Written by: gfesadmin on January 31, 2013

In our city I have been increasingly aware of the importance of the workforce. Many people I know, including good friends have been laid off from work or struggle to find jobs. There have been many businesses that have opened and closed. The workforce is struggling with “labor pains”. According to a recent news article, the current attitude towards labor is cautious optimism in out city. This is because of the increase in unemployment. In another current NPR article, the topic of the increase of workers was discussed. Unemployment rates have gone up, but temporary labor is on the increase, The article quotes New York Times sociologist Erin Hatton, “Many people have a great experience as temps. What I’m talking about her is this model of employment, the way we thing about workers. There’s a new model of employment where we thing that every penny we spend on a worker is a penny taken from the bottom line.” This she argues has given birth to an anti-worker ideology.

This last week I have been reading a classic book on the social implications of the development of the free-market system by Karl Polyani called “The Great Transformation”. He calls to question the assumptions created by the free-market. What he believed happened is that land and labor become commodities. The commodification of a human being devalues them. It can work against the good and God-given ability to work. In a free market system the bottom line is profit. What is not considered is the human fall-out to the average working class. Polyani warns of the dehumanizing forces that progress brought with it.  The problem is that labor is treated as a commodity. He warns, “To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment…would result in the demolition of society.” (73)

I have found this to be evident when I worked in a couple of factories right after high school. The workers felt devalued and part of the machinery of the company. They did not enjoy their work; instead they lived for the weekends. There was little pride in workmanship. Everything was measured. Your worth as an employee was determined by how fast you could work. Polyani saw this especially in the Industrial revolution. Economic progress came at the cost of social dislocation of workers and devaluation of the welfare of the community. (33) Now we are shipping the same kind of repetitive demoralizing jobs overseas with far less pay and unsafe conditions. The decline in the human value of the worker is a decline in the moral values of a society. Is this a decline in the value of labor? Is the pain in the labor force increasing as more jobs are sent overseas?

The insight of Polyani is not that the feudal system was somehow better, but that the system that replaced it has major flaws. The wealth that the free market produces is phenomenal. Many enjoy the benefits of it. The flaw comes when we work not to produce but to gain. Polyani states that a free market economy exists for people to make maximum gains. (68) The worker is not to offer a quality product with a sense of accomplishment, but to work for maximum productivity. What drives us to create more and cheaper goods is our desire to have more without any conscience to how our consumption affects our spiritual soul. Have we gained the world and in the process lost our soul to the market?

The labor pains occur when the workforce shifts from a human economy, where workers were valued as producers to one where workers were part of a system driven by gain. William Cavanaugh continues this thought by stating that increasing the profit margin drives the disparity of power between worker and employer. This is done in the name of free trade. (22-23) This does not give freedom to workers, but freedom to the market for gain.

How we view people, the nature of being a human being determines how we view the economy. Do we see people as projects to be helped, people as part of a system of survival or the strength of what it means to be a society? Polyani says in the market pattern, instead of the economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system. (57) Instead of society supporting the worker, the worker exists to support society.

The labor pains of unemployment, taking on temporary work and loss of jobs to low income labor in other counties may be an opportunity for something new to be born. But if big business continues to threaten to find cheaper and cheaper labor in conditions that demoralize human beings, then could the pain be one that leads to Polanyi’s warning of the demolition of society?

Examiner article “Cautious optimism in unemployment numbers”. http://www.examiner.com/article/cautious-optimism-employment-numbers

NPR article, “The Idea of the Expendable Employee”. http://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170473478/the-ideology-of-the-expendable-employee

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1944. 

William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.

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