Society (yet another look)

Watching people during the recent heavy snow falls I came to see very clearly the nature of society and especially the place of work in that society.

A whole street had turned up to dig itself out of the snow. There was a good feeling in that street as everyone ganged together. I felt that for a while society had built up stronger around the job that existed than it had about even being neighbours. One thing I missed during the snow fall was the experience of getting time off work. My days are free so when the snow fell I did not receive that bonus of free time that all the working people shared. It was just another day for me – the snow lost one part of its significance for me.

Putting those two experiences together gets to the point. Humans are social. We are constructed out of the interactions we have with other people: the inter-personal theory of human existence and truth. What work generates is human interactions – this is why we like work, this is the importance of work in our culture.

The economic view that work makes things that we need like food is almost completely missing the point. It is true that we need to expend energy in order to live – obtaining clean water, foraging or growing crops, building shelters and making clothes. But animals do this. Machines can do this. The point for humans is that these objective processes provide the focus around which society can organise and it is through these therefore that we as subjects are created. It is like rain condensing out from clouds onto dust. The mechanical production required to live is inanimate like the dust. Our “Life” however is not this: it is the fluid water than condenses and finds form around this dust.

All the structures we find in work from slavery, to pay increases, to authority are products not of the mechanical but of the social. The injustices are often blamed incorrectly on the mechanical when really they are nothing of the sort.

So actually society could be built on anything that organises people and creates interactions. That it is dominated by the mechanical requirements of our bodies is just coincidence.