"As far as the workers' comments are concerned, the only complaint we hear is about the food, which they find poor. They often slip out at night to buy food. And one woman reports a fight that another of the women had with a rough-tongued female supervisor. The one true grievance we do not hear from any of the women: we learn it from one of the bosses in a matter-of-fact way. The average pay is only about half the legal minimum wage. The factory had been built in China because labor is cheap, and it is being further cheapened. When the inspectors later report this fact back in Finland, management promises to do something about it.
"As the film progresses, expectation of exposé dwindles. Half salary is hardly a trifling matter, but the factory seems well enough run and is apparently a haven for some of the young women whose homes are a lot less attractive. Why, then, is the picture chilling? Because it is a calm reminder of an inevitability. The sight of long lines of young women doing tiny bits of attachment work or packing hour after hour, day after day, is saddening. The fact that the factory conditions are decent, as the title says wryly, makes it even sadder. Marx said that the alienation of labor--the gap between the worker and his work--is an evil of capitalism, but this is too limited: factories like this one flourish everywhere under every system. Marx's percept is not a charge against a system but a condition of modernity. Thousands of factories around the world where the attaching and packing go on and on--it's like Chaplin's Modern Times without Charlie."(1)
I'm not certain whether or not Kauffmann is being disingenuous here. He knew enough about Marx's idea of alienation to recognize it in the Nokia factory, but he must've known that China is only nominally a Marxist society. Finland (or, for that matter, the USA) is closer to being a Marxist society that communist China. Besides, China has embraced market capitalism on an unprecedented scale in order to expand its economy. This has created, as Marx predicted, enormous inequalities in China that didn't exist before - inequalities between people who want nothing more than a decent life and people who want impossibly more than they will never need.
Marx put it succinctly: a worker in a capitalist society "does not fulfil himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well-being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. The worker, therefore, feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs."
Marx knew that as long as the nature of work, which reduces the worker himself to a commodity, remains the same, work will forever be reduced to an utterly depersonalized and soul-destroying repetition of manual tasks. Almost seven years ago, I wrote about Oscar Wilde's brilliant pamphlet, which is utterly forgotten today, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism":
Wilde's vision of Socialism is unorthodox and often unrealistic. At times, when he discusses work and the freedom from work that he believes Socialism promises, he sounds like Eric Hoffer's remark about the modern "worldwide revulsion for work. To the new generation, 'la dolce vita' is not a life of plenty but a life of as little effort as possible."
Wilde believed that some time in the future all menial labor will be performed by machines, and men and women would be completely free from toil, suffering, and pain. He seems to think that work itself, and not just the motive behind it, will be eradicated under Socialism. I don't think that any socialist thinks this way. Work, which is mostly mindless toil, even for the middle class, will attain its true purpose once the motive behind it (making a living) is changed. Work, I think, is essential to living when it places the individual in the position of realizing that he is not simply an individual, but a part of a huge organism that is more than the sum of its parts. Soldiers find this out, whether they serve in combat or not. And its why they are willing to lay down their lives. They recognize probably more directly than anyone else the meaning of human brotherhood.
Marx elaborates: "Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have, in two ways, affirmed himself, and the other person. In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and, therefore, enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also, when looking at the object, I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses, and, hence, a power beyond all doubt. In your enjoyment, or use, of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature ... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature."
Wilde concludes his essay in quite uncharted territory:
"It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development."
Wilde even defends his "scheme" against the charge of Utopianism:
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias."
(1) Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic, July 4, 2005. It is well known that Chaplin had "communist sympathies." In Modern Times, there is a scene in which a truck carrying a load of lumber passes him and the red flag hanging off the end of the load falls on the ground in front of Charlie. He picks it up and, waving it, chases after the truck. Just then a large group of communists waving their red flags rounds the corner and marches right behind Charlie. The police arrive and Charlie is arrested.
(2) "A Brotherhood of One" May 10, 2012.
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