Is "Do What You Love" Capitalist Propaganda?

Is "Do What You Love" Capitalist Propaganda?

By Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 2:02pm |

"Do What You Love" is a secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation but is an act of love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, presumably it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.html

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Karl put it this way:

"The more the worker spends himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomes which he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself -his inner world- becomes, the less belongs to him as his own... The worker put his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the greater is the worker's lack of objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore the greater is this product, the less is he himself."

1844 Manuscripts

by moat on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 6:05pm

This made me think of Marx too. In a way, Marx was a DWYL guy, or maybe LWYD. He wasn't spinning capitalist propaganda, of course, but he still had an idealized notion of labor. Even under socialism, it's hard to take pleasure in washing dirty diapers.

by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 8:22pm

Marx was very skill full at identifying the ways labor undertaken in the name of individual advancement can hollow out an individual in the capitalist system.

Marx was one of the progenitors of socialism in the history of ideas and his political actions helped bring that sort of thing into being. What is odd about that legacy is that his models of alienation are all about the individual and what they experience or not.

Not much nutrition for people trying to be communitarian can be found in his writings. Maybe diaper washing played a role in that.

by moat on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 9:27pm

That's a wholenuthercanoworms. Putting aside the long-running socialism/marxism/communism debate, my point is just that Marx, like Steve Jobs, had an elitist view of labor--probably because he was a philosopher, not a diaper-cleaner.

by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 01/24/2014 - 1:23pm

Agreed. But he didn't think it was elitist. On odd oversight for an otherwise smart person.

by moat on Sat, 01/25/2014 - 2:54pm

Why do I picture this being typed on a Mac?

Miya Tokumitsu holds a PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania.

by EmmaZahn on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 6:29pm

Even Marx's pen was made by the masses.

by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 8:25pm

But by which pencil company?

by EmmaZahn on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 10:00pm

Staedtler-Marx

by Donal on Sat, 01/25/2014 - 6:43pm

Rebranding!

You know that just might work for the philosophy as well...

Mars-ism!

by EmmaZahn on Sat, 01/25/2014 - 8:19pm

and speaking of Apple and capital, did you notice this?

by artappraiser on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 8:53pm

Why sit on that much cash? To protected themselves from from Icahn? waiting for the stock market to sell off to buy back shares and go back to being a private company? Both? Hmmm.

by EmmaZahn on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 9:56pm

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