Too Long, Won’t Read: My basic point is that social relationships > capital accumulation. It’s sad that in our current political-economic system, all too often it’s the other way around… When we can learn to integrate our work into our life, that is living to work rather than working to live, and stop seeing work/life as an opposed dichotomy, we can potentially live more satisfying and meaningful lives.
Harms also connects the ability to take advantage of manipulating bifurcated categories as a way to discuss work/life balance.
At one point, Harms meets a man dressed in rags sitting outside of a cafe who claimed to be more rich than Americans: even if he didn’t have material wealth, he had time, he told Harms. He was one of many workers in the urban fringes of Saigon who sit with their friends drinking coffee in front of cafes waiting for work. If someone needs a task done, such as construction or carpentry work, they can go to the cafes and bargain for a coffee-drinking cafe-goer to come help them. If the worker thinks it’s worth it, he will agree to the job.
Harms argues that this man embodies a vision of an alternative way of living, a calculus of material comfort x free time = happiness. For the man in rags, there is no spatial or temporal division between work and life. He is king in a world where people have the time to enjoy their coffee at the cafe and chat with friends as a part of their working day.
Harms notices that the most successful people in Hoc Mon were not only those who harnessed their position in the middle of the rural/urban divide, but also those who did not draw a line between work and life. In other words, people who live to work instead of work to live, either by converting their homes into storefronts, or otherwise by seamlessly integrating their life with their work, like the man in rags, were the most successful.
Contrast this image of the man sitting outside the cafe with a factory worker. The factory worker is completely subordinated to capital, and having no family to help or land to live off of, uses his wages for both subsistence and remittances back home, which leaves him with neither material wealth nor social reproduction. The factory worker has wholly subordinated family time and family space to the factory.
Factories take people out of their homes and subordinate them to the power of the capitalist process, essentially forcing them to give up the role of social reproduction and social life, and making them devoted to capital accumulation by essentially separating work and life.
When you make someone work all the time, you essentially take away their life. You take away someone’s own ability to produce and reproduce themselves as social beings. You take away their ability of being, and make their lives all about doing.
How does this relate to all of us? Sure, this is the description of a factory worker in Vietnam, and obviously we are not in that position in terms of having to be slaves in order to secure subsistence existence or in terms of material comforts. But what about in terms of time? What about in terms of our relation to the modes of production? What about in terms of our roles in social reproduction versus capital accumulation?
I think such a situation is related to everyone I know who has subordinated themselves to the priority of capital accumulation; that is, working for the man. Certainly this subordination is not by choice. Because right now in the political economic realities of our country, chasing capital accumulation is how we are educated and raised; this is how we survive. There is no alternative right now for any of us.
And what a sad world we live in as a result. It’s not the world I want to live in and it’s not the world I want to bring children into. Not as an academic, not as a mother. That’s just not how I want to live my life. That’s not the vision I have for me, for my future, or for my children. I want to prioritize social relations.
Obviously we first have to have that subsistence level: water, shelter, food. Once we attain that subsistence level, can we start thinking about how to subordinate capital accumulation to social relations? The problem is that we are often burdened by debt: student loans, credit card debt, car payments, mortgages. And so we work our asses off just to maintain some sense of normalcy, struggling to keep from drowning. But what happens is that we lose a big part of what life is about: being instead of doing.
And capitalism tricks us into thinking that this is a good thing, that we are sacrificing the present for the sake of a better future. This is a lie. The time is now. There is no time to waste. It’s time to start enjoying our lives, living our lives, and just being before it’s too late. Before we wake up and think to ourselves, “where has my life gone…?” I want to wake up and say to myself, “I’ve committed myself to cultivating meaningful connections and genuine relationships and friendships with people.”
I completely agree that working hard is an extremely important part of life. Working hard is one of the core values of my life that I hold very close to my heart and one that I try to live out every single day. But what are we working so hard toward? And who are working so hard for? It is the answer to this question that is essential. I want to work hard to better humanity, but also to maintain relationships with the people I care about.
Are we working for ourselves, and by extension for our friends and family, for social relations? Or are we working for the capitalist who is extracting the sweat and blood off of our backs for his own benefit?
Capitalism is not the only way. There are other alternatives. The man in rags on the street exemplifies this alternative in a very real way.
So what does this mean for us, in the real world? It means, to quote Amy Poehler, treating your career like a bad boyfriend. It means making time for friends and family and also for ourselves. Making time for ourselves to read, to enjoy the sunshine, to relax, and to be creative. It means making our social lives a top priority, above trying to please other people, including our bosses or our mothers or our significant others. It means taking care of ourselves as a way to take care of our communities, as a way to foster social relations. It’s not about taking care of other people with an expectation that we will get something back, but as a way to cultivate a joy and happiness for life.
What I got out of Harms’ book is that one way to achieve this is to integrate work and life so that they’re not separated, but actually one in the same. This could be something like opening a jiujitsu gym (where my life and work would be completely integrated), or some other occupation such as being an artist. For me, it means being a part of academia or writing or teaching.
For me, the academic life straddles the life-work balance by integrating my research into my life. The happiest and most successful professors have made clear to me that the key to success in academia is being okay with and embracing the aspect of academia that spills over into your personal life.
The fact that there is no defined split between work and life in academia-- that you write in the evenings and on weekends, for example-- has its advantages. Because work is your life, there is no separation that means you are miserable while you are working and happy while you’re not. Because your research is what you’re passionate about and so if you really enjoy it then you don’t mind working on the weekends because it’s not really work; it’s an ingrained part of your life.
A lot of people I talk to despise this aspect of graduate school and academia, wishing longingly to be like their professional friends who have nights and weekends off. I too sometimes long for this kind of lifestyle. But at least in my limited personal experience and observations and talking to friends, this kind of lifestyle is exhausting. Having a work/life separation can be very alienating and draining, leaving one without energy to really enjoy the time off.
So why do we have to separate work and life? Why is it a zero sum game, a mutually exclusive one or the other? What about a job that is your life? Whether it be traveling, producing art, writing, or doing jiujitsu, have you imagined a life where you could integrate your work into the things you already love to do?
In our current political-economic system, this is impossible for most of us. So let’s change the system.
We can have our cake and eat it too. Let’s make it happen.
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