An Economy is Not a Society Read Online Free Page B
Author: Dennis; Glover
of helots hidden somewhere deep underground; in our case, I guess that means in China.
I imagine all sorts of people will know what I mean â journalists missing the once mad activity of the newspaper office, with its drinking and deadlines and passions; aircrew watching their aircraft being piloted by computers; Japanese waiters watching food being served up by a sushi train. That will, of course, sound crazy and romantic and probably plain stupid to the managerialists, and it sometimes does even to me, but I canât help thinking that thereâs more to life than bland, well-ordered, managed efficiency â the type of life the great captains of industry want to see everyone under them living but couldnât possibly live themselves. Anyone who knows the pampered rich understands that, even more than all their money, itâs the conflicts and triumphs of the business world that give them satisfaction and meaning. Their lives are full of passion and struggle; their employees are expected to shut up and obey. Thatâs what defeat looks like.
Barry has one more thing to show me. As we walk towards it, I remark on the cleanliness of the floor, which, as the cliché goes, looks like you could eat off it and not get sick. I hadnât expected that, having worked in many factories myself years ago and seen filthy drains, rats and deadly spiders everywhere. He says itâs not the original floor. You see, when the old assembly line building was demolished, it was decided not to jackhammer up the rough, uneven old base but instead to cover it with sand and top it with three feet of smooth, new, sealed concrete. (Sous les pavés, la plage! Under the paving stones, the beach!) Itâs an archaeologistâs dream, like a brontosaur falling into a tar pit, and I tell him that thousands of years from now, if humankind is still around, and if all the written records of our time have rotted away and the digital archives have become corrupted or unreadable, someone may rip up this smooth floor and wonder what had changed, what sort of civilisation that concrete from 1999 had covered over.
We reach what Barry wants to show me: a giant mural of the plant from the late 1960s or early â70s, which he had personally saved from destruction when the old plant was being closed down. Heâs proud of it, and so he should be. There, smiling down on the workers from the far wall of the massive space, is their past. An amateur and not completely successful painting, it is at once industrial and verdant: a huge saw-tooth-roofed factory, with smoke coming from its boiler house chimney, standing in the middle of a vast semi-rural landscape that the city and its economy had yet to completely swallow up. Here was life in the industrial age, an age when not-so-dark and not-so-satanic mills sustained a life much different from the one we live today.
For some reason, the painting reminds me of those pastoral works by Poussin and others, where the happy and innocent peasants frolic among the revegetating ruins of a once great civilisation. Instead of being wantonly smashed to pieces by a ball on a chain, ground up with the factoryâs bricks and dumped somewhere as contaminated landfill, the picture hints at a life we no longer have â one many might argue was, in important ways, far better.
CHAPTER 2
THE SUBURB THAT WAS MURDERED
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not â¦
â P ERCY B YSSHE S HELLEY
A t the centre of any great place to work is a top-rate subsidised cafeteria. Anyone who has ever worked in a large organisation, with the possible exception of the federal parliament, can tell you this. Just ask a journalist in a great newspaper, a student in a great college, a machine operator in a great factory. The cafeteria is the place you look forward to, a place to escape the job for an all too brief moment, talk with friends, have a cup of tea and of course eat. Boyfriends and girlfriends
I imagine all sorts of people will know what I mean â journalists missing the once mad activity of the newspaper office, with its drinking and deadlines and passions; aircrew watching their aircraft being piloted by computers; Japanese waiters watching food being served up by a sushi train. That will, of course, sound crazy and romantic and probably plain stupid to the managerialists, and it sometimes does even to me, but I canât help thinking that thereâs more to life than bland, well-ordered, managed efficiency â the type of life the great captains of industry want to see everyone under them living but couldnât possibly live themselves. Anyone who knows the pampered rich understands that, even more than all their money, itâs the conflicts and triumphs of the business world that give them satisfaction and meaning. Their lives are full of passion and struggle; their employees are expected to shut up and obey. Thatâs what defeat looks like.
Barry has one more thing to show me. As we walk towards it, I remark on the cleanliness of the floor, which, as the cliché goes, looks like you could eat off it and not get sick. I hadnât expected that, having worked in many factories myself years ago and seen filthy drains, rats and deadly spiders everywhere. He says itâs not the original floor. You see, when the old assembly line building was demolished, it was decided not to jackhammer up the rough, uneven old base but instead to cover it with sand and top it with three feet of smooth, new, sealed concrete. (Sous les pavés, la plage! Under the paving stones, the beach!) Itâs an archaeologistâs dream, like a brontosaur falling into a tar pit, and I tell him that thousands of years from now, if humankind is still around, and if all the written records of our time have rotted away and the digital archives have become corrupted or unreadable, someone may rip up this smooth floor and wonder what had changed, what sort of civilisation that concrete from 1999 had covered over.
We reach what Barry wants to show me: a giant mural of the plant from the late 1960s or early â70s, which he had personally saved from destruction when the old plant was being closed down. Heâs proud of it, and so he should be. There, smiling down on the workers from the far wall of the massive space, is their past. An amateur and not completely successful painting, it is at once industrial and verdant: a huge saw-tooth-roofed factory, with smoke coming from its boiler house chimney, standing in the middle of a vast semi-rural landscape that the city and its economy had yet to completely swallow up. Here was life in the industrial age, an age when not-so-dark and not-so-satanic mills sustained a life much different from the one we live today.
For some reason, the painting reminds me of those pastoral works by Poussin and others, where the happy and innocent peasants frolic among the revegetating ruins of a once great civilisation. Instead of being wantonly smashed to pieces by a ball on a chain, ground up with the factoryâs bricks and dumped somewhere as contaminated landfill, the picture hints at a life we no longer have â one many might argue was, in important ways, far better.
CHAPTER 2
THE SUBURB THAT WAS MURDERED
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not â¦
â P ERCY B YSSHE S HELLEY
A t the centre of any great place to work is a top-rate subsidised cafeteria. Anyone who has ever worked in a large organisation, with the possible exception of the federal parliament, can tell you this. Just ask a journalist in a great newspaper, a student in a great college, a machine operator in a great factory. The cafeteria is the place you look forward to, a place to escape the job for an all too brief moment, talk with friends, have a cup of tea and of course eat. Boyfriends and girlfriends
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