Groucho Marxism

It’s end-of-year review time at the company where I work. This is always a stressful time and one which inevitably leads to disappointment for many people, particularly those who don’t get the rating / pay rise / promotion they were hoping for. Thankfully I am not one of them, having long ago given up any desire to climb the corporate ladder. I now take the view that as long as my managers are broadly happy with the work I am doing and my job isn’t under imminent threat, then all is good. However seeing the disappointment others go through pains me as I remember going through the same thing myself in my younger years. I therefore thought it might be helpful to explain what led me to stop worrying about progressing my career.

I can still remember the bemusement I felt in my early career when I was unsuccessful in going for promotions and pay rises I believed I deserved and was ready for. Then one day someone gave me some life advice which completely changed the way I viewed the situation. The advice was this: If something bad keeps happening to you, instead of asking ‘why does this keep happening to me?’, ask instead ‘what is this telling me?’ So I decided to ask myself what my failed attempts at career progression were telling me. Quite a lot, as it turns out. The first and most obvious lesson is that hard work does not translate into promotions and pay rises. This is an idea we have drilled into us from an early age, but it’s just not true in the real world.

The bemusement I felt stemmed from me not understanding that the ‘hard work leads to career progression’ idea is a fallacy. Once I realized that, my lack of progression started to make a lot more sense. But this raised another question: If hard work doesn’t get you promoted, then what does? The stock answer is that you need to work smarter not harder. Which is to say, you need to focus your efforts on things that really matter and not on things that don’t. But who decides what really matters and what doesn’t? It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually the answer dawned on me. In a capitalist society, it is the capitalists who determine what work counts as worthwhile and what doesn’t, and those who get rewarded are the ones who do work that capitalists deem to be useful.

Under capitalism, ‘work’ is shorthand for ‘selling your labour power to a capitalist’, and the more valuable the labour power is to them, the more they will pay you for it. But what is valuable to the capitalist class is not necessarily valuable to society as a whole, contrary to what neoclassical economic theory would have you believe. Marx’s distinction between use value and exchange value is helpful here. The capitalist class is primarily interested in maximizing exchange value, as this is what increases their profits; whereas what would be beneficial for society as a whole would be maximizing use value. This highlights perhaps the key problem with capitalism as a system: namely, it maximizes the wrong thing.

Those who are succussful in climbing the career ladder – that is, those who get rewarded by the capitalist class – are those who do work which maximizes exchange value rather than use value. It is the people who bring in the most money that get rewarded, not the people who produce the most useful output. A critic might counter that those who produce the most useful output will automatically bring in the most money; but this is just another fallacy. Marx took pains to point out that use value and exchange value are unrelated, and in this he was absolutely correct. The easiest way to make money under capitalism is to make something people don’t really need then convince them to buy it, rather than to make something people do actually need.

On realizing all this, I immediately saw the career ladder for what it really is. The race for career progression is just a competition between workers to see who can be the most subservient to the capitalist class. Viewed in this light, the whole thing starts to seem rather pathetic. When people boast about how well they are doing in their careers – and sadly, people do this a lot (just have a look on LinkedIn) – they are really just broadcasting to everyone that they are a lickspittle. Rather than a high salary being a badge of honour, it should really be a seen as a badge of shame. Conversely, a low salary should not be taken as a sign that you are failing; on the contrary, it is a sign that you are probably doing something useful.

This provides an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable fact that under capitalism, the people who actually keep society running – bin-men, cleaners, nurses, teachers, etc. – are treated so poorly, whereas people who add little to society – management consultants, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, actuaries, etc. – are rewarded so handsomely. The explanation is simply that the former don’t create any value for the capitalist class, whereas the latter do. As the late, great American anthroplogist David Graeber pointed out, in our society there is an inverse correlation between the value of someone’s work to society as a whole and the amount they get paid to do it. So the next time you are passed over for a pay rise or promotion at work, maybe take it as a compliment.