Back to index of Nerve 20 - Summer 2012

The reality cheques we are all paying

8th - 10th June 2012
The Adelphi Hotel

A report by Minnie Stacey on the Philosophy In Pubs Conference

PIPS held their national conference at the Adelphi Hotel over a June weekend in Liverpool. On the Saturday morning I attended an essay presentation by Jonny Webb entitled 'Why we Should Treat People as Commodities'. He began by saying 'I'm an apologist, I suppose, for treating people as commodities, because I'm an economist.' The discourse that followed was frighteningly real, as it encapsulated the corporate context, the system within which we're all trying, and dying, to survive.

Mr Webb's words were the result of creative accounting, of the dishonest and dodgy mathematics we're currently besieged by. This 'Best business model' was described as a combination of capital and the labour that organisations seek to purchase 'in the same way as they'd buy machines or desks'. 'If people are compelled to sell their labour, then that's a ticklish area' he opined, adding that 'treating people as commodities isn't slavery', and that 'the model has an overall equilibrium'. It was clear that the price society pays for this 'commodified' system was off the speaker's prosaic balance sheet.

In support of the labour market being depersonalised by a separation between the individual and the labour they perform, he quoted a comment he'd received when delivering his essay in London, 'It's quite liberating to view yourself as a commodity, then if you get sacked you're still an individual'. 'Doctors put aside their emotions when treating patients' 'he continued, 'if they cared about them they wouldn't sleep at night'. The essayist hadn't cottoned on to the fact that being objective doesn't mean that you're uncompassionate, that you can follow procedures without being personal or treating people as commodities.

Mr Webb was certain that in buying the conference PIPS 'didn't care anything for the people who would be serving them lunch, only the commodified activities of the serving and the consuming'. He was confident that as members in the audience, none of us cared about each other. 'We treat our friends as a commodified value', he went on, 'we have friends we go to the cinema with, friends who tell good stories, friends who tell good jokes'. To him, all our relationships are acts of consumerism rather than communication. A quote from his essay summary on the web states 'Our current civilisation could not operate without some level of callousness to exist within the population in everyday exchanges.'

Hip hip hooray for PIPS then, where as members of the audience we all had a right to reply and people got up to deliver feedback from their tables.

Someone pointed out that by encouraging our children to view education as a stepping stone to getting on in business, we could well be treating them as commodities. Unfriending people on Facebook, texting instead of phoning and privatising the NHS were cited as examples of commodifying relationships - should we sack our friends or leave people to die when their value drops below our required level? Another delegate was sure the presentation supported the very model that has led us to global collapse, one which doesn't work on any level - the world to politicians is about war and creates collateral damage.

One guy said that Marx wrote about how commodities and markets determine people's lives in Das Kapital. Throughout the presentation Mr Webb had shied away from using the word capitalism and the fact that decisions are made by corporate dictators. The speaker hadn't used the words work or worker once. He'd ignored other societies that have existed, particularly those that produced for use only. Greece is the direct result of commodification, a system based on production for profit not for need. So, is our only choice the amount to which we are exploited?

People noticed that the speaker had not challenged power, not referred to a controlling 1%, not pointed to who makes the policies or that we commodify because we're subject to rules that other people put in place. As an audience member who seriously cared had put it, 'If a society will exploit children and animals, it will exploit anyone and everything'.

Mr Webb said he appreciated some of the more forcefully held views. But could there be anything more forceful than the system he advocates - a system that denies more and more people the power to even buy their survival?

In a session where no aggression had been vented, as if to promote self-censorship an audience member called for the debate to strike a 'polite balance', seeming to wish to decommission any passion or politics the audience had demonstrated. There were a couple of minutes left and the delegate used them to advocate increasing the level of democracy in finance - a troubling stance given the state of our democracy!

Nevertheless, it was clear that on the 9th of June 2012 in a room at the back of the Adelphi Hotel, there was a mandate for change, a mandate for moving away from sociopathic positioning to creating a system where we're not all customers, one that will serve us as humans - something that doesn't alienate a species with a natural drive to create and artistic ideals. The current business model is rife with nepotism, it's a false meritocracy. There was a call for the democratisation of the means of production, 'to give this back to the workers'.

It was scary when someone stood up and said they'd struggle to disagree with anything said in the essay, except is it right and do we have the power to set up other systems?

I had a conversation with a friend who, like members of the audience, saw right through Jonny Webb, 'He's insincere, this is a person who's promoting a system that he knows is advantageous to him - he's like a bailed out banker'. Well then, if this economist and his ilk are on bail, they've been sussed and really are banged to rights.

So, if business brains have turned to commodes and insist on continuing to sell us the shit that got us where we are - is the beginning of the end of this really here and is it time for action?

Twitter: @minniestacey

http://pipsconference2012.wordpress.com
http://www.philosophyinpubs.org.uk

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Comment left by phil n on 20th June, 2012 at 9:27
Hi Min Brilliant I read it in the Nerve office It was on the pips desk so Ill get back to you asap - dashing off to the 1st Huyton monthly pips today phil