Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
The slogan ‘ACAB’ (All Cops are Bastards) has been around a long time. It’s at least 100 years old, and was once used by gangsters and mobsters. More recently, anarchists and punks took it up. And yet more recently, ‘ACAB’ found a home among certain leftists and progressives.
I think it has its uses. But I have to admit, I find ‘ACAB’ as misleading as helpful.
So, lots of workplaces create committees. They create them for all sorts of things. Anyone who works as university faculty knows this all too well. But lots of other companies do it, too. Especially large ones.
On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with committee work. Let’s say you’re in a workplace that’s relatively democratic. And one that lacks a suffocating corporate structure. In those cases, it even has its uses. You can work with colleagues fairly and equally to get things done.
But that’s not how it works most of the time. Committees are a great way for a company to save face on some issue. Especially if and when the public perceives the company badly on the issue (e.g., racial justice, and so on). At other times, a middle manager really wants to feel important. So, he (it’s not always ‘he,’ but it usually is) organizes a committee.
When you find those latter forces at work, avoid it. No bullshit committee work, folks. It’s a waste of your time. It won’t do anything useful for the world, and it won’t get you anywhere.
In his book Know-It-All Society, Michael P. Lynch claims that intellectual arrogance rules US politics. Along the way, he points out that people share the news not to get at the truth. Or even to engage with ideas. Rather, they share the news an act of expression – a case of what Lynch calls ‘expressivism’ (related to, but somewhat distinct from, ethical expressivism). ‘Expressivism,’ here, means they post news stories on Facebook and Twitter to say something about themselves rather than about the world.
I think Lynch makes a good point. And I want to extend that point a bit. I think the term ‘expressivism’ provides us with a useful way to look at how people talk about COVID policy and even the politics they want to see.
Readers know I don’t talk much about the sectarian left. You know, the kinds of smaller leftist groups based on certain ideologies, e.g., Marxist-Leninist groups, Maoist groups, and so on. I spend a lot of time – both as a blogger and a local DSA chapter leader – discussing strategy on the left. I’ve even posted a couple of times on the DSA caucuses. But I mostly ignore the sectarian left during all this.
Why?
While the COVID-19 virus technically emerged in 2019, the pandemic got very real very quickly in the US in March 2020. It was a stark enough change that I still remember some of my ‘lasts’ from that March. I worked my last in-person shift on March 9. I attended my last in-person activist meeting on March 10. Last trip to the movie theater: March 11. And last trip to a coffee shop: Friday, March 13.
I’ve done a couple of those things again in 2021 or 2022. But it was a huge gap. It’s hard to believe it’s been a full 2 years since the start of the pandemic. It hit home for me a few weeks ago when the Englert Theatre notified me it had canceled a Dweezil Zappa show. A show originally scheduled for late March 2020. So, yeah, it’s been a long time.
It’s a good time to check in. Have we learned anything?
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