Today, I am posting a video (animated short, really) that speaks to it: "El Empleo".
Of course, it is overly simplistic to say that we all commodify ourselves at work. Some people feel very fulfilled at work--like it "humanizes" them. (Again this shows a distinction between the Marxist and business definitions--yes, you are selling your labor on a market for money [business], but you may or may not be "objectified" or alienated from the things that make you feel human when you do so [Marxist].)
Additionally, machines have taken on many roles that humans no longer have to. Humans do not always have to play those commodified (dehumanizing) roles because machines often can do so. Cars take us to and from desired destinations and machines can punch out widgets and assemble finished products with minimal human involvement in some cases. Yet, in other cases, machines have not been able to replace humans because the human element is essential in some types of "production"--psychologists come to mind. Perhaps it is the case that many of the roles left to humans have more of a human component to them (and are less commodifying at least in the Marxist sense).
However, in other cases machines could replace people but have not because of consumer demand for a human component. Bank tellers are a great example, When I began working in a bank 15 years ago, it was said that the number of bank tellers would be drastically reduced in just a decade or two. This was due to the then burgeoning technological side of banking--direct deposit and automatic payment being two service that by themselves almost completely eliminate the need for tellers. After check 21 legislation was passed several years later, this became even truer as even paper checks could now largely be dealt with electronically as well.
BUT PEOPLE KEPT DEMANDING TELLERS. It turns out there was an interpersonal component in banking that was vastly underestimated. People want to talk to a person face to face to feel like a person is watching over their money--not a machine.
Additionally, it turns out tellers filled a role akin to that of a barber or hairdresser--people relied on "their" tellers to be there to hear about their week and their good news and bad news.
I saw completely automated branches go up and be almost instantly torn down because so few people see their bank in that way. Banking has a vast interpersonal component for most people--even though most banking can be done almost completely electronically nowadays.
So, commodification has its limits (unlike what you will see in this video). The increased demand for cogs in the capitalist machine has the potential to commodify and dehumanize, but the increase in technology has filled many of those needs and may leave more of the "humanizing" jobs to be left to people. The video doesn't show that aspect of it, but it does make a powerful visual statement about commodification (of people/labor) and what it feels like for many people. So many people DO feel like they are little more than a cog in the capitalist machine just so they can consume the labor of other people being cogs in the machine. We no longer trade or create as artisans (at least very few of us do) in a very humanizing, interpersonal way.
Enjoy the video:
Comment with your thoughts below. How well does the video show commodification? What did he get right? What did he get wrong?
No comments:
Post a Comment