

strategic lesson to be learned, I think.
Speaking as someone who's been involved in

attempts to transform the world, at least
for the last 20 years since I was involved

in the global justice movement. I think
that there is a real lack of strategic

understanding that there's a vast shift
sort of happening to the world in terms of

central class dynamics that the populist
right is taking advantage of and the left

is really being caught flat footed on. So,
I want to make a case of what seems to be

going wrong and what we can do about it.
First of all, in terms of despairing. I

was very much at the point of despairing.
There's so many people put so much work

that I know into trying to turn around the
situation. There seemed to be a genuine

possibility of a broad social
transformation in England. And when we got

the results, I mean, there's a kind of
sense of shock. But actually, if you look

at the breakdown of the vote, for example,
it doesn't look too great for the right in

the long run. Basically, the younger you
are, the more determined you are to kick

the Tories out. The core... Actually, I've
never seen numbers quite like this. The

core... base of... electoral base of the
right wing is almost exclusively old. And

the older you are, the more likely you are
to vote conservative, which is really,

really kind of amazing because it means
that the electoral base of the right is

literally dying off - a process which
they're actually expediting by defunding

health care in every way possible. And
normally you'd say, oh, yes, so what? As

people get older, they become more
conservative. But there's every reason to

think that that's not actually happening
this time around. Especially because

traditionally people who either had been
apathetic or had voted for the left, who

eventually end up voting for the right, do
so at the point when they get a mortgage

or when they get a sort of secure job with
room for promotion and therefore feel they

have a stake in the system. Well, that's
precisely what's not happening to this new

generation. So if that's the case, the
right wing is actually in the long run in

real trouble. And to show you just how
remarkable the situation is. Someone put

together a electoral map of the UK showing
what it would look like if only people

over 65 voted and what it would look like
if only people under 25 voted. Here's the

first one. Blue is Tory. If only people
over 65 voted, I believe there would be

four or five Labor MPs, but otherwise
entirely conservative. Now here's the map.

If only people under 25 voted, there would
be no Tory MPs at all. There might be a

few Liberal Dems and Welsh candidates and
Scottish ones. And in fact, this is a

relatively recent phenomena. Here's... if
you look at the divergence. You know, it really

is just the last few years it started to
look like that. So something has happened

that like almost all young people coming
in are voting not just for the left, but

for the radical left. I mean, Corbyn ran
on a platform that not just two or three

years before would have been considered
completely insane and, you know, is

falling off the political spectrum
altogether. Yet, the vast majority of

young people voted for it. The problem is
that in a situation like this, the swing

voters are the sort of middle aged people.
And for some reason, middle aged people

broke right. The question is, why did that
happen? And I've been trying to figure

that out. Now, in order to do so, I think
we need to really think hard about what

has been happening to social class
relations. And the conclusion that I came

to is that essentially the left is
applying an outdated paradigm. You know,

they're still thinking in terms of bosses
and workers and a kind of old fashioned

industrial sense where what's really going
on is that for most people, the key class

opposition is caregivers versus managers.
And, essentially, leftist parties are

trying to represent both sides at the same
time, but they're really dominated by the

latter. Now, I'm going to go through some
basic political economy stuff as in way of

background. And this is a key statistic,
which is the kind of thing we were looking

at when we first started talking about the
99 percent of the 1 percent are the

beginning of Occupy Wall Street.
Essentially until the mid 70s, there was a

sort of understanding between 1945 and
1975, say, there was an understanding that

as way of productivity increases, wages
will go up, too. And they largely went up

together. This only takes it from 1960,
but it goes back to the 40s. More

productivity goes up. A cut of that went
to the workers. Around 1975 or so it

really splits. And since then, if you see
what's going on here, productivity keeps

going up and up and up and up, whereas
wages remain flat. So, the question is,

what happens to all that money from the
increased productivity? Feasibly, it goes

to one percent of the population. And
that's what we were talking about when we

talked about the 1 percent. The other
point, which was key to the notion of 99

and 1 percent when we developed that, was
that the 1 percent are also the people who

make all the political campaign
contributions. These statistics are from

America, which has a unusually corrupt
system, but pretty much all of them...

Bribery is basically legal in America. But
essentially it's the same people who are

making all the campaign contributions who
have collected all of the profits from

increased productivity, all the increased
wealth. And essentially, they're the

people who managed to turn their wealth
into power, and their power back into

wealth. So. Who are these people want and
how does this relate to changes in the

workforce? Well, the interesting thing
that I discovered when I started looking

into this, is that the rhetoric we used to
describe the changes in class structure

since the 70s is really deceptive.
Because, you know, since really since the

80s, everybody has been talking about the
service economy. What we're shifting from

an industrial to a service economy. And
the image that people have is that, you

know, we've all gone from being factory
workers to serving each other lattes and

pressing each other's trousers and so
forth. But actually, if you look at the

actual numbers of people in retail. People
who are actually serving food. I don't

have a, you know, detailed breakdown here,
but they remain pretty much constant. In

fact, I've seen figures going back 150
years which show that it's pretty much 15

percent of the population that does that
sort of thing. It has been for, you know,

over a century. It doesn't really change.
It goes up and down a little bit. But

basically, the amount of people who are
actually providing services, haircuts,

things like that, is pretty much the same
as it's always been. What's actually

happened is that you've had a growth of
two areas. One is providing, you know,

what I would call caregiving work. And I
would include education and health, but

basically taking care of other people in
one way or another. In the statistics you

have to look at education. Health is only
have a category of caregiving in economic

statistics. On the other hand, you have
administration and the number of people

who are doing clerical, administrative and
supervisory work has gone up enormously to

some degree. So according to some
accounts, it's gone up from maybe 20

percent of the population in, say, UK or
America in 1900 to 40, 50, 60 percent. I

mean, even a majority of workers. Now, the
interesting thing about that is that huge

numbers of those people seem to be
convinced they really aren't doing

anything and that essentially if their
jobs didn't exist, you would make no

difference at all. It's almost as if they
were just making up jobs in offices to

keep people busy. And this was the theme
of my book I wrote on bullshit jobs. And

just to describe the genesis of that book,
essentially, I don't actually myself come

from a professional background. So, as a
professor, I constantly meet people, sort

of spouses of my colleagues, the sort of
people you meet when you're socializing

people in professional backgrounds. Well,
I keep running into people of parties and

saying, well, who work in offices and...
you know, I'm an anthropologist, right. I

keep asking, well, what do you actually
do? I mean, what does a person who is a

management consultant, you know, actually
do all day? And very often they will say,

well, not much. Or you ask people, I am an
anthropologists, what do you do? And

they'll say, well, nothing, really. And,
you know, you think they're just being

modest, you know. So, you kind of
interrogate them by a few drinks later.

They admit that actually they meant that
literally, they actually do nothing all

day. You know, they sit around and they
adjust their Facebook profiles. They play

computer games. They were like, you know,
sometimes I'll take a couple of calls a

day. Sometimes I'll take a couple of calls
a week. Sometimes they're just there in

case something goes wrong. Sometimes they
just don't do anything at all. And you

ask, what? Does your supervisor know this?
And they say, you know, I often wonder. I

think they do so. So, I began to wonder
how many people are there like this? Is

this some weird coincidence that has
happened to run into people like this all

the time? What section of the workforce is
actually doing nothing all day? So I wrote

a little article. I had a friend who is
starting a radical magazine, said you

write something provocative, you know,
something you'd never be able to get

published elsewhere. So I wrote a little
piece called "On the phenomenon of

bullshit jobs" where I suggested that, you
know, back in the 30s, Keynes wrote this

famous essays predicting that by around
now we would all be working 15 hour weeks

because automation would like get rid of
most manual labor. And if you look at the

jobs that exist in the 30s, you know,
that's true. So I said, well, maybe what's

happened is the reason we're not working
15 hour weeks is they just made up

bullshit jobs. And just to keep us all
working. And I wrote this piece as just

kind of a joke, right? Within a week, this
thing had been translated into 15

different languages. It was circulating
around the world because the server kept

crashing, it was getting millions and
millions of hits. I was like, oh, my god,

do you mean it's true? And eventually
someone did a survey, YouGov, I think, and

they discovered that of people in the UK,
37 percent agreed that if their job didn't

exist either would make no difference
whatsoever or the world might be a

slightly better place. I thought about
that. What must that do to the human soul?

You imagine that, you know, waking up
every morning and going to work, thinking

that you're doing absolutely nothing if,
you know. No wonder people are angry and

depressed. And I thought about it, it explains a
lot of social phenomena that if people are

just pretending to work all day and then,
you know, it actually really touched me.

It's strange because I come from a working
class background myself. So you'd think

that, you know, oh, great. So, lots of
people are paid to do nothing all day and

get good salaries, like, my heart bleeds,
you know? But actually, if you think about

it, it's actually a horrible situation
because, you know, as someone who has had

a real job knows, the very, very worst
part of any real job is when you finish

the job but you have to keep working
because your boss will get mad. You know,

you have to pretend to work because it's
somebody else's time. It's very strange

metaphysical notion we have in our society
that someone else can own your time. You

know, so since you're on the clock, you
have to keep working or pretend to be,

make up something to look busy. Well,
apparently, at least a third of people in

our society, that's all they do. Their
entire job consists of just looking busy

to make somebody else happy. And that
must be horrible. So. And it made a lot of

political sense. Why is it the people seem
to resent teachers or autoworkers? After

the 2008 crash, the people who really had
to take a hit were teachers and auto

workers. And there was a lot of people
saying, well, these guys are making 25

dollars an hour, you know? Well, yeah,
that's they're providing useful service or

making cars. You're American. You're
supposed to like cars. You know, cars is

what makes you what you are if you're
American. How would they resent

autoworkers? And I realize that it only
makes sense if there's huge proportions of

the population who aren't doing anything
and were totally miserable and are

basically saying, like, yeah, but you get
to teach kids, you get to make stuff. You

get him in a car. And then you want
vacations, too? That's not fair, you know?

It's almost as if the suffering that you
experience doing nothing all day is itself

a sort of validation of... It's like this
kind of hair shirt that makes you

justifies your salary. Whereas people and
I truly hear people saying this logic all

the time that while teachers, you know, I
mean, they get to teach kids. You don't

want people pay them too much. You don't
want people who are just interested in

money taking care of our kids, do we?
Which is odd because you never hear people

say you never want greedy people. People
are just interested in money taking care

of our money. So therefore, you shouldn't
pay bankers so much. Though you'd think

that would be a more serious problem,
right? Yeah. So there is this idea that if

you're doing something that actually
serves a purpose, somehow that should be

enough. You shouldn't get a lot of money
for it. All right. So so. As a result of

this there is actually an inverse
relationship, that I don't have actual

numbers for this, but there's actually an
inverse relationship, and I have seen

economic confirmation of this, between how
socially beneficial your work is and how

obviously your work benefits other people
and how much you get paid. There's a few

exceptions like doctors, which everybody
talks about. But generally speaking, the

more useful your work, the less they'll
pay you for it. Now, now. This is

obviously a big problem already, but
there's every reason to believe that the

problem is actually getting worse. And one
of the fascinating things I discovered

when I started looking at the economic
statistics is that if you look at jobs

that actually are useful and let's again
look at caregiving. Remember, the big

growth in jobs over the last 30 years has
been in two areas which have collapsed in

the term service, but are really actually
totally different. One is these sort of

administrative, clerical and supervisory
work and the other is the actual

caregiving labour, the work where you're
actually helping people in some way. So,

education and health are the two areas
which show up on the statistics. Okay, if

you look at these statistics, you discover
that productivity in manufacturing, as we

all know, is going way up. Productivity in
certain other areas, wholesale, business

services are going up. However,
productivity in education, health and...

What's this other services? Basically
caregiving in general insofar as it shows

up on the charts, productivity is actually
going down. Well, why is that? That's

really interesting. Yeah, well, we'll talk
in a moment about what productivity

actually even means in this context. But
here's a suggestion as to why. This is the

growth of physicians on the bottom versus
the growth of actual medical

administrators in the United States since
1970. That's a fairly impressive looking

graph there. Basically, what that sort of
a giant mountain there is what I called

the bullshit sector. There's absolutely no
reason why you'd actually need that many

people to administer doctors. And actually
the real effect of having all those people

is to make the doctors and the nurses less
efficient rather than more. Because I know

this perfectly well from education,
because I'm a professor. That's what I do

for a living. The amount of actual
administrative paperwork you have to do

actually increases with the number of
administrators over the last 30, 40 years.

You know, something similar has happened,
isn't quite as bad as this, but something

very similar has happened in America, in
universities, that the number of

professors has doubled but the number of
actual administrators has gone up by 240,

300 percent. So. Well, more than that,
actually. Yeah, I mean. So, suddenly you

have like twice as many administrators for
professors as you had before. Now, you

would think that that would mean that
professors have to do less administration

because you have more administrators.
Exactly the opposite is the case. More and

more of your time is taken up by
administration. Well, why is that? The

major reason is because the way it works
is if you are hired, as you know, vice

provost, executive vice provost or
assistant dean or something like that.

Some big shot administrative position at a
virtual American university. Well, you

want to feel like an executive and they
give these guys these giant six figure

salaries. They treat them like they're an
executive. So if you're an executive, of

course, you have to have a minor army of
flunkies of assistants to make yourself

feel important. The problem is they give
these guys five or six assistants, but

then they figure out what those five or
six assistants are actually going to do,

which usually turns out to be make up work
for me. Right. The professor. So suddenly

I have to do time allocation studies.
Suddenly I have to do. I have to do, you

know, learning outcome assessments where
I describe what the difference with the

undergraduate and graduate section of the
same course is going to be. Basically

completely pointless stuff that nobody had
to do 30 years ago and made no difference

at all, to justify the existence of this
kind of mountain of administrators and

just give them something to do all day.
Now, the interesting result of that is

that, and this is where this sort of stuff
comes in, it's actually the numbers are

there. But it's very, very difficult to
interpret. So I had to actually get an

economist friend to sort of go through all
this with me and confirm that what I

thought was happening was actually
happening. Essentially, what's going on is

just as manufacturing, digitalization is
being employed to make it much more

efficient. Productivity goes up, the
number of workers go down, the number of

payment that, you know the wages are
actually going way up in manufacturing,

but it doesn't really make a dent in
profits because there's so few workers.

So, OK, that we kind of all know about. On
the other hand, in the caring sector, the

exact opposite has happened. Digitalization
is being used as an excuse to make lower

productivity so as to justify the
existence of this army of administrators.

And if you think about it, you know,
basically, you know, in order to translate

a qualitative outcome into a form that a
computer can even understand, that

requires a large amount of human labor.
That's why I have to do the learning

outcome studies and the time allocation
stuff, right. But really, ultimately,

that's to justify the existence of this
giant army of administrators. Now, as a

result of that, you need to have actually
more people working in those sectors to

produce the same outcome. These are
becoming less and less productive, more

and more of your time has to be spent. Oh,
yes. This is for the average company now

looks like. More and more of your time
ends up being spent sort of making the

administrators happy and giving them an
excuse for their existence. This is a

breakdown I saw in a report about American
office workers, where they compared

2015 and 2016. In 2015 only 46 percent of
their time was spent actually doing their

job. That declined by 7 percent in one
year to 39 percent. That's got to be some

kind of statistical anomaly, because if
that were actually true in about a decade

and a half, nobody will be doing any work
at all. But it gives you an idea of what's

happening. So if productivity is going
down, these people are just sort of

working all the time to satisfy the
administrators. So the creation of

bullshit jobs essentially creates the
bullshitization of real jobs. There is a

huge, there's both a squeeze on profits
and wages. More and more money is going to

pay the administrators. And you need to
hire more and more people. So what do you

get? Well, if you look around the world,
whereas labor action happening, basically

you have teachers strikes all over America
and professors strikes in the UK. You have

care home workers, I believe, in France.
They had nursing home workers first time

ever on strike, nurses strikes all over
the world. Basically, caregivers are are

at the sort of cutting edge of industrial
action. The problem, of course, and this

is the problem for the left is that the
administrators, who are in the basic class

enemy of the nurses, and I believe in New
Zealand, the nurses wrote a very clear

manifesto stating this. They said, you
know, the problem we have is that there's

all of these hospital administrators,
these guys, not only are they taking all

the money, so we haven't got a raise in 20
years. They give us so much paperwork, we

can't take care of our patients. So that
is the sort of class enemy of what I call

the caring classes. The problem for the
left is that often those guys are in the

same union and they're certainly in the
same political party. Tom Frank wrote a

book called "Listen Liberal", where he
documented what a lot of us had kind of

had a sense of intuitively for some time,
that what used to be left wing parties,

essentially the Clintonite Democrats, the
Blairite Labor Party. Talk about people

like Macron, Trudeau, all of these guys, at
essentially the head of parties, that used

to be parties based in labor unions and
the working classes and by extension the

caring classes, as I call them. But
have shifted to essentially be the classes

of the professional, I mean, the parties
of the professional managerial classes. So

essentially, they are the, you know, they
are the representatives of that giant

mountain of administrators. That is their
core base. I even caught a quote from

Obama where he pretty much admitted it,
where he said, you know, while people ask

me why we don't have a single payer health
plan in America, would that be simpler?

Wouldn't that be more efficient? And he
said, you know, well, yeah, I guess it

would. But that's kind of the problem. You
know, we have at the moment, like, what is

it to 3 million people working for Kaiser,
Blue Cross, Blue Shield, all these

insurance companies. What are we going to
do with those guys, if we have an

efficient system? I mean, so essentially
he admitted that it is intentional policy

to maintain the marketization of health in
America because it's less efficient and,

you know, allows them to maintain a bunch
of paper pushers in offices doing

completely unnecessary work, who are
essentially the core base of the

Democratic Party. I mean, those guys, you
know, they don't really care if they shut

down auto plants, do they? In fact, they
seem to take his glee. They say, well, you

know, economy's changing. You just gotta
deal with it. But the moment look at

those guys and the officers who were doing
nothing are threatened, the political

parties leap into action and get all
excited. All right. So if you look at what

happened in England. Well, it's pretty
clear that the conservatives won because

they maneuvered the left into identifying
itself with the professional managerial

classes. There is a split between the sort
of labor union base, which is increasingly

unions representing very militant carers
of one kind or another. And the

professionals, managers and the
administrators, both of whom are

supposedly represented by the same party.
Now, Brexit was a perfect issue to sort of

make the bureaucrats and the
administrators and the professionals into

the class enemy. Now, it's very ironic
because of course, in the long run, the

people were really going to benefit from
Brexit are precisely lawyers, right.

Because they got to rewrite everything in
England. However, this is not how it was

represented. It was represented your
enemies. I mean, there was an appeal to

racism, obviously, but there was also an
appeal: your enemies are these distant

bureaucrats who know nothing of your
lives. The key moment in terms of where

essentially the Tories managed to
outmaneuver Labor and guaranteed their

victory was precisely by forcing Labor
into an alliance with all the people like

the Liberal Democrats and the other
remainers, who then use this incredibly

complicated constitutional means to try to
block Brexit from happening. 20 minutes?

Okay, that's easy. And it was fun to watch
at the time on TV were all these you know,

like all these guys in wigs and strange
people called Black Rod and, you know, in

odd costumes, appealing to all sorts of
arcane rules from the 16th century. And it

was great drama. You know, it was like
costume drama come to life on television.

But in effect and you know, it seemed like
Boris Johnson was just being constantly

humiliated. Everything he did didn't work.
His plans collapsed. He lost every vote he

tried. But in fact, what it ended up doing
was it forced what was actually a

radical party which represented the angry
youth in the U.K. into alliance with

professional managerials, who live by
rules and whose entire idea of democracy

is of a set of rules. This is very
clear in America. And again, you could see

this in the battle of Trump versus Hillary
Clinton. Clinton was essentially accused

of being corrupt because she would do
things like, you know, get hundreds of

thousands of dollars for speeches for
investment firms like Goldman Sachs, who

obviously aren't paying politicians that
kind of money unless you expect to get

some kind of influence out of it. And
constantly like Clinton's defenders would

say. Yes, but that was perfectly legal.
Everything she did was legal. Why are

people getting so upset? She didn't break
the law. And I think that if you want to

understand class dynamics in a country
like England or America today, that phrase

kind of gives the game away, because
people of the professional managerial

classes are probably the only people
alive, who think that if you make bribery

legal, that makes it OK. It's all about
form versus, against content.

Democracy isn't the popular will.
Democracy is a set of rules and

regulations. And if you follow the rules
and regulations, well, you know, that's

fine no matter. And these guys, that kind
of mountain of administrators are the

people who think that way. And they've
become the base of parties, you know, they

are the electoral base of people like
Clinton, people like Macron, people like

Tony Blair had been, people like Obama.
And now. And Corbyn was not at all like

that. He is this person who had been a
complete rebel against his own party for

his entire life, but what they did, was
they maneuvered him into a position where

there had been a Brexit vote which
represented substance: the popular will.

And he was forced into a situation where
he had to, like align with the people who

are trying to block it through legalistic
regulation, essentially by appeal to

endless arcane laws. Thus identifying his
class with the professional managerials

and a lot of my friends who actually were
out on doorsteps. You know, they actually

seem to think of Boris Johnson as a
regular guy. I mean, this guy, his actual

name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel
Johnson. He is an aristocrat going back

like 500 years. But they seem to think he
was a regular guy. And Corbyn, who hadn't

even been to college and was was sort of a
member of the elite, based almost entirely

on that. And if you look at people like
Trump and people like Johnson, how did

they manage to pull off being populist in
any sense? You know, they're born to every

conceivable type of privilege. Basically,
they do it by acting like the exact

opposite of the annoying bureaucratic
administrator, who is your kind of enemy

at work? That's the game of images they're
playing, you know. So Johnson is clearly

totally fake. He fakes disorganization.
He's actually a very organized person

according to people who acutally know him.
But he's developed this persona. This guy

is all about content over form. And he's
sort of chaotic and disorganized. And so

they're basically playing the role of
being anti-bureaucrats and they maneuver

the other side into being identified with
administration, rules and regulations and

those guys who basically drive you crazy.
The question for the left, then is how to

break with that. So I have, what is it, 15
minutes in order to propose how we can

break...? It strikes me that that we need
to kind of rip up the game and start over.

We're in another world economically than
we used to be. And perhaps the best way to

do it is to think about what when people
say their jobs are bullshit, you know,

when people say that 37 percent of people
who say, if my job didn't exist, probably

the world be better off, I'm not actually
doing anything. What do they actually mean

by that? In almost every case, what they
say is that it doesn't really benefit

anymore. There is a principle that
ultimately work is meaningful if it helps

people and improves other people's lives.
Thus caring labor in a sense has become

the paradigm for all forms of labor. And
this is very, very interesting because I

think that to a large degree, the left is
really stuck on the notion of production

rather than caring. And and the reason we
have been outmaneuvered in the past has

been precisely because of that. I could
talk about the, you know, how this

happened. I think it really a lot of
economics is really theological. It's a

transposition of old religious ideas about
creation, where human beings are sort of

forced to feel like the story of
Prometheus, the Bible, you know, the human

condition. Our fallen state is one where
God is a creator. We tried to usurp his

position. So God punishes us by saying,
OK, you can create your own lives, but

it's being miserable and painful. So work is
both is both productive, it's creative.

But at the same time, it's also supposed
to be suffering. Whereas so we have an

idea of work as productivity. So I was
actually looking at these charts. You're

talking of the different productivity of
different types of work. Now I can see

where productivity of construction comes
in. But according to this, you can even

measure the productivity of real estate,
productivity of agriculture. Okay.

Productivity, I mean, everything is
production. What does productivity of real

estate...doesn't make any sense, you're
not producing anything, it's land. It sits

there. Our paradigm for value is
production. But if you think about it,

most work is not productive. Most work is
actually about maintaining things. It's

about care. If you think whenever I see,
talk to a Marxist theorist, wherever, they

try to explain value, which is what they
always like to do. They always take the

example of a teacup. They say, well,
usually they're sitting there with a glass

bottle, a cup. Well, look at this bottle,
you know. You know, it takes a certain

amount of socially necessary labor time to
produce this, say it takes, you know, this

much time, this much resources. It's
always about production of stuff. But a

teacup or a bottle. Well, you know. You
produce a cup once, you wash it like 10000

times. Most work isn't actually about
producing new things, it's about

maintaining things. We have a warped
notion, which really, it's a very

gendered. Real work is like male craftsman
banging away or some factory worker making

a car or something like that. It's almost
a paradigm for childbirth, right? Because

labor is supposed to be, the word labor is
very interesting, right? Because in the

Bible they say, they curse Adam to work
and they curse Eve have pain of

childbirth, but that's called labor. So
there's the idea that, you know, there's

this. Factories are like these black boxes
where you're kind of pushing stuff out

like babies through a painful process that
we don't really understand. And that's

what work mainly consists of. But
actually, that's not what work mainly

consists of. Most work actually consists
of taking care of other people. So I think

that what we need to do is we need to
start over. We need to realign. First of

all, think about the working classes, not
as producers, but as carers. And working

classes are basically people who take care
of other people and always have been.

Actually, psychological studies show this
really well, that you know, the poorer you

are, the better you are reading other
people's emotions and understanding what

they're feeling. That's because, you know,
it's actually the job of people to take

care of others. All rich people just don't
have to think about what other people are

thinking or they don't care, literally.
And so I think we need to A: redefine the

working classes as caring classes. But
second of all, we need to move away from a

paradigm of production and consumption as
being what an economy is about is if we're

going to save the planet, we really need
to move away from productivism. So I would

propose that we just rip up the discipline
of economics as it exists and start over.

Chuckles

Applause

So this is my proposal in this regard. I
think that we should take the ideas of

production and consumption, throw them
away and substitute for them the idea of

care and freedom. Think about it. You
know, thank you. I mean, even if you're

making a bridge, right, you make a bridge,
as feminists constantly point out,

you know, you're making a bridge because
you care that people can get across the

river. You know, you make a car because
you care that people can get around. So

even like production is one subordinate
type of care. What we do is, you know, as

human beings, as we take care of each
other. But care is actually and this is, I

think, something that we don't often
recognize closely related to the notion of

freedom, because normally care is defined
as answering to other people's needs. And

certainly that is an important element in
it. But no, it's not just that. Like if

you're in a prison. Right. They take care
of the needs of the prisoners, usually at

least to the point of giving them basic
food, clothing and medical care. But you

can't really think of a prison as caring
for prisoners. Right. Care is more than

that. So why isn't a prison a caregiving
institution, whereas something else might

be? Well, if you think about care, what is
the the kind of paradigm for carrying

relations? A mother and a child. Right. A
mother takes care of a child, or a parent

takes care of a child so that that child
can grow and be healthy and flourish.

That's true. But in an immediate level,
you know, you take care of a child so the

child can go and play. That's what
children actually do when you're taking

care of them. What is play? Play is like
action done for its own sake. It's in a

way the very paradigm of freedom, because
action done for its own sake is what

freedom really consists of. Play and
freedom are ultimately the same thing. So,

a production-consumption paradigm for what
an economy is, is a guarantee for

ultimately destroying the planet and each
other. I mean, even when you talk about

de-growth, you know, if you're working
within that paradigm, you are essentially

doomed. We need to break free away from
that paradigm entirely. Care and freedom,

on the other hand, are things you can
increase as much as you like without

damaging anything. So we need to think:
what are ways that we need to care for

each other that will make each other more
free? And who are the people who are

providing that care? And how can they be
compensated themselves with greater

freedom? And to do that, we need to like
actually scrap almost all of the

discipline of economics as it currently
exists. We're actually just starting to

think about this. I mean, because
economics as it currently exists is based

on assumptions of human nature that we now
know to be wrong. There have been actual

empirical tests of the basic fundamental
assumptions of the maximizing individual

that economic theory is based on. It turns
out they're not true. It tells you

something about the role of economics that
this has had almost no effect on economic

teaching whatsoever. They don't really
care that it's not true. But one of the

things that we have discovered, which is
quite interesting, is that human beings

have actually a psychological need to be
cared for, but they have an even greater

psychological need to care for others or
to care for something. If you don't have

that, you basically fall apart. It's why
old people get dogs. We don't just care

for each other because we need to maintain
each other's lives and freedoms. But our

own very psychological happiness is based
on being able to care for something or

someone. So what would happen to
microeconomics if we started from that?

We're doing actually a workshop tomorrow
on the Museum of Care, which we're going

to imagine in Rojava, which is in
northeastern Syria, where there is a

women's revolution going on, as you might
have heard. But it's in places like that

where they're trying to completely
reimagine economics, the relation of

freedom, aesthetics and value. Because at
the moment, the system of value that we

have is set up in such a way that this
kind of trap that I've described, and the

gradual bullshitization of employment,
where essentially production work has

become a value unto itself in such a way
that we're literally destroying the

planet. And in order to actually reimagine
a type of economics that wouldn't destroy

the planet, we have to start all over
again. So I'm going to end on that note.

Applause

Herald: David, thank you so much. I think
it's very interesting to also have some

political views now that we mix in all
sorts of technology and it goes very good

in the theme of Congress. Please, if
anyone has any questions line up by the

microphones and we'll go for that.
Unfortunately, in the beginning, I forgot

to mention that you can ask questions over
the Internet through IRC, Mastodon or

Twitter. And remember to use the channel
#borg and we'll make sure that they get

answered. So please microphone number
1

Q: When you when you observe the
productivity in healthcare going down, do

you have an explanation, according to new
liberal thinking, why hospitals, one with

more administrators, one with less
administrators, don't have competition

outcome that the hospital with less
administrators wins?

David: Haha, yeah. Well, one of the
fascinating things about the whole

phenomena of bullshitization and bullshit
jobs is that it's exactly what's not

supposed to happen under a competitive
system. But it's happened across the board

in every, equally in private sector and
public sector.

Q: Why?
A: That's a long story. But one reason

seems to be that, and this is why I
actually had managerial feudalism in the

title, is that the system we have, is
essentially not capitalism as it is

ordinarily described. The idea that you
have a series of small competing firms is

basically a fantasy. I mean, you know,
it's true of restaurants or something like

that. But it's not true of these large
institutions. And it's not clear that it

really could be true of those large
institutions. They just don't operate on

that basis. Essentially, increasingly,
profits aren't coming from either

manufacturing or from commerce but from
rather redistribution of resources and

rent, rent extraction. So that and when
you have a rent extraction system, it much

more resembles feudalism than capitalism
is normally described. You want to

distribute you know, if you're taking a
large amount of money and redistributing

it, well, you want to soak up as much of
that as possible in the course of doing

so. And that seems to be the way the
economy increasingly works. I mean, if you

look at anything from Hollywood to the
healthcare industry, you know what you've

seen over the last 30 years, the creation
of endless intermediary roles, which sort

of grab a piece of the pie as being
distributed downwards. It's... I mean, I

could go into the whole mechanisms, but
essentially the political and the economic

have become so intertwined that you can no
longer make a distinction between the two.

So you have a problem and this is where
you go back to the whole thing about the 1

percent. You're using political power to
accumulate more wealth, using your wealth

to create more political power. An engine
of extraction whereby the spoils are

increasingly distributed: we get these
very, very large bureaucratic

organizations and that's essentially how
our economy works.

Herald: Great thank you.
A: I mean, I could talk for an hour about

the dynamics, but that's that's basically
at it. You know, you could call it

capitalism if you like, but it doesn't in
any way resemble capitalism the way that

people like to imagine capitalism would
work.

Herald: Great. Awesome. Questions from the
Internet, please.

Q: How to best address this
caregiver class when the context of the

proletariat is no longer given to awake
their class consciousness?

A: How to address the caregiver when the
proletariat is no longer what?

Herald: Please repeat the question.
Q: How to best address the caregiver class

when the context of the proletariat is no
longer given to awake their class

consciousness?
A: Given to awake?

Q: I'm not sure what they're asking.
A: Yeah. I mean the question is how do you

create a class consciousness for that
class? Yeah. Well, that is the question. I

mean, first of all, you need to actually
think about who your actual class enemy

is. And I mean, I don't mean to be too
blunt about it, but the problem we have,

why is it that people are suspicious of
the left? And people like Michael Albert

were pointing this out years ago, that one
reason that actual proletarians were very

suspicious of traditional socialists in
many cases is because their immediate

enemy isn't actually, you know, the
capitalist who he rarely meets, but the

annoying administrator upstairs. And, you
know, to a large extent, traditional

socialism means giving that guy more power
rather than less. So I think we need to

actually look at what's really going on in
a hospital, in a school. And I use

hospitals and schools as examples, but
they're actually very important ones

because people have shown that in most
cities in America now, hospitals and

schools are the two largest employers:
universities and hospitals. Essentially

work has been reorganized around working
on the bodies and minds of other people

rather than producing objects. And the
class relations in those institutions are

not, you can't use traditional Marxist
analysis. You need to actually reimagine

what it would mean. Are we talking with
the production of people? If so, what are

the class dynamics involved in that? Is
production the term at all? Probably not.

Why not? That's why I say we need to
reconstitute the language in which we are

using to describe this, because we're
essentially using 19th century terminology

to discuss 21st century problems. Both
sides are doing that. The right wing is

using like, you know, neoclassical
economics, which is basically Victorian.

It's trying to solve problems that no
longer exist. But the left is using a 19th

century Marxist, you know, critique of
that, which also doesn't apply. We just

need new terms.
Herald: Thank you. I hope that answered

the question from the Internet. Microphone
number two, please.

Q: So, the question is basically, to what
extent can technology help? And the

subtext here is there's actually really
lots of projects now whose function at

some level is to automate management and
to the extent to which that can be molded

into removing this class that you're
talking about or somehow making it too

painful for them to exist. And some of
these projects are companies but some of

them are very independent things that have
very soft Marx ideas, but with tens of

millions in funding.
A: Well, that's the interesting thing,

that people talk about it all the time.
And there's this, but this is where power

comes in, right? I mean why is it that
automation means that if I'm working for

UPS, the delivery guy gets like tailorized
and downsized and super-efficient to the

point where our life becomes a living hell
basically. But somehow the profits that

come from that, end up hiring like, dozens
of flunkies who sit around in offices

doing nothing all day. One of the guys,
when I started gathering testimonies, I've

actually gathered several hundred
testimonies of people with bullshit jobs

or people who thought of themselves as
having bullshit jobs. And one of the most

telling was a guy who was an efficiency
expert in a bank. He estimates that 80%

of people who work in banks are
unnecessary. Either they do nothing or

they could easily be automated away. And
what he said was it was his job to figure

that out. But then he gradually realized
that he had a bullshit job because every

single time he proposed a plan to get rid
of them, they'd be shot down. He never got

a single one through. And the reason why
is because if you're an executive in a

large corporation, your prestige and power
is directly proportional to how many

people you have working under you. So, no
way are they going to get rid of flunkies.

That's just going to mean, the better they
are at it, the less important they'll

become in the operation. So somebody
always blocked it. So this is a basic

power question. You can come up with great
technological ideas for eliminating

people. People do all the time. But who
actually gets eliminated and who doesn't

has everything to do with power.
Herald: Great. Thank you. And last

question, please, from
microphone number 5.

Q: Can we maybe have one question
from a non-male person?

A: Yeah, that'd be nice.
Herald: Non-male person? Sorry, I am not

choosing questions based on stuff. We're
kind of choosing all around the hall.

Q: Ok, have fun.
Herald: Please, microphone number 5.

Q: Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
I really like your description of a

paradigm or that people are stuck on
production and consumption, and that you

would like to change the paradigm to a
paradigm towards more care and freedom, et

cetera. And for me, it kind of sounds a
little vague. And that's why I myself

think of basic income as a human right. As
the actual mean to break with the current

hegemonic, macroeconomic paradigm, so to
speak. And I was interested in your point

of view of that, of basic income.
A: Well, I actually totally support that.

I think that one of the major objections
that people have to universal basic income

is essentially people don't trust people
to come up with useful things to do with

themselves. Either they think they'll be
lazy, right, and won't do anything, or

they think if they do do something, it'll
be stupid. So we're going to have millions

of people who are trying to create
perpetual motion devices or becoming

annoying street mimes or bad musicians or
bad poets or so forth and so on. And I

think it actually masks an incredible
condescending elitism a lot of people

have, which is really the mindset of the
professional managerial classes who think

that they should be controlling people. If
you think about the fact that huge

percentages, perhaps a third of people,
already think that they're doing nothing

all day and they're really miserable about
it, I think that demonstrates quite

clearly why that isn't true. First of all,
the idea that people, if given a basic

income, won't work. Actually, there are
lots of people who are paid basically to

sit there all day and do nothing and
they're really unhappy. They'd much rather

be working. Second of all, if 30 to 40%
of people already think that their

jobs are completely pointless and useless,
I mean, how bad could it be? It's like,

you know, even if everybody goes off and
becomes bad poets, well, at least they'll

be a lot happier than they are now. And
second of all, one or two of them might

really be good poets. If just 0.001%
of all the people on basic income who

decide to become poets or musicians or
invent crazy devices, actually, do become

Miles Davis or Shakespeare or actually do
invent a perpetual motion device, well,

you've got your money back right there,
right?

Herald: Great. Thank you so much.
Unfortunately, that was all the questions

that we had time to. If you have any more
questions, please, I'm sure that David

will answer them if you come up here.
Thank you so much, David, for your time.

Please give him a great round of applause.

Applause

Outro

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