Work. Work means money. Loss of the ability to work. That’s what man is most scared of. That’s what he asks in the first minutes after an operation. And this is sound. By producing, by working, you guarantee your vital activity. But today, with the presence in human life of the government, work acquires a social aspect as well. Nobody can manage only with natural economy. The trade of goods is replaced by the comfort of buying a product for money. And this is logic - progress, development, with time everything has to take more perfect and comfortable forms. Besides, many of my acquaintances who voted for Putin argued their choice by the fact that with VVP their salary has grown, they have “risen”. So what are the new, unique and progressive things that the XXI century brings us in the sphere of relations of the employer and the employee and on the job market?
With the “thick” socialism, the principal and the most frequent work schedule was 5/2 for eight hours, a shift for 2/2 for 12 hours and 1/3 of the day. With the recalculation on a 40-hours workweek in the three versions the result was about the same. The shifting schedules gave days off for a small overtime. Today you will barely find shifts of 1/3. Basically the janitor-pensioner on a plant, in a hostel. Their salary rarely goes above 100$ even in large cities. The priority is 1/2 (each two days). And the classical five days of eight hours are only in factories. For the rest, the six-days or 5/2, but let’s say for 10 or 11 hours, the latter are practiced in fashionable super markets. As for the 2/2 shifts, they are often now 14 and 16 hours. That is, the 40-hours week for which the workers of past years have fought so hard cannot even be dreamed of. Is that so bad that man started to work more? Yes, it is bad. What can do a man who has ploughed five days in a row for 11 hours during his two days off? To get off. To sleep his best, to get drunk on the evening of the first day and to get off during the entire second one, preparing for new “working exploits”. It is clear that after a week of 11-hours slavery one needs to relax. The same can be said about the 1/2 schedule: you sleep off one day and the second day is for daily problems, burdened by tomorrow’s 24-hours shift. A man who works like that doesn’t have the time and the energy for the reading of serious books. He is left without the possibility of quietly philosophizing, walking far outside of the city, of comprehending, listening, understanding himself and what is happening around. There is not enough time for anything. The source of information is TV. Practically, the modern work conditions deny man what differentiates him from the animal - the possibility to reflex, to analyze, to feel something bigger than fear and hunger.
Today’s commercial-capitalistic relations have degraded man to the level of a labor force. The modern civilization considers man purely as a physical object. It ignores that man is consisted, in a way, out of two persons. The first one - the physical person - composed of water, amino acids, muscles, bones. Who eats, drinks, works. And the second - the metaphysical man - who feels, loves, hates, etc. It is like a genie in a bottle. One can simply use the bottle for daily purposes. But also one can use it for higher purposes, after grasping the mysteries and the sub consciousness and to call the genie. But modern civilization doesn’t need genies. It needs bottles to use them for commercial purposes, and when they wear out, to discard the useless crocks in the dump.
Here they are, the conquests of modernity. It is clear that the more you are enslaved by work, the more you’re getting paid. But civilization always gives birth to more needs than it can satisfy. The predating state plays on the lowest instincts of man and they win, naturally. Since man is weak. How right had Limonov called this soft-violence, when weaknesses are encouraged. Civilization has invented and the states have brought to people, that pleasures and money are directly in proportionate dependence. But all of this is false. All than man needs for happiness was given by nature from the start and money is an artificial invention. For instance, good sex doesn’t depend in any way on money.
The state allows seeing only one side of getting happiness - to work, to work, and to work some more, for “the gentleman” or the state. This is an illusion. And why is it an illusion? Ask the comrades ex-party members, who have gone for “good” jobs, if they are happy. Almost everyone is nostalgic about the party’s period of his life.
The brigand Procrustes, Limonka №244
Tags: Government, human, job, life, money, sex, TV, violence, work