In An aesthetic critique of the capitalist’s mindset I have quoted a passage about Kant and reached the conclusion that the capitalist’s mindset, only seeing the worker as an instrument but not as a human per se, is, ultimately, ugly.
Kant distinguished two attitudes: the interested and the disinterested. The interested attitude is what we get when we demote the worker to his or her labour, perceiving him as a means to an end. The disinterested attitude would be seeing the worker as a human.
Reading further in Beauty,* I came across the sentence: “One sign of a disinterested attitude is that it does not regard its objects as one among many possible substitutes.”
One might say: The person that puts the lids on top of pickle glasses is clearly substitutable, anyone can do that. That is, clearly, an interested attitude, which does not see the person, but the person’s ability to put lids on glasses. The person is a means to an end: the end are pickle glasses with lids and the means are people. The means in this case could also be machines. It is this mindset that, when taken to the extreme, allows the corporation to look for the skill, rather than for workers, and that dictates the corporation to get rid off the cost of the worker when the skill is not being utilised (e.g. the worker is sick) or is utilised slowly (e.g. an old worker).
This, as discussed in the Aesthetic critique, is what allows me to call the capitalist’s mindset ugly.
An ‘ideal capitalist mindset’ (for the lack of a better phrase) would recognise that he or she needs the skill to put lids on glasses, but that the skill comes with a worker who is more than his or her skill. In fact, the skill does not come with a worker, a worker has a certain skill. An ideal capitalist mindset would find a balance between using the skill and recognising the human condition of the worker.
A manifestation of such a balance would be a regulated working schedule with enough breaks, including breaks between days and longer breaks between, say, weeks or months; it would be sufficient pay for the worker to be able to decently live with one job; it would be the continuation of pay during breaks and other involuntary absences (e.g. sickness); it would be flexibility that allows the worker to continue his or her education or company-financed trainings; it would be the possibility of genuine progression within the company.
What justifies a disinterested attitude towards the worker (i.e. an attitude that sees a worker with a substitutable skill as non-substitutable)? I have already answered it briefly when I said that it is the fact that she or he is human, however, I’d like to elaborate briefly on it with a few examples.
Workers are men and women with interests in cooking, books, films or traveling. They have partners who need and wish them around and children who are going to school and are considering their futures, step by step, exploring the limits of the possible. If a worker is fired, his or her ability to pursue interests for the soul can be compromised, a relationship can be strained or threatened, violence might be provoked, saving for the child’s med school can be discontinued, his or her future altered to his or her clear disadvantage. No two workers face the same consequences, the same dangers, the same disappointment. No two workers have the same relationship. No two workers’ children have identical interests and possibilities and talents. No two workers are the same.
The problem with this entire reasoning is, of course, that you need to accept my basic premise that a worker is more than the sum of his or her skills that can be productively put at the disposal of the capitalist. That’s a value judgment, clearly, but if one (in this case the capitalist) only considers the worker as an instrument that can be used to achieve a certain aim, he or she thinks and acts as an animal, not as a human.
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*Scruton, Roger, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, 2011.
Think! 