A couple of days ago, Rishi Sunak, the world's deadliest chef, tweeted that, as a youngster, he aspired to become a Jedi. Presumably not like his, nor anyone else's, father before him, since Jedi are fictional space wizards. He is neither: fictional nor a wizard. Though, probably like his father before him, he is beholden to a financial understanding that is ignorant of how sovereign economies work. A believer in the absence of a magical money tree, except when it comes to him and his class. As demonstrated by the abject wealth within which he is cocooned daily.
The tweet was nothing more than an advert for the tired notions of hard work and effort. That, within the space of less than two hundred characters, the reader is meant to gain an understanding of how society really works. Particularly when it comes to the lives of the elite. It's simple: work hard and apply yourself and you too can become Chancellor of the Exchequer. Keeper of the illusory magic money tree. Fail to work hard and your much deserved reward is factory work; a lifetime of drudgery and disappointment. That is what the ruling class thinks of you and the work you are raised to do. Essential work, in many cases. Much more essential than one single high profile position. That it is treated and rewarded so contemptibly; that those who do it are so poorly regarded is of greater educational value than the world's deadliest chef's just so story.
Society under capitalism is a pyramid scheme. Or perhaps scam. There is only one position labelled Chancellor. It is not earned either. It is appointed. This means you must earn the favour of not just the ruling class, but the party of the ruling class. The party perennially in power. Consequently you will never get to be appointed if your economics do not align with capitalism. Thus Sunak is a capitalist, an ex banker (of course). There is no way the ruling class will ever pick a Marxist or a progressive to manage their system. What this in turn means is that the capitalist ideology reinforces itself. Replicates itself.
That is what Sunak is doing in this tweet. Hard work is a cipher for corect ideology. If you start with a view that capitalism is unfair destructive and exploitative, as one objective look around the world will confirm, you have already failed the applicatoin for Chancellor. You will nevber get to the positoin of being a candidate for the ruling class to appoint you. Never mind having to sign up to their ideology, joining their party. If you don't, you wont' be chosen. Boris was never going to pick a Chancellor from outside his own party. Though of course he, and the ruling class, rewards those that ally and support their cause - class traitors (in most cases) - by stuffing them upstairs, in the Lords.
So if you have a desire to follow the Chancellor's example you have to accept their ideology in order to even begin working hard. Anything else is of course laziness. This is the fundamental point of this article: if we try and engage capitalism on these terms we will already lose. We will have to accept the premise that there are no rewards for those that don't work hard. We hear this all the time: "beggars can't be choosers", "nothing comes without hard work", or, my personal favourite, "the world doesn't owe you a living". These trite tropes are trotted out ad nauseum, serving as little more than thought terminating cliches intended to shut down dissent (essentially). They are repeated so often, and with the help of the powerful toxic media, that people now don't question them, but we must.
Of course hard work and effort are important. But they are a natural extension of performing tasks that we are naturally invested in. I work hard when I wash the dishes because I want them to be clean; that is the reward. I don't get paid for it. But it is essential labour that capitalism taints in the form of reproductive labour. What is often called, with derision, women's work. Is it any surprise our society's ingrained misogyny when such work, vital to the survival of capitalism, isn't even deemed worthy of a wage?
But I digress. The world may not 'owe' us anything, in the convention sense, but it is a world that has all we need. The problem isn't abundance, or the lack thereof, it is that, through historic means, a powerful elite has taken control of those resources and the means of producing them. Were that not so, capitalism couldn't exist and thus goods and services, including women's work, could not be reduced to commodities, denuded of creativity and worth. Dish washing then becomes a chore, not a task necessary that can be shared and, even, enjoyed as one working with equals friends and family can enjoy. Such as when a community works together to overcome a problem; build a new farmhouses for example. A little trite perhaps, but even so.
So one doesn't aspire to be Chancellor. It is a job you are given for supporting the ideology of the ruling class. Anyone that genuinely wants the job will end up being a class enemy simply by virtue of what is required to do the job. The position itself is therefore not neutral. Instead, like the rest of the state machine, we should reject and replace it with something direct and non authoritarian. It shouldn't be the job of one person to dictate to us how much we are allowed. Wether kids can eat during a pandemic. Even if one could apply for the job, how many people would you be competing with? Capitalists will argue that process ensures the most qualified person gets the job, but that's a lie. The people that oversee the selection process will simply ensure their ideological preferences are maintained and that is the problem: the hierarchy of capitalism. All Sunak has achieved is to reinforce that.
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