Noam Chomsky

Nea, wholly uninterested in any notions of work or productive labor.

I'm reading Noam Chomsky right now; the great linguist and political thinker. His 1971 debate with Michel Foucault was an event produced and televised by the Dutch as part of a series which aimed to bring opposing philosophers together on television (imagine?).

It is uncanny to read this debate now; almost 40 years later and note the similarities. Read the following as it relates to ideas about the nature of work in capitalism, the oppression of creativity and rethinking the concept of 'the proletariat'...

Chomsky:

"I've never seen a child who didn't want to build something out of blocks, or learn something new, or try the next task. And the only reason why adults aren't like that is, I suppose, that they have been sent to school and other oppressive institutions which have driven that out of them.
Now if that is the case, then the proletariat, or whatever you want to call it, can really be universal, that is, it can be all those human beings who are impelled by what I believe to be the fundamental human need to be yourself, which means to be creative, to be exploratory, to be inquisitive, to do useful things...

It is not true in our given society that all people are doing useful, productive work, or self-satisfying work - obviously that's very far from true -- or that, if they were to do the kind of work they're doing under conditions of freedom, it would thereby become productive and satisfying.

Rather there are a very large number of people who are involved in other kinds of work. For example, the people who are involved in the management of exploitation, or the people who are involved in the creation of artificial consumption, or the people who are involved in the creation of mechanisms of destruction and oppression, or the people who are simply not given any place in a stagnating industrial economy. Lot of people are excluded from the possibility of productive labor..."
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I want to transcribe it all for you here, but instead I'm going to organize a reading group and continue to think about how to use Worlds End to create more fulfilling, creative work for people. Many of you have sent me emails and notes about your own experiences in business or specifically the wedding industry. This is exactly what I wanted to happen -- which is to say direct dialog with people I can know personally and have direct relationship with instead of pouring my energy into the gigantic sea of social media. So - thank you. Hopefully you'll consider coming to my reading group, which I think must be here at Worlds End so that we can feed you.