CAPITALISM WAS NEVER GOING TO YIELD

[David Morris]

https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2021/12/stop-calling-it-late-capitalism.html
CAPITALISM WAS NEVER GOING TO YIELD

*Updated to remove my misuse of the term "late capitalism."*

At Vox, in a piece titled "The World as We Know It Is Ending. Why Are We
Still at Work?," Anna North writes
<https://www.vox.com/2021/12/16/22837830/covid-pandemic-climate-change-great-resignation-2021>
:

For a moment in early 2020, it seemed like we might get a break from
capitalism.

A novel coronavirus was sweeping the globe, and leaders and experts
recommended that the US pay millions of people to stay home
<https://www.vox.com/2020/7/18/21324068/covid-schools-reopening-open-science-coronavirus-pandemic>
until
the immediate crisis was over. These people wouldn’t work. They’d hunker
down, take care of their families, and isolate themselves to keep everyone
safe. With almost the whole economy on pause, the virus would stop
spreading, and Americans could soon go back to normalcy with relatively
little loss of life.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Did anyone really believe this would happen -- that "we might get a break
from capitalism" as a result of the pandemic? [...]

Were there past crises when capitalism actually *did* stop? If so, I don't
remember them. Life mostly went on as usual. Crime waves, blackouts, 9/11
-- maybe some New Yorkers were told to take it easy after the Twin Towers
fell, but my wife and I were back at our jobs the next day. If capitalism
didn't stop for 9/11, why would it stop for COVID or George Floyd?

*Updated to remove my misuse of the term "late capitalism."*

The vast majority of ordinary schlubs understand this. Who questions it?
Elite, Substacked <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Helen_Petersen> knowledge
workers:

“This is the black heart of productivity culture: the maniacal focus on the
individual capacity to produce elides the external forces that could (and
should!) short-circuit our concentration and work ethic,” Anne Helen
Petersen, co-author of the book *Out of Office*, wrote at the time
<https://annehelen.substack.com/p/how-to-work-through-a-coup>. “If we had
time and space to process the tragedies of daily life, if we gave ourselves
permission for deep empathy — then maybe we’d have the fortitude and will
to fight for the changes that would actually make the world less traumatic.”

I love that: *if we gave ourselves permission for deep empathy.* The
"permission" isn't ours to grant or withhold. Our employers decide, and
they rarely decide that empathy is appropriate, except in very small doses.
(I can't tell you how many transparently phony email messages of alleged
empathy my co-workers and I received from our white bosses last year in
response to the murder of Floyd.)

But employers could do more, couldn't they? North writes:

Companies can start by taking the onus off individual employees and
offering time off to everyone in difficult times. Even if management
encourages people to take time off, employees may fear repercussions if
they actually do it, Anderson pointed out — plus they’ll be coming back to
a mountain of work on their return. A better strategy is to simply give
time off to all employees without requiring them to request it. Nike, for
example, gave all office employees a week off
<https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/31/nike-gives-head-office-workers-a-week-off-to-destress.html>
earlier
this year, and Bumble and LinkedIn enacted similar policies.

Trust me on this: An extra week off on short notice could just mean that
you have to do twice as much work between now and the week off to keep all
of your projects on their current schedules, because the deadlines never
move.

One problem is that we think we can confront capitalism through normal
political means -- we think the system will totter, or at least change
significantly, if we vote for Democrats (or Bernie, or members of the
Squad, or, if you're delusional, Donald Trump), or if we form a union or
two at elite magazines or independent bookstores, or if we give money to
groups fighting good fights. In reality, we need to do more. At the very
least, we need to tap into the widespread contempt for fat cats -- they
need to be held up as the enemies of progress that they are; we need to
talk about precisely how they control the system, with an eye toward
weakening that control. But talk probably won't be enough. The victories of
the labor movement a century ago were won with violence, or at least the
threat of it. I don't want violent revolution, but I question whether true
progress is possible without it. I hope so, but I don't see any reason to
believe it.

In any case, capitalism isn't going to let us take a breather, no matter
how many virus strains threaten our health, no matter how many tornadoes
are approaching our workplaces. Capitalism doesn't care what happens to us,
as long as it doesn't have to pay significant costs associated with our
suffering. We have to make capitalism care, and I don't know if we're up
for the fight.

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