A Radical Critique of Well-being under Capitalism
by Suddhabrata, Research Wing, AIITEU
The Covid-19 pandemic has enforced unprecedented alterations within the global economy. Although plagues and pandemics are not alien to human history, the Covid-19 Pandemic has struck at a point where the involvement of technology within the lives of the workers is at an exceptionally high level.
With the onset of the cases in India from the 30th of January 2020, the workers found themselves in a difficult condition. Workers from all the different sectors were affected by the precarity that lockdowns associated with Covid-19 brought with them. While the migrant workers of the informal sector struggled to save their lives (not from Covid-19 but from hunger and poverty), the software industry workers were introduced to a ‘new normal’ which affected not only how they work, but also their way of life itself — Work from Home.
These workers or employees (the name hardly matters!) are part of a system in place which is highly demanding both mentally and physically. The global capitalist structure which dominates the industry works in favour of the profits that the workers generate for capital. It neither cares about the workers nor their working conditions but is rather more worried about the costs of the process associated with the ideal management of the workers’ productivity.
The strategies that the companies employ in taking care of its workers also have an effect on the social and personal lives of the workers. Within contemporary society, there cannot be a well-being strategy which treats all employees as a single homogenous unit — either physically or psychologically. Well-being strategies today have to be conversant with the varying conditions of life that different workers live through in their everyday lives.
Well-being of the workers under capitalism is not focused on the workers, because under capitalism workplaces such as the ones that software and IT workers work in, are constructed as spaces which are completely divorced from social reality.
At the same time, the contemporary era is not only an era dominated by capitalist economy but rather by capitalism as a social system itself which means that capitalism has invaded every aspect of the public and private lives of individuals. In situations such as these, any meaningful well-being strategy, or human resource practice, has to situate itself within the existing socio-political reality going beyond the mainstream normalised theoretical understandings. The well-being strategies that the companies have formulated are indicative of the ways in which alienation is ushered in within the lives of the workers.
Alienation, to Marx was the process in which the worker loses control over one’s labour and the products of that labour.
The contemporary workplace at home, does not only alienate the worker from the products of labour (which is perennial within any capitalist process), but also alienates the worker from the workers’ self — dehumanizing and completely transforming the worker into a part of the machine of production even during leisure hours.
The well-being of employees has mostly been theorised following two approaches: hedonic approaches — focus on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance, and eudemonic approaches — focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning.
While the former is a one-dimensional approach towards well-being which only takes happiness into account, the latter argues that it is the complete realization of human potential which should be the marker of well-being.
A subjective understanding of well-being becomes critical in conditions like the present where workers are facing increasing difficulties which include delays in resolution of work-related issues, constant threat of being fired, increasing hours of work, and a general sense of becoming dehumanized. Companies have been successful in extending the hours of work for many workers citing that they have been working from the comforts of their home. This has created emotional, social and psychological issues among the workers, which are equally important parts of the well-being of any worker.
The well-being of the employees within any structure has to be about the all-encompassing well-being of the employees, including but not restricted only to those factors influenced by work and the workspace. This becomes a crucial component of contemporary well-being strategy because the employees today do not exist as a homogenous whole. They have their own set of issues related to how productive or co-operative they can be within the labour process. To disregard these aspects would be fatal to the overall well-being of any worker.
Well-being strategies formulated by any company needs to take into account the fact that unless and until workers can voice their concerns, any strategy for their well-being will be an abject failure, as it robs the meaning that the workers attach to their work.
The inability to voice concerns constitutes a critical part of becoming alienated from one’s work, which has a negative impact on one’s overall productivity and existence.
This also constitutes a critical aspect of being human for the workers. It is true that there are companies and organisations which have been proactive about providing the workers with added financial help for meeting the demands of working from home through maintenance funds and equipment. However, these measures do not help in restoring the human nature of the workers, which is subsumed under digital modes of exploitation while working from home.
Working from home robs the workers of a vital aspect of their life as human beings — the spontaneous nature of their existence. By subsuming them to constant surveillance — which is normalised under the work from home culture — capitalism has been attempting to create subservient slaves. The worst aspect is that because of the global structure of the sector and its incessant search for cheap labour, the companies have even stopped recruiting professional human resource managers and social scientists. This means that during times of crises, such as the one that the pandemic presents, there is a dearth of people who can accurately analyse the social context within which the workers live. The combined effects of these processes increase the probability of work alienation.
Hedonic approaches cannot address the concerns of well-being because of its unilateral approach focusing on the factors which are supposed to make the employees happy rather than those which actually make them happy. Even eudemonic approaches, which are much more sophisticated in their content, cannot be successful because it often tends to undermine the material basis of human existence essentialising psychological existence.
The vulnerabilities of the techno-social system which have been exposed by the pandemic can be addressed if well-being strategies are reanalysed from a perspective taking into account the fact that it is at the end the workers who have to benefit from the process. For doing that these strategies have to talk about the social existence of the workers, encompassing both workplace and non-workplace related issues. In other words, there needs to be more research focused on employee centred well-being approaches. Companies have largely formulated their policies keeping in mind the nonsensical utopian belief that the interests of the employee and the employer are aligned, which failed to take into account the fact that the employers and employees are parts of a relationship which is supposed to be strained because of the ways in which organisations function — that is the basic principle of capitalism.
The conditions of work which have resulted from the rise of the work from home culture have made life difficult for an increasing section of the workers, especially for women and those coming from marginalised families. For example, the nature of work that women perform at home is unpaid. Under the current conditions, the amount of housework that women do has also increased, because of the simple reason that they are more often than not at home. Mainstream well-being strategies render these voices invisible. It completely invisiblises, more so than others, the voice of the most marginalised sections of the working class such as women, Muslims and Dalits.
A radical critique of ‘well-being’ as a concept enables one to understand the fallacies of the capitalist system in place. Well-being under capitalism merely exists for the elites and the rich. For the workers, well-being under capitalism is a myth, because for capitalism, well-being is not about the workers but about productivity and profits.
About the Author:
Suddhabrata Deb Roy is an academic associated with the AIITEU, and is a PhD Candidate at the University of Otago. He is the author of ‘Social Media and Capitalism: People, Communities and Commodities’ (2022) and ‘Mass Struggles and Leninism: Dialectics, Contradictions and Revolution’ (2022). He is currently working on a book for Routledge on the analysis of the Post-Covid19 scenario from a humanist-dialectical perspective.
