9: OPENING UP THE FUTURE OF WORK
Colin C Williams
The notion that we live in a ‘capitalist’ society organized around the systematic pursuit of profit in the marketplace is something commonly assumed by business leaders, journalists, politicians and academic commentators of all major political hues. Wherever one looks, the prevailing orthodoxy is that there has been a shift away from (pre-modern or traditional) non-market work in the western economies and towards the production and delivery of goods and services for monetised exchange by capitalist firms for the purpose of profit.
Here, however, I wish to question this commonly held view of economic development that closes off the future to anything other than a commodified world. How deeply has the market really penetrated western economies? Is the trend towards ever more market-oriented economies? Or do non-market economic practices persist? If so, how can their persistence be explained? And what are the implications for how the future of work is envisaged? In answering these questions, the intention is to show that the view of the market as victorious, colonizing and all-powerful needs to be transcended and for greater attention to be paid to imagining and enacting alternative futures for working life beyond the market.
THE COMMODIFICATION THESIS
Given that every society has to produce, distribute, and allocate the goods and services that people need to live, all societies have an economy of one type or another. Economies, however, can be organized in a multitude of different ways. To depict the configuration of economies, most analyses differentiate three modes of producing and delivering goods and services, namely the ‘market’, the ‘state’ and the ‘community’. Analysed in these terms, the widespread consensus is that most nations are witnessing a common trajectory so far as the nature and direction of their economies are concerned. A view predominates that the market is becoming more powerful, expansive, hegemonic and totalising as it penetrates deeper into each and every corner of economic life and stretches its tentacles ever wider across the globe to colonize those areas previously left untouched by its powerful force.
This process of commodification, or what is sometimes referred to as ‘commercialism’ or ‘marketization’, where goods and services are increasingly produced by capitalist forms for a profit under conditions of market exchange, is seen to be leading to a predominantly market mode of economic organization where firstly, goods and services are produced for exchange, secondly, these exchanges are monetised and third and finally, monetary exchange is imbued with the profit motive. Given that the non-market sphere is by definition composed of economic practices not possessing one or more these characteristics, this sphere can be here divided into three distinctive forms of work. Firstly, there is non-exchanged work, secondly, non-monetised exchange and third and finally, monetised exchange where the motive of profit is not to the fore (see Figure 1). According to the commodification thesis, therefore, the shaded area of Figure 1 is expanding and colonising all of the other spheres of work.
Table 1 Allocation of working time in western economies |
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Country Canada Denmark France Netherlands Norway UK USA Finland 20 Countries |
Paid work |
Non-exchanged work (minutes per day) 204 155 246 209 232 206 231 216 230 |
Time spent on non- |
One of the most worrying and disturbing aspects of this thesis that we live in a ‘capitalist’ society organized around the systematic pursuit of profit is that despite its overwhelming predominance, hardly any evidence is ever brought to the fore by its exponents either to show that a process of marketization is occurring or even to display the extent, pace or unevenness of its penetration.
If this was an insignificant process or merely some ‘academic’ theory in the most derogatory sense of the word (i.e., of little or no importance), then it might not even matter. However, the commodification thesis is seemingly the principal driving force underpinning the decisions to restructure both ‘transition’ economies and the ‘third world’ towards a market system. It is also the main reason for the focus upon the market in economic policy in the western economies. It is thus crucial that this thesis is interrogated. Unless this occurs, then one will not know whether the current focus of economic policy upon the market realm is built upon firm foundations or not.
EVALUATING THE COMMODIFICATION THESIS
To gauge whether there is a displacement of non-market activity by a colonizing market sphere, the component parts of the commodification thesis can be investigated. If this thesis is correct, then firstly, monetised exchange should be expanding relative to non-exchanged work and non- monetised exchange and secondly, monetised exchange should be increasingly conducted for profit-motivated purposes.
Non-exchanged work
Examining how people spend their time in twenty western countries, Table 1 uncovers that unpaid domestic work (i.e., non-exchanged work) occupies 43.6 per cent of total working time. It appears, therefore, that the reach of the market is rather narrower than imagined by exponents of marketization. Self-provisioning, so long considered a marginal ‘other’, is only slightly smaller than paid work, measured in terms of the amount of time spent on it. Indeed, in some nations (e.g., Canada, France, Nether- lands, UK, USA), more time is spent engaged in non-exchanged work than paid work.
This finding should not be a surprise. When Karl Polanyi in his 1944 book, The Great Transformation, depicted the shift from a non-market to a market society, he strongly emphasized how this was merely a shift in the balance of economic activity from the non- market to the market sphere. He never asserted that it would be total. These data demonstrate that he was quite correct not to exaggerate the reach of the market.
It might be also presumptuous to talk of an expansive and colonizing market sphere. As Table 2 displays, the shift of work from the unpaid to the paid sphere has, at best, stalled over the past forty years. Indeed, in some nations, it has even gone into reverse. In countries such as Denmark, Finland, France, the UK and the USA, unpaid work now occupies a greater share of people’s total working time than it did four decades ago. Working life, therefore, is not everywhere becoming more market-orientated, as propounded by exponents of the commodification thesis.
Table 2 |
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Country |
1960-73 |
1974-84 |
1985-present |
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Paid work Subsistence work |
Mins per day 309 237 ------------- 546 |
% of all work 56.6 43.4 ------------ 100.0 |
Mins per day 285 212 ------------- 497 |
% of all work 57.3 42.7 ------------- 100.0 |
Mins per day 293 235 --------------- 528 |
% of
all work 55.4 44.6 -------------- 100.0 |
Source: Gershuny (2000, Table 7.1)3
Non-monetised exchange
It is not only the persistence of non-exchanged work that casts doubts on the commodification thesis. According to exponents of commodification, non-monetised exchanges are also disappearing as monetary relations penetrate every nook and cranny of the world and into almost every aspect of social, even private life, meaning that what we are living through is the accelerating passage of non-monetised activity into the formal economy, its colonization by market transactions. Is it the case, therefore, that in ‘market societies’, non-monetised exchange has ceased to exist?
It takes only a moment’s reflection to realise that this is not the case. Throughout western economies, there exists a tremendous amount of what is variously referred to as voluntary work, unpaid community exchange or mutual aid. Take, for example, the UK. A 2001 UK government survey (the Home Office Active Citizenship Survey) identified some 3.7 billion hours of volunteering occurred in the previous 12 months. This is the equivalent in hours to the total work of just over 2 million people employed on a full-time basis (i.e., at 35 hours per week). Or put another way, for every 14 hours worked in formal employment in the UK (assuming 27 million people working an average of 35 hours), approximately one hour is spent working on a non-monetised basis. Given that non-monetised exchange constitutes some 7 per cent of the total time that people spend engaged in formal employment in the UK, such work is thus far from some marginal leftover, especially and as will be shown in the next section, given that not all paid work is market work.
Not-for-profit monetised transactions
The notion that the only type of monetary exchange is that which is profit-motivated runs deep across economic discourse ranging from neo-classical to Marxist thought. Reading monetised exchange as always profit-motivated serves the interests of both neo-liberals whose belief is that this must be met with open arms and radical theorists who use this as a call to arms to resist its further encroachment. The result is the perpetuation of a crude view of monetised exchange that fails, as will now be seen, to get to grips with the real diversity of monetary exchange in western economies.
The fact that monetary exchange does not always have to be imbued with the profit-motive can be clearly seen in many ‘alternative economic spaces’ such as car boot sales, inflation-free local currency experiments such as Local Exchange and Trading Schemes, sweat-equity money projects such as time dollars and the realm of gift-giving. More importantly, it can be clearly seen in many mainstream economic sectors.
For all of the talk of the demise of the public sector, which by definition has not been oriented towards profit, this sector still represents in western economies the equivalent of somewhere between 30-50 per cent of GDP. Indeed, even if it is no longer a major direct provider of goods and services, this does not mean that these have been moved into the commodified sphere. To realise this, one has only to look at the growth of the non-profit sector in the western economies, which now represents the equivalent of some 5 per cent of GDP. Examining the not-for-profit sector in 26 countries, the John Hopkins Comparative Non-Profit Sector Project (www.jhu.edu/~cnp/compdata.html) displays that the pace of job growth in this sector is faster than in the wider economy. In the US, for example, although there was an overall increase in employment of 8 per cent between 1990 and 1995, the growth in employment in the not-for-profit sector was 20 per cent. In four EU nations (France, Germany, the UK and Netherlands), meanwhile, the 24 per growth in not-for-profit sector employment far outstripped the 3 per cent growth in the economy as a whole, thus accounting for 40 per cent of total employment growth. The inference is that the relationship between monetised exchange and the profit motive might well be growing weaker rather than stronger.
It might be assumed that whenever the private sector partakes in monetary transactions, the motive of profit is always to the fore. In a bid to deconstruct this belief so as to deprive capitalism of its solid coherent identity, numerous studies have displayed that private sector enterprises are not all, and always, driven by a common imperative of profit.
To take just one example, a recent study4 explores how competing discourses of management shape the fluid entity that is unproblematically represented as ‘the capitalist firm’. Examining an Australian minerals and steel multinational, this study produces a disruptive reading that emphasizes the de-centred and disorganized actions taken in response to multiple logics circulating within and without the corporation. Their analysis represents the enterprise as an unpredictable and potentially open site, rather than as a set of practices unified by a predictable logic of profit maximisation. No longer tethered to a pre- ordained economic logic, the enterprise becomes recognisable as an ordinary social institution; one that often fails to enact its will or realize its goals or even fails to come to a coherent conception of what these might be. Hence, even in the commercial sphere, so dominantly perceived as the embodiment of the profit motive, enterprises are not always tethered to the motive of profit and profit alone.
The outcome, therefore, is that despite the widespread belief that we live in a commodified world, this is not the case. Indeed, taking all of the above estimates into account, Figure 2 provides a graphic display of the nature of western economies, showing how well under half of our economies, at the very most, can be characterized as commodified.
EXPLAINING THE PERSISTENCE OF NON-COMMODIFIED WORK
To explain the continuing prevalence and even growth of non-market work in western economies, one option is to view its growth as the product of a new stage of capitalism (often called post-Fordism) that is off-loading social reproduction functions from the market sphere back onto the non- market realm. In this reading, the breakdown of the post-war economic regulations and welfare states through a general trend of deregulation and flexibilisation of production, and the transferring of social services to private and communal hands, has led to a practice of de-commodification. Those no longer of use to capitalism, in this view, are thus being off-loaded onto the non-market sphere to eke out their living.
Is it the case, however, that all non-market activity can and should be seen in such structural economic terms? As the distribution of non-market work has been unpacked and the motives underpinning these economic practices unravelled, it has become increasingly apparent that this is a necessary but insufficient explanation. Numerous studies display that although affluent populations lead more commodified lives, their volume of non-market activity is actually greater. For deprived populations, engagement in non- market work tends to be confined to routine, monotonous and unrewarding work whilst for affluent populations, it is more orientated towards non- routine, creative and rewarding activities. Unravelling their contrasting motives, furthermore, the finding is that although deprived populations engage in such activity mostly out of economic necessity, for affluent populations it is more a matter of choice.5 As such, economistic discourses need to be complemented with more agency-oriented narratives to fully explain this sphere.
One option in this regard is to read the continuing prevalence of non- market work as resulting from cultures of resistance to commodification. From this viewpoint, the persistence and growth of non-market work displays for example, how the in- creasing dissatisfaction with formal employment is resulting in participation in non-market activity as people search for alternative sources of work satisfaction and pleasure due to its absence in their employment. Certainly, it would appear that this view of non-market economic practices as ‘spaces of hope’ is important for explaining the non-market work of affluent populations, even if the view of them as ‘spaces of despair’ continues to have more resonance for deprived populations.
CONCLUSIONS
Until now, the widely held view that the market is reaching ever further into every crevice of daily life has led many to conclude that there is ‘no alternative’ to a commodified world. In this article, however, a large non-market realm has been identified that for the past four decades, if anything, has grown rather than diminished relative to the market sphere, thus raising doubts about whether the market is so victorious, colonizing and all-powerful as many previously assumed. By allowing capitalist imperatives to colonize our imagination, it appears that adherents to the commodification thesis have obfuscated the economic plurality that characterizes western economies and closed off the future of work to anything other than a com- modified world. Here, however, the future of work has again been opened up to an endless array of new possibilities that now need to be explored and discussed as serious options. If I have here started to peel away the scales that have covered the eyes of so many and to encourage hope that it is wholly feasible to open the future of work to alternatives beyond a commodified world, then this paper will have achieved its objective.
May 2004
Colin C Williams
Professor of Work Organization
Co-ordinator, Collective for Alternative Organization Studies (CAOS)
University of Leicester Management Centre Leicester LE1 7RH United Kingdom
E-mail: [email protected]
NOTES
1. This paper introduces arguments covered in greater detail in C.C. Williams (forthcoming September 2004) A Commodified World? mapping the limits of capitalism, Zed, London.
2. J. Gershuny (2000) Changing Times: work and leisure in postindustrial society, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
3. ibid
4. O’Neill, P. and Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1999) ‘Enterprise discourse and executive talk: stories that destabilize the company’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24: 11-22.
5. See Williams (2004)