/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Who are you even talking to or about?

>>1793678
schizo lumpen thread

probably OP is one of those anarcho-psychosism self-made hobos

>>1793673
hey look bulshit jobs thread! cool

I will try and re-read the book so i remember where were the main arguments

graeber was such a pseud

won't be missed

the five major varieties of bullshit jobs

No typology is perfect, and I’m sure there are many ways one could draw the lines, each revealing in its own way, but over the course of my research, I have found it most useful to break down the types of bullshit job into five categories. I
will call these: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters.
Let us consider each in turn.
1. what flunkies do
Flunky jobs are those that exist only or primarily to make someone else look or feel important. Another term for this category might be “feudal retainers.” Throughout recorded history, rich and powerful men and women have tended to surround themselves with servants, clients, sycophants, and minions of one sort or another.
Not all of these are actually employed in the grandee’s household, and many of those who are, are expected to do at least some actual work; but especially at the top of the pyramid, there is usually a certain portion whose job it is to basically
just stand around and look impressive. 5 You cannot be magnificent without an entourage. And for the truly magnificent, the very uselessness of the uniformed retainers hovering around you is the greatest testimony to your greatness.
Well into the Victorian era, for instance, wealthy families in England still employed footmen: liveried servants whose entire purpose was to run alongside carriages checking for bumps in the road.

vants of this sort are normally given some minor task to justify their existence, but this is really just a pretext: in reality, the whole point is to employ handsome young men in flashy uniforms ready to stand by the door looking regal while you hold court, or to stride gravely in front of you when you enter the room. Often retainers are given military-style costumes and paraphernalia to create the impression that the rich person who employs them has something resembling a palace guard. Such roles tend to multiply in economies based on rentextraction and the subsequent redistribution of the loot

3. what duct tapers do
Duct tapers are employees whose jobs exist only because of a glitch or fault in the organization; who are there to solve a problem that ought not to exist. I am adopting the term from the software industry, but I think it has more general applicability.

Many duct-taper jobs are the result of a glitch in the system that no one has
bothered to correct—tasks that could easily be automated, for instance, but
haven’t been either because no one has gotten around to it, or because the
manager wants to maintain as many subordinates as possible, or because of some
structural confusion, or because of some combination of the three

4. what box tickers do
I am using the term “box tickers” to refer to employees who exist only or
primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that,
in fact, it is not doing.

5. what taskmasters do
Taskmasters fall into two subcategories. Type 1 contains those whose role consists
entirely of assigning work to others. This job can be considered bullshit if the
taskmaster herself believes that there is no need for her intervention, and that if
she were not there, underlings would be perfectly capable of carrying on by
themselves. Type 1 taskmasters can thus be considered the opposite of flunkies:
unnecessary superiors rather than unnecessary subordinates.

>>1793709
>>1793707
>>1793705
>>1793697
Subjective mess:
>A 2023 study, using data from the American Working Conditions Survey showed that 19% of respondents consider their jobs "rarely" or "never" useful to society. In addition, the survey shows that the occupations pointed out by Graeber are in fact most strongly perceived as socially useless, after controlling for working conditions. However this is still significantly below Graeber’s claim that over 50% of all jobs are useless. It also does not show that the jobs are objectively useless, merely that the respondents feel this.[18]

This is the scientific rigour I expect from anarchists, tbh.

>>1793711
1/5 of US society that consider they jobs "useless" is still a lot

>>1793673
>>1793711

ok, i will try and explain what i get from the book.

Neoliberals and capitalists often promote that they are the most efficient way of production in the world, arguing that the soviet union economy colapsed because the state holded monopoly of the means of production, was not focused on increasing eficiency and created false jobs to avoid unemployment, therefore leading to no increase in production of industrial goods. Those critiques of the socialist system of production are not only wrong, but they can be much better redirected to the capitalist system of production. The capitalists, the billionaires, the powerful class doesn't gain money by "innovating" or "efficiency", they gain money by exploiting the working class, by holding monopolies so that consumers have no other choice but to buy from them, and to sell their products with much higher prices them their actual vallue. Since they already controll the capitalist market, their mission to retain power is to destroy oposition, make any form of competition obsolete, and try to redirect inverstors and public analysts to invest in their monopolies instead of other capitalists. They present how they employ hundreds of workers, and how their gains are increasin every year, because it makes for good propaganda that their system is the best and most efficient. The porkie retains almost all of the money generated, and keeps for himself, instead of investing and buying more machinery, instead of expanding the means of production. Instead, he pays lower and lower wages for the workers, build a corporate system where the workers need to fight one against the other, create multiple managerial systems, where the worker is alienated to think that he has controll of anything, and to separate more and more the worker from the means of production.

In a "utopian" society, there would no be the need for so many vendors that sell the same thing, for the same price, each stree. There would be no need to have so many executive workers and managers in the enterprise. Each and every worker would know how much profit he makes for the company and gain his fair chair, a more "meritocratical" sytem, etc. Secretarys, whose main job is no manage the company, would gain much more them their salarys of secretaries while capitalist porkie does nothing. That is what i got from the book, am i wrong? what do you guys think?

>>1793690
I only readed like, two books of him, and he sounded pretty ok, wasn't he cool and based?

>muh meritocracy
>communism is when everyone has a wage job
a thread died for this libshittery

>>1793743
not a communist so no

>>1793755
ARTICLE 12. In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."

The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism : "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

Isn't this meritocracy?

The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter loses. Thus, the worker does not gain if the capitalist keeps the market price above the natural price by virtue of some manufacturing or trading secret, or by virtue of monopoly or the favorable situation of his land.

Furthermore, the prices of labour are much more constant than the prices of provisions. Often they stand in inverse proportion. In a dear year wages fall on account of the decrease in demand, but rise on account of the increase in the prices of provisions – and thus balance. In any case, a number of workers are left without bread. In cheap years wages rise on account of the rise in demand, but decrease on account of the fall in the prices of provisions – and thus balance.

Another respect in which the worker is at a disadvantage:

Like, isn't the whole point that the capitalist sytem steals the fruits of labor, where everybody has small wages even if their work is much more valuable?

Another thing i forgot to mention, the whole "Third sector" of the economy, wich doesn't, in the most part, produces anything of material vallue, doesn't produce neither industrial goods or resources to the manufacturers, is the one that most grows nowadays. The US and europe are not producing more and more industrial goods, they are producing less them expectec, but their so called "third sector" increases. What is this sector, if not stealing money from the debt of third world countries, if not trying to convince the worker and alienate him to buy ever more high price products wich less quality that are produced in China or countries where the industrial workers reside? Isn't the third sector a farce, a propaganda industry to make alienate the worker wich services he doesn't want or need, and doing those services in the most inneficient way, so that they can still retain power?

I will give an example. Cars. Why have so little public transport if you could have more railways and buses to carry more people faster and ocupying less land? Why have so many petit vendors ocupying, again, land that could be used to actually produce something or be the house of the worker, to sell their goods, if their jog is literally sitting arround all day and doing nothing, "selling" stuff, when there could be a better way to distribute goods? All of this, and much more, sems extremely wasteful, and are a critique of the capitalist liberal system. In socialism those ineficiences doesn't exist, because the worker controlls the means of production, and the workers decide how much they gain, how much they should invest in obtaining more means of production, investing more on innovation, etc.

I am not trying to force anyone to be a liberal or a neoliberal. Not really trying to convince the anon of any ideology in fact, that is what i understanded of the book

>>1793759
i dont care about what degenerated bourgeois nation-states did in the past lmao

anyway "we should do x because the ussr did" is peak brainlet. zero analysis as expected from this place

everyone in this thread is a retard.

please reply.

>>1793850
To my mind, the so-called ‘socialist society’ is not anything immutable. Like all other social formations, it should be conceived in a state of constant flux and change. It’s crucial difference from the present order consists naturally in production organized on the basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production. To begin this reorganization tomorrow, but performing it gradually, seems to me quite feasible. That our workers are capable of it is borne out by their many producer and consumer cooperatives which, whenever they’re not deliberately ruined by the police, are equally well and far more honestly run than the bourgeois stock companies.

Engels, Letter to Otto Von Boenigk (1890)

Not only can we manage very well without the interference of the capitalist class in the great industries of the country, but that their interference is becoming more and more a nuisance.

Engels, Social Classes - Necessary and Superfluous (1881)

Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.

Engels, Anti-Dühring (1877)

In a higher phase of communist society, … — only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (1875)

Also, i feel that the fact that 2/3 of this thread is just me talking might mean 3 things:
1- I am literally schizo posting and talking gibberish nonsense. Maybe because my discourse is either perceived as market socialist, because i failed to comprehend the idea of the book, or because we are in a misunderstanding of ideas because i did not expressed them in a clear and direct way. Towards wich i ask where did i got wrong, what books do you recomend in cooperativist economies, syndicalism and another forms of production where there is no class struggle. This is a topic i would like to study more.
2-The author David graebber, wich i thought was one of the most popular "anarcho-socialists" in 21 century, is wrong, is not scientific enough, did not conducted scientific experiments to proof his theory, etc.
3-You, dear anon who is reading this, only readed parts of what i wrote and come to preciptated conclusions. I believe that this is not the right place to debate about a writer who is not even a socialist or a communist, you are right, this is a place for left and radical left thought and should be maintained that way. There are too many 4chan rairders trying to destroy this place. So i ask, where should i try and talk about david grabber? I am gonna try and have a debate about "Bulshit jobs" maybe on reddit, see if i can better understand his thoughts there maybe.

I love all of you far left of leftypol. Trust me when i say i am not sectarian when i say this, you are all dear comrades of mine. Sorry for shizoposting, i will not "bump" this thread any longer if there is nothing more to say about the subject

>>1793870
>we can't have socialism now so we should call social democratic capitalism "socialism"
yawn

>>1793866
this thread is not filed with retards, basically all of this is just me writing

>>1793875
i am kinda dengist myself tbh

Cooperativism is a radical change from corporativism, it abolishes the existence of porky inside the working ambient, eliminating the class struggle inside the factory. This is not "reformist programs", this is a fundamental change in the way workers live their lives, have direct controll of the machinery, and can decide what gets done, who gets what, what to make, etc. The workers have direct power

>>1793743
From what I've read of him, he exists in that weird area between liberal and leftist that's highly critical of capitalism, but still has one foot in it. He's a good writer, and his views are interesting, but if you're going in expecting undiluted leftism you're going to be disappointed.

>>1794099
Cool, thanks comrade!

>>1793875
The socialist transition is already underway.

>>1793878
Dengism is to the left of social democracy insofar as it still retains a considerable SOE component on which the state relies upon for funding. It also maintains a DotP which an actual social democracy cannot endure.

>>1794099
>>1793743
The thing is he's an "anarchist without adjectives" and not really familiar with Marxism or any of the other philosophical theories of politics. He was an academic, so his approach comes from his formal training as an anthropologist and not "socialist theory." Reality is what it is though, so certain things are unavoidable regardless of your framework. Graeber is the kind of reading that's useful to a communist to get a bit of an outside perspective on things. He also wrote approachable books that just about anybody could get through. He's useful for getting people to think more critically about the topics he writes about before they've become radicalized.

Remember: If your job description is longer than three words, it is a bullshit job.

"I uh do research and develop materials like for the interface between biological tissue and artificial limbs." = 🐂💩

"I fuck fish." ✅

>>1794365
I manufacture consent 💚

Graeber's book about Debt is nearly a masterpiece. The main arguments he makes are a load of cherrypicked shit, but his exposition in the intro and conclusion is immaculate and impacted my worldview immensely. There's something really weird about debt if you sit down and think about it too hard

>>1794365
It's a fun joke even the most advanced jobs can be oversimplified down to three words if you really try.

>>1794365
>>1793673
>uhhhhhhh thats not a REAL job methinks
why do americans have to obfuscate and make everything retarded and why do leftoids pretending to be communists have to spread it around lol

>>1794106
>The socialist transition is already underway.
theres no dictatorship of the proletariat anywhere right now and the only one in history was russia for a couple of years

>>1793697
What the other economists advance against it is either horse-piss, namely that every action after all acts upon something, thus confusion of the product in its natural and in its economic sense; so that the pickpocket becomes a productive worker too, since he indirectly produces books on criminal law (this reasoning at least as correct as calling a judge a productive worker because he protects from theft). Or the modern economists have turned themselves into such sycophants of the bourgeois that they want to demonstrate to the latter that it is productive labour when somebody picks the lice out of his hair, or strokes his tail, because for example the latter activity will make his fat head – blockhead – clearer the next day in the office. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm

You can more or less boil down the existence of bullshit jobs to the separation of capital ownership from capital management. The big porky who owns the business (including the many shareholders) can't be bothered to see to the day to day operations of the business so they need managers. For larger businesses they need a whole bureaucracy. Within that space, the managerial "class" (really a stratum) is able to carve out for themselves a sort of security. Depending on the scenario, it's often beneficial to a manger to have people around doing nonsensical things. It creates an impression that the manager is more necessary if they have a lot of people to manage, for instance. You could say that what's happening with bullshit jobs is a result of internal contradictions of a business, the antagonism between the interests of the managers and the interests of the owners.

The bigger issue than bullshit jobs though is bullshit businesses. There are whole sectors of the economy doing something unnecessary but by some scheme are able to turn a profit (e.g. the FIRE sector).

>>1795319
Porkies are stupid and hire scammers to run businesses for them. Got it

I mean, yeah, the whole marketing science is just self-referential self-glorification black hole, same as economists and managers. What do Americans call it, hustler culture? Hustler class carved out a place for itself. It's kind of easy to see how fascists would see this and decide that if they liberate porkies from hustlers, then real capitalism "will come back"

>>1795351
Its less porky and more the managerial class as a burgeoning economic entity. The PMC is self-reproduced as a sector which itself is outsourced as an independent market, which is why its basically impossible to move up the chain in a business these days. So managers stand against both porky and proles.
And youll also notice that so much populist discourse is about how much people hate their "boss" which is usually just a regional manager, not the company owner(s).