An image beloved of both the internet right and the left. The worker. "Imagine going up to a worker", they say, "and saying what you've just said." Often they are specific: The steelworker, the tired coal miner, the teamster, etc. But one must ask: what does the worker of today look like?
This figure is everywhere, watching over us. We like this idea of the worker, he is pleasing to have around. He works a real job, a job that produces things. There is unfortunately a catch: A soldier is closer to a representation of the average western worker than he is. (Some quick numbers: US coal mines employ about 50,000 people. The US military has 480,000 soldiers.) No, if you want an image of the average worker today, you're looking at the other pictures. People with smartphones and Twitter accounts. People who'll talk your ears off about films, not good films like Blue Collar (1978), films like Black Widow (2021), which they don't even watch in photogenic cinemas - no, they watch them in bed on their laptops, or perhaps if they're still students then with a HDMI cable awkwardly slung from a precariously balanced MacBook Pro in the middle of their shared flats. They're not the people you wish were your dad, they're the people you went to school if you're not underaged. A disproportionate number of them have degrees. Or perhaps they're the old people, practically invisible to you now. The middle aged ones who sit watching daytime television. The unemployed. The people who get in your way at the supermarket, the people who sit beside you on the bus when you'd really rather be left alone listening to your spotify playlist.
They are not, by and large, "aesthetic". There is no gigantic repertoire of social realist art to look on that will make you appreciate the low paid social worker in her office tabbing through an excel sheet of case-work. No obvious visible end product from the care workers looking after forgotten retirees. Some think "after the revolution, I will be a miner", but who thinks "after the revolution, I will work in the [former] amazon warehouse."? And it is this force, this lack of a clear image in one's mind that is so pernicious. Without a clear image of the modern working class, people quickly fall back to their file photo - the working class of the days before everyone had a colour television.
So what? "Well", you think "First of all I object to your characterization, you haven't specifically highlighted…" yeah, great. T
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