The Gag and the Smile: Anatomy of the Global Worker

May 1, 2008 Labor Day Parade in Jakarta

International workers day is presented as the day for the workers, in which the man of the day is the workers. International workers day also symbolized the historical struggle, achievements, and rights of the working class. On this day workers have a day to relax, but also to demonstrate. In many countries the workers took to the street and demonstrated in front of the parliament and the ministry of labor, the same goes to the workers in Indonesia. In Indonesia the workers took to the street and gathered in front of the parliament building. Years after years, president after president, regime after regime the workers always demonstrate in the street. But sadly the pattern is always the same, in the morning the workers gather in front of parliament and demonstrate, the parlement did not listen nor send a representative, in the afternoon the police started to get physical with the workers, and by the evening the workers have dissolved and coming back to their home without any change, and the same thing happened last year.

The general public see this as a good thing, since the workers do indeed have the right to demonstrate. But I argue that deep down this is not just a plain old workers demonstration, but this is one of the tools of capitalism to keep growing. The capitalist let the workers demonstrate so they can say “look we have freedom here”, they give the freedom for one day before oppressing the workers the next day. In a more cynical lens I argue that the capitalist smiles when he sees the workers demonstrate, why? Because in the eye of the capitalist the workers are just a crazy man. The capitalist smiles because they see that the crazy man is still crazy. The capitalist smiles because the capitalist knows that once the crazy man gets his consciousness he will not make a better speech or make a better demonstration. The capitalist knows once the crazy man is not crazy anymore then he will grab a knife and stab the capitalist.

We can see the power imbalance here between the workers and the capitalist. To put it in an image I will show it through the metaphor of BDSM. The workers are the sub and the capitalist are the doms. In this BDSM situation the dom ball gag the sub, the sub who is gagged can only drool and spout incoherent nonsense. When the saliva of the sub flow from the lips to the floor it is where the dom smile. But behind all of the smile the dom know that, if the sub revolt he can. The dom knows that the sub can easily grab a dildo and shoved it up the dom ass. For this not to happen then the dom needs to act between a delicate line, in which the dom needs to be strict but at the same time not too strict.

We the observer can only look at this sub and dom situation and we might say “the degradation and the gagging have gone for too long, why doesn’t the sub just grab the dildo and revolt?”. The answer is for the sub the dildo is an illusion. The sub believes that there is no dildo to use, that every dildo in the room is for the dom to use to the sub, not the other way around. Put it in the real world with the workers and the capitalist, ask why doesn’t the workers revolt? If the workers have the sheer amount of man power, then it is possible for them to kill all of the capitalists.

Taking from Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality, the workers do not revolt because society has labeled revolting as bad and immoral. Earlier I said that the capitalist smiles looking at the crazy man, but in the point of view of the workers they are not the crazy man yet, why? It is because they are still civil. To avoid the “crazy man” label they never revolt, they build community and solidarity between workers. With their actions they are saying “look at us, we are civil just like you”. But in that civility the workers still demonstrate and protest, to this we see zizek cynical reason. They know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it. according to zizek this is cynical reason. The workers know the demonstration will be met by the silence of the parliament and a confrontation by the police. But by doing that they are preserving the ritual of they still matter, this can be seen as using a dildo,yes but not the big dildo but the small one. Then why don’t they use the big one? Why wont the sub grab the big 30 inch dildo and shoved it to the dom? For this we look at Hannah Arendt and her idea of the terror of true action. She said that behavior is following the script while action is the unexpected, the spontaneous, the beginning of something new. To act is to step outside the boundaries of the known. It is to risk everything. The worker prefers the certainty of suffering to the uncertainty of freedom. The workers know if I act I will lose my job, yes my job sucks but it is still a job, this is the gamble the workers won’t take.

Furthermore if we look into the history of the sub there is never a time the sub took a step to enter the room, the sub is born in that room, the sub daily entertainment is to see the dom gaging the other sub before finally it was gagged by the dom. The same goes with the workers, Louis Althusser on the Reproduction of Capitalism, argues that capitalist systems persist by reproducing the conditions of production, specifically the exploitative labor relations. The workers were born as a proletariat under the system controlled by the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system. The workers only know that “my father is a worker”, so when the time to apply for a job comes, being a worker is natural. The same as the sub the workers watch the subject, before it finally becomes the object. The sad conclusion is the sub and the workers don’t have any agency nor the option to choose. Zizek took this even further, the idea of cynical reason is knowing the system is fake but participating anyway. The workers know the demonstration is fake and that the parliament will always give the cold shoulder, but they still do that anyway, why? Because they got the effect of Jouissance (excessive enjoyment) from marching, demonstrating and chanting reform. Lastly they protest and work as a miserable worker not because they want to, but because they are trapped in the fantasy of “i am an important worker”.

Now lets move on from the explanation and metaphor, now look at the real world. The dungeon is not confined by country, it crosses borders and culture. In every direction that we look the worker is always a gagged sub. If we examine the workers from baby until its death we will not see a point when the sub seeks the gag, the gag comes naturally and fits perfectly to the sub mouth. There is no ‘outside’ to run to. There is no ‘other’ country where the sub is free. The room is the world. The world is the room. And so the demonstration ends. The workers go home. The parliament remains silent. The capitalist counts the profit. And tomorrow, the sub wakes up, puts on the uniform, and waits for the next day to march.

As the Indonesian poet Widji Thukul, who vanished under the dictatorship, once wrote:

“Besok pagi, kita ke pabrik. Kembali bekerja, sarapan nasi bungkus, ngutang seperti biasa.”

(Tomorrow morning, we’ll go to the factory. Back to work, takeout for breakfast, and borrow money as usual.)