Long Covid

Economics, The Future of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism

Morning Comrades.

This topic has been bubbling up at my end for the past few weeks often enough to warrant another special type of email. Initially, I was going to run on some type of reactionary “what in the fuck is going on here” type of roll but I will probably save that for Friday.

First and foremost, I am not a economic scientist and despite being neck-deep in a lot of published research I have to stick to their executive summaries mostly because I never studied economics at a level that this research is based on. I will hyperlink the sources I have been digging through in this text for anyone to get into it and transparency.

This email is going to be about work, the future of work, the questions Covid has made abundantly clear, what the capitalists are thinking and planning and what options are on the table. Additionally, I am working from the reality that we currently do and will continue exist under the current model of capitalism. This isn’t going to assume a scientific utopian approach, but for once, a cold, hard reality check.

Amazingly, I haven’t had Covid yet, at least I don’t think so. A couple of scares, surely, but nothing so far. Considering my lifestyle this is hardly surprising but nevertheless, at this stage, I am surprised myself. Before we get into it, I do want to check in with you all and would genuinely like to hear from you in regards to this topic. Have you had Covid? How are you feeling? How has this all affected your work and your relationship with work? Please, feel free to anonymously drop me a line, or comment below. Your answers aren’t going to be published, it’s solely to get a better picture of where everyone is at here in this community.

My work reality hasn’t changed much since the beginning of the pandemic. I have always worked from home and at several times in my life I have rented a studio space, in which I have also worked alone, I prefer it that way. What has significantly changed is my ability to concentrate, it has drastically declined and the efforts involved to pull a full working day, let alone the 15-18hr days I used to pull back when I was young seem and quite frankly are, impossible at this stage. Oddly enough I never applied a systemic analysis to this decline in productivity but put it down to my own short comings, we all know that horrific by-product induced by the alienation inherent in capitalism. However, over the last few weeks and especially in light of the fact that most Western nations have capitulated to Capital, are enforcing the end of this pandemic to “save” their respective economies, I have spoken to a number of comrades who all feel the same. Some work as freelancers, some are in full-time employment and there seems to be no discrimination here at all everyone is fatigued and their ability to concentrate is greatly reduced, and thus our respective productivity is negatively affected, or is it?

The way our economies work at this point is that everything is geared towards to growth, the inherent nature at the base of capitalism, more importantly, financial growth. This is either achieved by increased productivity and thus product and / or reducing overhead costs- i.e., firing your ass. It is no secret that the average productivity has increased at a much higher level that wages,¹ and you’d think that the effects of Covid, both short and long term will have a negative effect on this - oddly, short term, yes, due to the general shock throughout the entirety of everything but oddly, not long term.

Despite the long term effects of Long Covid of which women of working age—particularly low-paid and frontline workers²—are disproportionately affected, most projections by the big players of capitalism see no decrease in productivity.³ - granted, one always has to take everything companies like McKinsey say with a grain of salt, as they are not scientific researchers but sell a product, mostly faith and hope at their core, but the resources they have allocated to these papers is significant, certainly much more significant that any University I know. What’s even more astounding, according to a paper by the European Central Bank is: “Between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2021, euro area labour productivity growth remained positive and even accelerated compared with the period prior to the pandemic (Chart A). Average growth in annual real GDP per hour worked rose to 1.7% during this period, more than twice the average pre-pandemic (2014-19) rate, while real GDP and total hours worked declined by annual averages of 5.7% and 7.4% respectively. The fall in employment was much smaller, due mainly to the different job retention schemes set up in various euro area countries – on average, employment fell by an annual 1.6% over the same period. In the second quarter of 2021, however, these developments reversed, with hours worked and employment rebounding sharply, causing productivity growth to slow. Nevertheless, productivity is now more than 2% higher than the pre-pandemic level seen in the fourth quarter of 2019.⁴

This really confused me at first because these statistics were telling a contrary story to what many of us, including myself felt but the more I thought about this I realized that I was probably going about this train of thought from the wrong angle.

Initially, my thinking went along the lines that with Long Covid having a severe effect on the ability of workers to maintain, let alone increase productivity, this would be a huge cog in the machinery of capitalism. Clearly, this is isn’t the case as seen above, and by all means read the footnoted articles if this is of interest. Apparently, the crisis of “work” is actually the realization many of us are having that our work-places, and our relationships with the undemocratic realities of capitalist hierarchies at most work places are the problem, more so than anything else. Obviously, this counts for the large majority of people doing what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” and not those doing work that directly benefits society, read: care work.

In Bullshit Jobs, American anthropologist David Graeber posits that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to "bullshit jobs": "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."⁵ While these jobs can offer good compensation and ample free time, Graeber holds that the pointlessness of the work grates at their humanity and creates a "profound psychological violence".⁶

Graeber contends that more than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and, as he describes, five types of entirely pointless jobs:

1. flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;

2. goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;

3. duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;

4. box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;

5. taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.⁷

Whilst I could talk for hours about the brilliance of Graeber’s work, let’s get back to the point. The capitalists aren’t seeing a decline in productivity despite Covid and Long Covid but I wager what we are seeing is a very clear realization that a) most jobs we do are bullshit jobs b) remote working is pretty good c) remote work made it extremely clear what it means to be a care worker, especially an unpaid one at home (shout out to all my other single full time fathers out there, you know what I mean) and that other relationships to work can and quite frankly should exist. Now, utopian scientists, this amateur included, have written and talked about the necessity to a radical shift away from the nature of our work relationships for years, prior and especially before the pandemic. Nothing about the current model really makes sense and the pandemic accentuated that. Couple that with the insistence by many companies and our respective governments to “come back to work” - for what purpose exactly many of us ask IF productivity remains the same or actually increased during the pandemic, this great resignation trend, especially in the US, is making more and more sense. ⁸

Couple that with the hard realities that Capitalism never sleeps, adapts faster than anything else we know, and the plans that are already in place this brings us to a point where we need to ask, why work in these realities, what do we need, how can we achieve this fairly, sustainably ( in all regards, not simply ecologically ) and outside of the parameters set forth by capitalism. It’s a little wild to read into the analysis’ and plans by big players like McKinsey that are out in the open for anyone to read - like this one here:

“The pandemic pushed companies and consumers to rapidly adopt new behaviors that are likely to stick, changing the trajectory of three groups of trends. We consequently see sharp discontinuity between their impact on labor markets before and after the pandemic.” ⁹

Wild, in the sense that it seems that the Capitalists are always a step ahead of this discussion, always crating the framework in which we can come up with new realities. This needs to drastically change and that is also another realization from this ongoing pandemic, at least at this end. If there is one net-positive effect of Covid and one net positive long covid symptom let it be this: We need to drastically re-evaluate what work means, how we value it and how we go about achieving it. Certainly, the way we have worked up until now cannot continue and maybe, just maybe, let this be another nail in the coffin of capitalism.

Food for thought.

Thanks for tuning in, supporting this work and this will return Thursday and Friday.

Until then, I remain yours, without compromise,

V.

1. Growing inequalities, reflecting growing employer power, have generated a productivity–pay gap since 1979- by Lawrence Mishel

2. https://www.bsr.org/en/emerging-issues/the-workforce-challenge-of-long-covid

3. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/will-productivity-and-growth-return-after-the-covid-19-crisis

4. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/economic-bulletin/focus/2021/html/ecb.ebbox202107_04~c9050e1d70.en.html

5. Heller, Nathan (June 7, 2018). "The Bullshit-Job Boom". The New Yorker.

6. Heller, Nathan (June 7, 2018). "The Bullshit-Job Boom". The New Yorker.

7. Duncan, Emma (May 5, 2018). "Review: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber quit now, your job is pointless". The Times.

8. https://www.statista.com/chart/26186/number-of-people-quitting-their-jobs-in-the-united-states/

9. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-after-covid-19