Selling What Out

I'd like to associate myself with Dana Goldstein's remarks on The Trap. What's more, I'm reminded by this debate of a column that I think I kept meaning to write for the college paper when I was in school and never got around to, namely that a lot of people heading into careers in investment banking or management consulting had a bizarre habit of appropriating the language of "selling out" even though it was far from clear that they had anything to sell.

If you ruin your band's sound in an effort to write more radio-friendly songs, you're selling out. If you quit your job on the Hill to start shilling for health insurance companies, you're selling out. When you dumb Veronica Mars down after season two in a desperate bid to gain a bigger audience, you're selling out. But if you just decide at the age of 22 or 23 that there's nothing you're sufficiently passionate about to make you want to give up the stability and prosperity that comes with a corporate career, you're not selling anything out, you're just applying to law school.

And there's really nothing wrong with that. But the nominal self-critique involved in dubbing such activity "selling out" is really a form of self-dramatization and self-praise, carrying with it the implication that of course you could have written the Great American Novel or turned around and inner-city school if only you hadn't been so damn selfish.

Comments

I'm not sure I agree. If you're someone who has a set of values that tells you that there is something fundamentally bankrupt, spiritually deadening and immoral about the Way of American Success, and those values haven't changed, but you still become some corporate asshole because it's more materially profitable, well... maybe you're just a douche bag.

Posted by Freddie | October 16, 2007 7:31 PM

If you're someone who has a set of values that tells you there is something fundamentally bankrupt, spiritually deadening and immoral about the Way of American Success...

And how many 22- or 23-year-olds genuinely, deeply feel this way, as opposed to thinking it would be cooler to be a rock star or successful actor/writer/whatever than to be a successful lawyer?

Posted by Swopa | October 16, 2007 7:41 PM

What if you got the job on the Hill for the specific purpose of eventually doing some lucrative health care shilling?

It's also worth noting that the top three democrats running for president apparently engaged in the conduct described (and probably the self-aggrandizing too, if I had to bet).

Posted by southpaw | October 16, 2007 7:47 PM

Well there are people who are very passionate about politics (for instance) and want to make the world a better place, but who instead decide to work in consulting or i-banking for the money/comfort. I think that's selling out.

Posted by Algernon | October 16, 2007 7:49 PM

And how many 22- or 23-year-olds genuinely, deeply feel this way, as opposed to thinking it would be cooler to be a rock star or successful actor/writer/whatever than to be a successful lawyer?

Well that was a year or two ago. But I was one...

Posted by Freddie | October 16, 2007 7:53 PM

When the main purpose of what you do is to make a lot of money, as opposed to helping people in some way, or making art of some kind, then you're selling out the gifts, talents and training you have, just to be able to buy fancy crap. At least that's one interpretation of generic "selling out" that doesn't require delusions of grandeur.

Posted by Ken C. | October 16, 2007 8:05 PM

I am a somewhat newish attorney and would have to agree that I don't consider myself a "sellout." I was in the Air Force before law school, and my main concern was to...get out of the air force, not to pursue an artistic dream (which I didn't have).
Although in law school there is exposure to the ideals of public interest, and I do feel guility for not providing more pro bono services (hopefully only a symptom of being a low man on the totem pole too maxed out by my current job requirements to devote the necessary time to a pro bono case).
But now that I do work, I can't go out and party and attend late night concerts or go clubbing (as much as I could, anyway).
Perhaps that is what the investment bankers who came from upper class families mean by selling out: I could be working a softer job that doesn't demand long hours and be partying and hungover all the time (like when they were an intern at some music company or publishing house one summer in college). But they "sell out" their dreams of drunken idleness and drug fuled bachanallias to instead make a lot of money, so they can be aggressively drunk on the weekends.

Posted by where do I sign? | October 16, 2007 8:06 PM

Veronica Mars was a superb show with crazy-good writing the 1st two seasons, and a fine cast, that truly challenged it's audience.
Unfortunately, it didn't get the ratings.
3rd season slipped as the people in the Veronica Mars cast didn't sell out, they purposefully dumbed down to try and get dumbed down Americans to watch. It didn't work. They finally got cancelled.
It's one thing to say someone is selling out from a position of security, it's another when you are doing what it takes to survive and avoid failure.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 16, 2007 8:07 PM

But the nominal self-critique involved in dubbing such activity "selling out" is really a form of self-dramatization and self-praise, carrying with it the implication that of course you could have written the Great American Novel or turned around and inner-city school if only you hadn't been so damn selfish.

That's not the way I interpret selling out. It has nothing to do with having something to sell in the sense that you have something other people would pay money for; rather it's about doing something that compromises your principles, for gain. If there's any self-dramatization or self-praise involved, it's not about whether you could have written the Great American Novel, but whether you used to think or say that, for example, working in the military industrial complex is a bad thing for world peace, and then you decide to do it anyway for the money.

Posted by RSA | October 16, 2007 8:13 PM

>>But the nominal self-critique involved in dubbing such activity "selling out" is really a form of self-dramatization and self-praise

I think it's just called "youth." Give it a few years -- you'll get over it.

Posted by jim | October 16, 2007 8:23 PM

My similar annoyance with this issue in law school wasn't so much with the use of the term "selling out", as with the complaining that something should be done to prevent the buyers from offering the sell-out option. This faux-pose paved the way for acceptance of the selling out without having to take any moral responsibility, as such responsibility, naturally, fell to the corporate law firms and school administration who had the nerve to offer and facilitate the offering of highly paid jobs!

Posted by Gentle Reader | October 16, 2007 8:28 PM

It's one thing to say someone is selling out from a position of security, it's another when you are doing what it takes to survive and avoid failure.

Wow! Who'da thunk it? Chris Ford's starting to channel Woody Guthrie! Next he'll be exhorting the proletariat to seize the means of production. Power to the people! Rock on CF!

Posted by DMonteith | October 16, 2007 8:28 PM

the linguistic point is acceptable, but I think it's more common that people who really did have nobler aspirations that end up following the assembly line into i-banking and consulting.

The problem is with many people who NEVER REALLY HAD such aspirations -- except in the boring, vague, and nominal ways of greeting cards and public service announcements -- using the term "selling out." It's kind of like an appropriation by the corporate class. (or at least a meager psychological trick to mask the guilt many initially feel about making tons of money).

Posted by publius | October 16, 2007 8:31 PM

There are very few "softer" jobs in America than corporate lawyer. The hours are grueling in the first 2 or 3 years but I have never thought I had a "hard" job.

Posted by double play | October 16, 2007 8:38 PM

running for president ... self-aggrandizing

Pretty sure that's redundant.

Posted by guineapigfury | October 16, 2007 8:52 PM

I agree with the commenters who disagree with Matt. I'd point out that in addition to being off-base his comments have bad implications. If you have to have be passionate like an artist to make personal sacrifices for the public good, things are pretty hopeless for progressive politics. Ditto if there's "nothing wrong" with serving Big Money.

Posted by AF | October 16, 2007 9:18 PM

I think some of this appropriation might also be a defense against some of the tendencies that the above commenters have exhibited. I.e., you truly are doing something soulless and bordering on evil by entering corporate America. It might be easier to make this sort of self-deprecating jibe than to get into a long argument about annoying sanctimony.

Posted by GHK | October 16, 2007 9:32 PM

I think a lot of us (management consultant here) would reject the dichotomy. One of the things about top-tier consultants and bankers and whatnot is that they tend to be people who've never failed at anything.

Most of the kids I see joining our firm believe that the can both live a comfortable and affluent life and also participate in making the world a better place. Nearly every young corporate go-getter I've ever met has significant involvement in some charity or other on the side.

Put more broadly, if you expect people to choose between comfort and justice, they'll often choose comfort. If you encourage them to do both, they often can. Arguments like this that suggest it can only be one or the other are arguably harmful and likely wrong.

Posted by Andrew Edwards | October 16, 2007 9:45 PM

Selling out is like time -- relative. I'm sure Kenneth Pollack thinks you sold out when you stopped supporting the Iraq War. Personally, I think you sold out when you started shilling for Dexter.

Posted by GiantDuck | October 16, 2007 9:54 PM

I think a lot of us (management consultant here) would reject the dichotomy

I don't disagree.

Posted by Freddie | October 16, 2007 10:15 PM

RSA: If there's any self-dramatization or self-praise involved, it's not about whether you could have written the Great American Novel, but whether you used to think or say that, for example, working in the military industrial complex is a bad thing for world peace, and then you decide to do it anyway for the money.

There's something missing here and in a lot of these comments. It's perfectly possible to do good, or at least attempt to do good, within the context of an evil corporation or industry. For example, is someone who does environmental clean up for Lockheed selling out? Is Walmart's head of sustainability--who will be spearheading some phenomenal environmental efforts--selling out by virtue of the fact that the sustainability efforts will allow Walmart to grow even more gigantic and do even more to screw up pay scales in the developing world?

It's fine to talk about selling out theoretically, but as a practical matter, there are few jobs that are purely evil--say, tobacco company lobbyist, a la Thank You For Smoking--and those people probably see nothing morally wrong with their jobs.

Posted by brad | October 16, 2007 10:24 PM

There's a bit of ambiguity about what you are selling-out. I'd suggest that it has to be giving up the pursuit of that-which-you-value for money. That-which-you-value can be any number of things and there is nothing inherently contradictory between that and business. Look, for example, at the Clinton Foundation.

Posted by Isaac | October 16, 2007 10:25 PM

Uhh, Goldstein's post was idiotic and Matt's an utter moron to cite it approvingly. "It will help if you don’t have considerable student debt, so ambitious high school seniors should consider the trade-offs as they’re choosing between the flagship campus of State U and an Ivy League school." Wow, simple as that, eh? Yes, you two Ivy Leaguers tell us again how we should go to state schools to avoid the crushing burden of hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational debt. As a generation, let's collectively adopt that categorical rule. I'm sure it won't result in any kind of class divide whatsoever. Are you freaking kidding me?

"Eventually, you’ll think about sending your own child (you may be able to afford only one) to a diverse public school, perhaps one of the new magnet programs, instead of to a private prep academy or a suburban practically-private district." Of course! All our Gen Y progeny will just get into magnets! Why didn't I think of that. Boy, I'm so glad my kid won't have a learning disability and be stuck in the shitty public schools in my high crime neighborhood. Hmm, about that kids being too expensive, what if I can't afford to go to the gyno and get my birth control either? Should I just not have any sex and write blog posts all day? Yeah, that sounds like fun!

My siblings (10 years older than me) paid less than helf what I did for college. They bought houses for less than a third of what one would cost me. And health care these days means that unless you're lucky enough to get a job with good benefits (how are the TAP non-profit benes, anyway?) you're one medical calamity away from bankruptcy (and incidentally no house-buying for a decade or more).

Maybe a few of us decided we wanted to be married, financially stable and having kids before we turned 30. Maybe we even thought about this back when we were 22. Maybe, just maybe, we liked that path better than losing out to a bunch of smug, Ivy League douchebags in a rat race for very competitive "public interest" work like wanking off about politics all day, or worse yet, not losing out and having to work with a bunch of those assholes. Excuse the rest of us for not wanting to be just like you two narcissistic, self-congratulatory assholes.

Not to mention that when a person decides to file a certificate of incorporation to protect themselves for personal liability for the debts of their business that doesn't automatically make their business evil. This is going to blow your minds, I know, but some of us working at big corporate law firms are helping the good guys. Yeah, I know, weird, but true. The Googles and Apples and all those cool, sexy companies you think are neat--they've got lawyers too! Maybe it won't be your first job out of law school, but after at most three years, it will be no problem to switch jobs and work with companies that are more politically acceptable to you, like start ups, or clean tech companies or what have you (aka what I and a bunch of my friends from law school did).

Also, I know it may come as a shock to you, Matt, but The Atlantic Monthly is a corporate-owned magazine. It's rich hearing all this from the young pundit poster boy and his wannbe buddy, as if you two aren't where you are as a result of a great deal of good fortune. Yeah, the law students are the ones who are assholes for thinking they would have saved the world otherwise (and a lot still will try once their loans are paid off), but it's totally legit for you to think you're saving humanity b/c 50,000 people reading something they already knew in your "Incompetence Dodge" article. Way to go. You're awesome.

Posted by This Is Why Liberals Are Accused of Hating Success and Money | October 16, 2007 11:08 PM

What's eluding MY here is the concept of a soul.

Posted by Matt | October 17, 2007 12:37 AM

I have no problem calling it "selling out" when self-identifying progressives decide to use their elite law degree to shill for the richest in order to enhance their riches. Most progressives acknowledge that the distribution of wealth and resources in our society is outrageously inequitable. They believe something should be done to change this. Yet, when they choose how to allocate themselves in the public sphere, they lend their talents and highly valuable skills to the rich SOBS who will pay them a ton of money to make them even richer. This is selling out on their own terms because their studies and experiences have made them painfully aware of how little cognizance our legal system has for vast swaths of the population and they know that the bare fact of them allying professionally with the underlcass would have a huge marginal impact. They really DO have significant resources and a choice of how to allocate them, and in contravention of their personal values they shill for richie rich.

If I sound like I have a chip on my shoulder its because most of the folks in my JD class who enter corporate law are so guilty, cynical, and disintegrated about their own career path that they put ME on the defensive, as if I had offended them all by aligning my career with my private values. Oddly enough I am often the one who has to fend off snipes that I am sanctimonious, when I mostly try to keep my mouth shut and respect people's choices. I think progressive lawyers have a place in the corporate world for sure, but they don't like it when you burst their "necessity" bubble.

Posted by StJoe | October 17, 2007 1:31 AM

I'd rather live in a world were all the bankers, consultants and corporate lawyers occasionally get the feeling they've sold out. It's only human after all to occasionally question the ethical implications of your deeds and in some cases it might actually lead to making better decisions, so I don't see why one should ridicule such sentiments.

Posted by novakant | October 17, 2007 4:33 AM

I've tried to influence several kids I knew (from my lofty vantage of age-induced-wisdom) to go into business. The world needs honest businessmen as much as it need ditch diggers. One kid took me up on it and is (so far) struggling despite good service, decent product, and low prices. I'm not sure what more it takes, but I suspect that kid is wondering if selling out (by going into business) shouldn't have been more lucrative.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 17, 2007 9:25 AM

a lot of people heading into careers in investment banking or management consulting had a bizarre habit of appropriating the language of "selling out" even though it was far from clear that they had anything to sell.

This is not quite wrong nor quite right; our framing of this issue is ridiculous. The term 'selling out' *is* hopelessly corrupted. It's another one of those feckless mental binaries we seem to be stuck with, and it reinforces the problem! It brings to mind the corporate lawyers and mid/upper management types I've known over the years occasionally getting a little drunk and listening to the Greatful Dead (or Jimmy Buffet) - 'Yes, I'm a right wing souless asshole, but I can still blaze a fatty and listen to 'The Dead'!'. Contra MY, *everyone* has 'something to sell', as it were. I think Brook's point is that this binary is not just mental but material: in the last 25 years, more and more people have been confronted with the choice of either doing something they find meaningful, and living essentially like a college student for the rest of their lives, or just being a corporate slug. Yes, there are a few positions in the middle, and yes, not all corporations completely lack social responsibility or meaningful jobs. But, let's face it, those are exceptional. And most people (non-lawyers) live/work like said slugs without the choice of making money or not. The middle ground has been shrinking away. There is a big difference between choosing a smaller-but-roughly-adequate middle class salary so as to do something you find meaningful, and choosing a confirmedly penurious life so you can do so.

Brook's point is really the same as MY's, in a way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with and nothing to be ashamed of about making money. Everyone should do it. But that should include teachers, scientists, researchers, etc.

BTW, don't kid yourself: the trend is for people who have 'sold out' to get squeezed more and more, too (eg, the AMT which never gets 'fixed'). As tempting as IT/internet/new market utopian thinking can be, the business of business is one thing, and one thing only: maximizing profit, in a local, narrow sense. If you are 26 now and have 'sold out', working for a big firm, etc., don't think that the same firm won't hire someone younger in a few years, for even less money, to replace you. There is something wrong with our very ethos, and there's no avoiding it.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 17, 2007 10:08 AM

This is just the difference between liberals and radicals. Liberals believe in the free market. They just want to smooth out the rough edges.

As long as you tell the truth and play by the rules, there's nothing wrong with working in the system and making a nice living doing it. In fact, you may be helping to keep the "great breadmaking machine" of the free market in operation, to the great benefit of most of your fellow people. Just remember to give back a little every now and then.

Radicalism is fun in your 20's. But it won't survive your 30's, especially if you have kids to feed.

Look at who remains radical in their later years. Face it. They're mostly weirdos.

Posted by jbd | October 17, 2007 10:22 AM

Liberals believe in the free market. They just want to smooth out the rough edges.

The current ethos doesn't really believe in smoothing out 'the rough edges', unless said rough edges might effect its bottom line sometime soon (health care, education). The current regime believes in the free market, alright - that it must be utterly 'free'; that there should be no compelled or compelling reponsibility to the greater society, nor that any collective action (government) is ever warranted, except grudgingly, and always voluntarily; the current regime doesn't believe in the very idea of the larger (or any) society.

There are almost no 'radicals' left, so why worry about them? The debate is between liberalism in a corrupted 18th century sense vs. the 20th century sense. I fear that some younger people who came up after the Reagan Years have internalized the corrupted 18th century sense more than they quite realize, ie that the Market is a Perfect System in which everything must always work out on its own - something Adam Smith himself didn't even believe. This feeling is bolstered by the advent of the internet, which really can be a perfect meritocracy-market at times. This is bolstered also by vague notions of incipient post-scarcity. Well, we aren't there yet, and it's naive in the extreme to think that we're on that path at the moment.

Of *course* there's nothing wrong with doing business and making money. It's what 99% of us do, or try to do. But choosing a life of service oughtn't wrench you out of the mainstream. You don't have to be a Marxist to see that our current ethos is fucked and unsustainable. You can be Teddy Roosevelt and see it.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 17, 2007 11:06 AM

Our current ethos is unsustainable? Okay, I'm worried about global warming and the stagnation of US middle-class wages. But even the Bushies are now giving ground on global warming, and they'll be gone soon; then we can begin tackling that problem in earnest.

In many, many ways, things are better now than they ever were and getting better all the time. Racism? Discrimination and violence against gay folks? Teen pregnancy? Violent crime? Urban decline? US air and water quality? Access to higher education? Unemployment? Long-term welfare dependency?

All have seen great, if sproadic and uneven, improvements in the last thirty years. Heck, we even got a unanimous Congress to take a first stab at addressing the epidemic of sexual assault in prisons, a subject that would not have even been discussed in polite society a few years ago.

Income inequality is admittedly sticky and a big worry, with no easy and obvious solutions (although some tweaks to the tax code and improvements to schools would surely help). Some 20th century liberal ideas--like mass and unrestricted handouts to able-bodied, nonworking adults--have died because they had disastrous unintended consequences and deserved to die. Our overall "ethos" is okay and getting better, I'd say.

Posted by jbd | October 17, 2007 12:08 PM

Our overall "ethos" is okay and getting better, I'd say.

Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs Lincoln?

Listing problems separately doesn't make them discrete or of equal importance/impact. Clearly, economic issues matter a *little* more than whether gay people are moving toward having equal civil rights (although i strongly favor the latter). All the civil rights in the world will not be much good if we retire the very idea of a truly middle class, as we are doing; or continue to have a negative national savings rate (national debt, etc.). Those and other problems are abetted by what might be called Moderate Pollyanna-ism - ie, 'things are tending positively overall, because I want to believe they are, because I'm not a 'weirdo', because I'm optimistic, etc'. That stuff is not true simply because you want it to be.

I don't enjoy gloom and doom for its own sake, believe me, but we aren't going to deal with our problems by underestimating them.

Your 'handing out checks to able-bodied people' is a rather telling strawman, and quite germane to this thread. Even the wonderful Mark Schmitt sort of buys into the problem without realizing it (I'm not going to link to his TPM Cafe post because comments with more than one link tend to disappear); he mentions parenthetically that he can't believe he was actually paid to do some of the jobs he's had, so much did he enjoy them. That's a commonplace, a cliche: 'Strange and unnatural that they actually pay me to do something I love!'. It points to an assumed, underlying resentment and perversion of the work ethic: if you like doing it, you shouldn't be paid. By that logic, the more you hate doing something, the *more* you should get paid. If you are doing work that you love - teaching, making music, researching, etc. - you should be paid little or nothing. Does that really make sense? In that formulation, investment banking is a horrible job and a worthless function. Of course that's not right (some people love banking). What happened to the dignity of work? What happened to pride? What happened to culture itself? I contend that that attitude makes for a *shitty* culture in the end, the very shitty culture conservatives - and liberals too - complain about all the time. In the real world, almost no one gets to do precisely what they want to do and get paid for it, but it's the converse logic that's the problem: if you're doing something meaningful or fun or gratifying at all, you should be paid less or not at all. It's preposterous.

To get back though, a disappearing middle class is a very important problem, a keystone problem, one which effects all the others. You admit that this is a 'big worry', but still manage to equate it with more contingent things. Fixing the tax code and improvements to schools are just the beginning. I'd suggest paying a visit to a more evolved banana republic and checking it out. You'll find lots of well-educated, literate people with no money and no hope - try Argentina or Costa Rica. A very 'big worry' indeed. And I think an underlying, yes 'ethos', stands in our way, fundamentally: namely, that a.) everything is a market, including love, sex, art, and spiritual fulfillment, and markets are magic, automatic systems which are ultimately never wrong about anything, and; b.) those things which don't directly contribute to the raw GDP number are worthless, or worth very little, and only chumps believe in the dignity of work.

I don't say there aren't bright spots, and you mention some of them. Here's another.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 17, 2007 1:45 PM

Freddie,

This is off-topic, but I thought you might appreciate it, given your interest in race and IQ: "Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners":

"Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Posted by Juan | October 17, 2007 2:17 PM

Jonnybutter, I mean no disrespect, and I think we seem to agree on a lot of things. But you say that all the radicals are gone, and then you seem to criticize U.S. capitalism for failing to provide enough well-paying jobs in which people can "self-actualize" or something.

Sounds a whole lot like the theories of "alienation of labor" and the need for creative work as a characteristic of our "species being," together with quotes from the young Marx, that were all the rage among radicals in the 1970's.

Human organisms and human societies must work to live. Most of us are inherently lazy and need some compulsion to keep us working regularly and on schedule. Even in socialism, someone has to take out the garbage, as the old saying went. I think some of your pessimism comes from judging reality against an impossible standard, which is the essence of radical idealism.

Posted by jbd | October 17, 2007 3:10 PM

Sounds a whole lot like the theories of "alienation of labor" and the need for creative work as a characteristic of our "species being," together with quotes from the young Marx, that were all the rage among radicals in the 1970's.

If you have a substantive critique against the existence of a phenomenon called "alienation" then let's hear it. Yes, the notion that a country with a market economy must necessarily brutalize its working class has been discredited. So has the abolition of private property. But if you think there's no such thing as "alienation" I'd suggest rewatching Office Space.

I think Johnnybutter has a great point. Although our economy is designed to efficiently match up highly demanded goods to those who want them, this principle doesn't apply when it comes to one of the greatest goods of all, namely one's career. The "work is hell" doctrine implies that a healthy economy pays people more money to be increasingly wretched.

If people who were paid high salaries really believed their work was worthwhile -- i.e. if the assumption underlying our economy actually held -- then "work is hell" would be false. People would take pride in the fact that they were generating something useful and worthwhile. The fact that they don't suggests that our economy is not functioning as designed, that is, high salary has little correlation with the usefulness of your work product. I disagree that with jonnybutter that this is a problem of "ethos" or mind-over-matter. I think its a symptom of dysfunction.

I also must strongly disagree that our society is successfully coming to grips with racism and "getting better" at it. Passage of a civil rights act did not end racism in 1870s and it did not do so in the 1960s. We have eliminated some of the problems of racism from our past, namely we've ended slavery and denounced formal inequality and odious racial classifications in law. But in a country where 1 in 3 blacks males are incarcerated, voluntary desegregation in education is unconstitutional, civil rights litigation is being gutted, and the voting rights act is being purposefully transformed into a minority vote suppression tactic by republican administrations, to say nothing the revelation of Jena Six-style overt racial hatred, progress is reversing itself. We are nowhere near a stage where we should collectively patting ourselves on the back.

Nevertheless, I do agree that that your typology is pretty apt -- "liberals" generally think the status quo is fine except for some rough edges, nothing that can't be largely resolved by putting a Democrat in the oval office, and "leftists" think there are some problems of a more fundamental nature that need to be overhauled.

Posted by StJoe | October 17, 2007 3:55 PM

Juan,

I don't care if he invented DNA, Watson's still a racist. And so are you. Any differences in intelligence are because of environment. All humans have the same inherent intelligence.

Posted by Jennifer | October 17, 2007 3:55 PM

Jennifer: How do you know that? Have you reviewed all the relevant scholarly studies of the issue? There is certainly not unanimity about your claim. I say this as someone who hopes Watson is wrong, but I haven't reviewed the scholarship in depth and don't really know enough to opine for certain.

Jonnybutter: You discuss "an assumed, underlying resentment and perversion of the work ethic: if you like doing it, you shouldn't be paid". Why is this so perverse? All else equal, if you are getting compensation in the form of enjoyment, then in a competitive labor market you should require less money benefits for your work.

Posted by nbt | October 17, 2007 4:45 PM

"If you have a substantive critique against the existence of a phenomenon called 'alienation' then let's hear it."

Okay, St. Joe, I'll bite. Here's the critique: The "theory of alienation" implies that we could create a world where work is fulfilling for everybody, rather than an often unpleasant necessity that keeps us housed, fed, warm, and alive. If you're going to claim that we suffer from "alienation," you're going to have to explain how we could get to a state of affairs that would not be "alienating." Once again, who takes out the garbage under socialism?

Every effort to create such a society has resulted in failure. I'd say the Israeli kibbutznikim came closer to the ideal than anyone else I've ever heard of, but that movement is now in its death throes. Why? Because in the end they all pretty much decided they enjoyed their life more selling their alienated labor than engaging in endless meetings with each other to decide whether it was an unacceptable deviation for one couple to have a space-heater in their concrete apartment while others did not (that was one example I heard from some each-kibbutz folks I recently vacationed with in Israel).

And of course, often the effort to create systems of "unalienated labor" resulted in hell on earth. Surely there is no need to elaborate on that.

Alineation is a nice subject for undergraduate daydreaming, especially after you light up a fattie with some friends. But come on.

Posted by jbd | October 17, 2007 6:05 PM

jbd, you're not debating hippie hold-outs from the Vietnam era. I'm a 24 year old soon-to-be attorney, I don't smoke joints, and I agree that someone's got to take the garbage out and they won't do it unless you pay them. I don't think a world where work is fulfilling for everyone is something we can expect this century, and probably ever. I was under the impression that we were talking about the white collar sector brand of alienation, its relation to salary and "selling out" in general. My point is that if people taking high salary jobs don't think their work is worth anything (i.e. they experience alienation), this suggests there is some flaw in the market according to market assumptions, not socialistic ones.

If those who earn vast salaries, i.e. people with a pretty sophisticated grasp of how they fit and where there product goes and what it actually accomplishes, don't even believe that their work product is worthwhile, this suggests two explanations: 1) these people just don't truly understand how their work is part of the breadmaking machine that efficiently feeds us all or 2) these people DO understanding their role and this is evidence that the machine is somehow malfunctioning.

The policy proposals this discussion potentially relates to are about government subsidized health care, tax policy, and provision of education. For example, one source of alienation might be the perception that your work as lawyer does nothing to improve the lot of all but the already wealthy. This points to a market failure, namely, distorting wealth effects. Those of modest means cannot express their preferences on par with the upper crust because they simply can't pay for your services. At the level of the firm, this might mean having a better pro bono policy. At the level of government, this might mean relieving educational debt burdens or providing universal health care to make it more viable to work in distressed sectors. These policies would of course be aimed at improving the well-being of the direct beneficiaries, but they'd have the side effect of alleviating alienation by allowing more people to produce goods for which there is ample demand, but are short-circuited by market failures.

Not "every effort" to remove alienation and other ills experienced in a laissez-faire economy has resulted in hell on earth -- hell on earth results from utopian projects with no basis other than a priori speculation.

In short, this discussion has nothing to do with dismantling the corporate machine and radically remaking the world into one where we ration toothpaste. To me these proposals are conservative and cautious in nature, acknowledge the essential goodness of our way of life, but suggest minor adjustments. This isn't the 80s and comparing communistic utopian horror stories with incremental pragmatic policy proposals is no longer good argumentation.

Posted by StJoe | October 17, 2007 9:48 PM

The "theory of alienation" implies that we could create a world where work is fulfilling for everybody, rather than an often unpleasant necessity that keeps us housed, fed, warm, and alive.

(Sorry I had to duck out of this discussion: I had to go to my soul-destroying job! HA. I kid...)

StJoe has done a lot of my arguing for me here (thanks for that), and I take his point that this isn't so much an ethos problem as just one of dysfunction under advisement - but I'm not sure the two are exclusive of each other.

I also mean no disrespect to jbd - just arguing respectfully here...

An observation that there is such a thing as alienated labor absolutely does not imply that 'we could create a world where work is fulfilling for everybody, rather than an often unpleasant necessity that keeps us housed, fed, warm, and alive.' It simply identifies a problem, and, I suppose, posits a difference between work and labor, which is indeed a Marxian distinction (so what?). Because drudgery is unavoidable in life doesn't justify devaluing those facets of work (and life) which aren't drudgery. A teacher, whose job is filled with drudgery, can still love their job because they feel it's important and meaningful overall. I'm a composer, and believe me, you don't know what drudgery is until you've hand copied an entire score or orchestra parts, or edited noise or mistakes out of a long audio file. It's boring as hell, but part of the job. I do that job for free most of the time, BTW, and while I think that fact is unfortunate, I still do it just for the sake of it, and don't expect anyone to give me money for it. Paid or not, I understand that that drudgery - and lots of other kinds - are part of the deal.

The problem is the binary thinking: since the garbage must indeed be taken out, ALL remunerative work must be 'taking out garbage'. Isn't that an insult to work? Isn't that an insult even to garbage men who, for the sake of their own pride try to do a good job at *being* garbage men? A commenter above flat out said that if you at all enjoy what you're doing, you should be paid less because you are being 'compensated' by your enjoyment. I think that's puritanical and sick - it's why I used the word 'ethos' in the first place - but he certianly does have the courage of his conviction. You don't go that far, but I still don't see what you ARE saying, other than 'things aren't so bad'. I'm not alone in seeing a general deterioration in our culture over the past couple decades, and am pretty sure I'm not imagining it. I think it can get better, but that we have to examine some of our fundamental values for that to happen.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 18, 2007 3:10 AM