Stuck in the Middle #2 Working for a living9 min read

Years ago, when I complained to my dad about some aspects of my job, he responded, “You aren’t supposed to like all parts of your job. That’s why they pay you.”

He had created a split between the part of the job that creates meaning (and you enjoy) and the part that earns you a living. He reasoned that you are paid for work you would not otherwise do. This showcases a bit of the contradiction that exists in contemporary work.

Jason Read’s book The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work takes on the contemporary relationship with work.

The often-asked question, “What do you do for a living?” vacillates between these two senses [(a necessary fact of life and an object of desire)]; at once, it indicates something of necessity, of one’s economic situation, and freedom, one’s supposedly chosen path in life. It is both what one has to do and who one is. ¹

Many people identify with their jobs. What they do becomes an integral part of who they are, and this is closely tied to the meaning that people find in their work. At the same time, defining ourselves by what we do is limiting and alienating, which is a subject we will explore in a future newsletter, but for now, let’s look at an important question.

Why do you work?

As in the quote from Read above and what my dad alluded to, there are usually two fundamental answers to the question: “Why do you work?”

1. You work to earn a living.
2. You work to have meaning in your life.

It is important to note that not all forms of work align with the first answer. Various forms of unpaid work (child-rearing is a perfect example) create purpose but do not support earning a living. This is an important and complex issue, but we won’t cover this now. We can look at this in a future newsletter if you are interested.

When we look at these two perspectives, we can see a level below each of these answers. Earning a living is about survival and addressing biological needs. Meaning is also about recognition, respect, and authority. ²

Let’s look at each of these answers in more detail.

Earning a living

As much as the work literature is about the engagement and empowerment of workers, the reality is that having a job is, in most cases, a requirement for survival. It is about getting the money required to ensure you have food, clothing, and shelter, and in the United States, employment is directly tied to access to health care.

Frédéric Lordon offers a similar perspective on work in his book Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire:

“It is tedious to have to repeat such trivial and obvious facts, yet necessary inasmuch as contemporary fictions, built on ‘work enrichment’, ‘participative management’, ‘employee empowerment’ and other programmes of ‘self-realisation’ are successfully erasing the memory of that original truth about the employment relation: that it is a relation of dependence, a relation between agents in which one holds the conditions for the material reproduction of the other, and that this is the permanent backdrop and the immoveable foundation for anything that unfolds on top of it.” ³

Life is expensive. In a capitalist society, providing for your basic needs is not guaranteed. Unless you have substantial wealth, you need to work to survive. ⁴

Money also acts as a status symbol; capital accumulation for its own sake is at the heart of capitalism. “[C]apitalism is always about growth. There can be no such thing as a capitalist social order that is not about growth and accumulation on a progressively increasing scale. ‘Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production.’” ⁵

And this leads to questions about the nature of wages. It is clear that we work to be paid, but how is what we are paid set? The simple answer is supply and demand. The more valuable your skills are, the more you will be paid, but this doesn’t really answer the question. Suppose we imagine a perfect equilibrium where the number of workers with the required skills matches the number of jobs. In that case, we can start to think about how wages are determined and see supply and demand as a fluctuation that happens on top of that.

It is critical to note that wages are not a measure of value. You are not paid what you are worth. This is a simple pronouncement, but it operates on three levels.

1. Your worth is not tied to your salary. You are far more valuable as a person than any salary could cover. It can be easy to forget when modern language has us talking about people’s net worth as the amount of money and property they possess rather than about the valuable connections and not about the meaning they create in the lives of others.
   
2. Your salary is tied to the value of your labor as a commodity, and the prices of commodities change. Some of the value of the work is tied to the required skills, and some to the demand for the job. Both are constantly changing, so your pay is relative to a system of supply and demand that isn’t about you. You may be paid more in some contexts than in others.
   
   Karl Marx offers a detailed description of how wage-based capital works in his book Capital Volume I:
   

   Wages appear in every firm’s account books, but as ‘wage capital’, not at all as a condition of the material reproduction of labour-power. Yet that is clearly how wages ‘work’, since they represent only that portion of the value produced by the expenditure of labour-power that is indispensable for its reproduction: that is, indispensable for reconstituting the wage-worker’s labour-power (what he needs to procure food, clothing, and shelter; in short, what he needs to present himself at the factory gate again the next day, and every further day God grants him). ⁶

   
   Louis Althusser expands on Marx’s work:
   

   Let us recall that the quantity of value (wages) required to reproduce labour-power is not determined by the needs of a ‘biological’ minimum wage alone, but by those of a historical minimum. (English workers need beer, Marx says, while French proletarians need wine.) Thus it is a historically variable minimum. ⁷

   
   Wages represent what the worker needs to show up to work each day. This also includes things like the training required to be able to do a job. You are paid what it takes to show up, not for your output.
   
3. You create more value than you are paid for. Marx saw the wages paid to laborers not for their work but for their capacity to work. Therefore, their wages are based on what it would take to reproduce the capacity for labor, not the result. The difference between what it costs to pay the laborer and the value produced is the surplus value the person has created.
   For capitalism to function, labor needs to generate surplus value. This means you can’t be paid for all the value you create. As a simple example, the cost of shoes comprises the cost of the raw materials used in making the shoes, the tools and facilities required to make the shoes, and the human labor needed to transform the raw materials using the facilities and tools into shoes. If the raw materials are $10, the incremental cost of tools is $10, and the shoes can be sold for $40, what is the value of the labor? It should be $20. However, for capitalism to function, the owner of the tools and facilities, who purchased the raw materials and hired the laborer, also expects to make money. Therefore, even though you created $20 of value through your labor, the owner will take a piece. You may think that if you create even more value, you should get paid more, but more often than not, all that increases is the surplus value.
   

At this point, you may say that is all well and good, but I need to get paid enough to maintain my lifestyle, which will always be less than I generate. However, that is okay. I get something back, too. I find meaning in my work; it is part of my identity.

Bringing this back to a more contemporary view, Lordon makes this same point for why people submit to the reality of wage labor:

If employees accept the enlistment relation imposed on them by the social structure of capitalism, and submit to demands for ever-rising productivity, it is not only the effect of compulsion or organisational violence, but also because at times they get something out of it: opportunities for joy. ⁸

It is important to note that while all workers are exploited, there are certainly differences. Being exploited and making a wage that keeps you below the poverty line is very different from being exploited and living a very comfortable life. The intent is not to say that these two situations are the same but to clarify that even those doing well despite the exploitation have a common cause and a reason to change the system in ways that will support those who are exploited and struggling.

What does this mean as a middle manager?

This means you play an interesting dual role as both exploited and part of the exploiting apparatus. There are limits to what is possible within the confines of a middle management role: you can’t give everyone huge raises, equity, or bonuses. However, there is a lot you can do. The answer isn’t just to treat everyone well; that needs to be given for any ethical management, but it needs to be more than that.

1. Be honest and transparent with your teams about how decisions are made. Knowledge is power. When you withhold information, ask yourself why.
2. Recognize that wage labor is based on purchasing a certain amount of labor time from employees. Ensuring that your team is not contacted on nights and weekends is vital, and giving flexibility in time off and extra days off is a small way to shift the balance of wages for labor. Where can you give small benefits across the team that can make a difference?
3. Evaluate how you recognize people and prevent the glorification of auto-exploitation. Are the people rewarded those who put in extra hours and are always available? How can you recognize those who have firm boundaries?
   

In the next newsletter, we will explore the other aspect of why we work: meaning. Until then, have a lovely weekend.

---

1. Read, Jason, The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work ↩
2. Ibid ↩
3. Lordon, Frédéric, Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire ↩
4. This is an essential context in a world where economists discuss a “healthy unemployment rate” between 3 and 5%. “[W]e are not accustomed to thinking of unemployment as a category of exploitation.” (Jameson, Fredric, Representing Capital) People are keeping the economy healthy while struggling with their basic needs. ↩
5. Harvey, David, A Companion to Marx’s Capital: The Complete Edition ↩
6. Marx, Karl, Capital Volume I ↩
7. Althusser, Louis, On the Reproduction of Capital ↩
8. Lordon, Frédéric, Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire ↩