I don’t see how the second hand you mention is at all in tension with the first. In fact, it seems to be supportive of it. More worker power means less corporate constraint.
The last writers strike was also less radical, less class conscious, far from the near unanimity we have today, and wasn’t backed up by the actors (or teamsters!)
Why would having greater worker power not help? I’m not saying they’d have complete control over it or anything, but the less economic precarity someone has, the more comfortable they are expressing themselves to leadership. There’s less leverage by the bosses towards their workers, so they will have to compromise more.
You are mistaking ‘worker power’ with ‘monetary compensation’. The abuses within Hollywood run incredibly deep, it’s assumed in the industry that you will be sexually harassed at some point on set, and there is nothing you can actually do about it and keep your job, particularly if that person is a lead. There is a magnitude of power discrepancy that an increased paycheck and additional residuals cannot cover. Most of these writers are economically precarious, and it is their economic precarity that is causing them to strike against management. When they were not economically precarious, they did not strike against management nor raise any real fuss over these abuses. They want to be on the gravy train, they don’t want the gravy train to stop working because it is fundamentally unethical. Which I sympathize with, getting a good-paying job is hard, but keeping it is a nightmare.
I really recommend you listen to the QAnonAnonymous episode, I think it is 143 on Jim Caviezel, and realize that it is literally just the tip of the iceberg for the show business industry.
That being said, it fundamentally doesn’t matter what I think about any of this. The WGA will fight their hearts out for whatever demands they want and we will see what the consequences of that fight actually are, critical support regardless.
I think it’s unfair to treat the writers as a monolith here. Yeah, there are shitheads in every union that are just pay focused, but a lot of people are victimized by these issues themselves. I agree stuff like this won’t cure it, that the strike is unlikely to make a fully transformative action, but it’s not the wrong direction. Negotiated contracts aren’t just about monetary compensation. They can cover a wide variety of protections. I don’t think it’s fair to say that writers don’t care about this, or won’t push for it. Most writers aren’t the people in power that perpetuate these crimes. The last strike didn’t do anything about it, but labor action has been weak as shit for decades. It’s only recently that any real teeth have started to remerge, and either way, enhancing the power of workers can only give them a stronger position to fight abuse.
This is the way dialectics works, they are at once opposed and supportive, with the balance drawing from context. I’ll walk you through the thought process.
I’ll start with the idea of ‘social revolution’, where one class upsets and grabs the balance of ownership of the means of production from another class. This is not a social revolution. Nothing is fundamentally changing about the power dynamics of the situation, the union is the union, the corporation is the corporation. This is not ‘more worker power’ because the workers are not seizing ownership, they are asking for a larger slice of the pie and residuals. So that leaves us with two questions. What does that mean and does that make it bad?
What it means is that assuming that because the workers are going to have a larger share of the pie they will be subject to less constraints is a false equivocation. It may happen, but the likelihood is low. And we can even verify this from their demands, none of which are asking for greater creative control, or democratic control over production scheduling. There is nothing here that removes the abuse from the sets, it simply makes it tolerable through greater payoff.
So does that make it bad? Well, depends on what your goal is politically. If you are seeking harm reduction, then no, it is not bad, people getting paid for their work is good. On the other hand, if you think the entire edifice is corrupt and cannot be redeemed, then all this does is reinforce the socio-political structure through payments, which are still far under the value that is being created. Upton Sinclair described it thusly, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It is bad because it is buying off the tension, again, not removing the shit, but sprinkling sugar on top to make it palatable.
To me, Hollywood and professional writing in general is a cesspit that excuses some of the most heinous abuses and, tragically, mostly doesn’t even produce anything worthwhile because of it. The vast majority of these cultural products will be memory-holed within the next three years, maybe to be brought up again in seven years by the YouTube review raccoons that paw through and monetize the detritus.
Essentially, it is a good that they are striking, but to make it really good, an unequivocal good, they should be demanding more. Why cause such a fuss if you aren’t going to actually go for it and try to fix the problems at the root of the industry? Otherwise we will just be back here again in another decade (or less at this rate), fighting over the payment of the creation of even shittier cultural products.
The writers are highly visible and might inspire others. And most of what the machine demands most of us make is shit.
Building the union is worker power. More money for workers, is, actually worker power, or can be. Getting from there to flipping the whole table is something no one in the Failed States has figured out, but that shouldn’t mean don’t bother or it isn’t unambiguously good because it might make life less horrific for some working people.
I don’t see how the second hand you mention is at all in tension with the first. In fact, it seems to be supportive of it. More worker power means less corporate constraint.
Yeah. More rights, payment, and security will all lead to more creative freedom and expression.
The last writer’s strike did not, so I don’t know why you would assume this one would.
The last writers strike was also less radical, less class conscious, far from the near unanimity we have today, and wasn’t backed up by the actors (or teamsters!)
Why would having greater worker power not help? I’m not saying they’d have complete control over it or anything, but the less economic precarity someone has, the more comfortable they are expressing themselves to leadership. There’s less leverage by the bosses towards their workers, so they will have to compromise more.
You are mistaking ‘worker power’ with ‘monetary compensation’. The abuses within Hollywood run incredibly deep, it’s assumed in the industry that you will be sexually harassed at some point on set, and there is nothing you can actually do about it and keep your job, particularly if that person is a lead. There is a magnitude of power discrepancy that an increased paycheck and additional residuals cannot cover. Most of these writers are economically precarious, and it is their economic precarity that is causing them to strike against management. When they were not economically precarious, they did not strike against management nor raise any real fuss over these abuses. They want to be on the gravy train, they don’t want the gravy train to stop working because it is fundamentally unethical. Which I sympathize with, getting a good-paying job is hard, but keeping it is a nightmare.
I really recommend you listen to the QAnonAnonymous episode, I think it is 143 on Jim Caviezel, and realize that it is literally just the tip of the iceberg for the show business industry.
That being said, it fundamentally doesn’t matter what I think about any of this. The WGA will fight their hearts out for whatever demands they want and we will see what the consequences of that fight actually are, critical support regardless.
I think it’s unfair to treat the writers as a monolith here. Yeah, there are shitheads in every union that are just pay focused, but a lot of people are victimized by these issues themselves. I agree stuff like this won’t cure it, that the strike is unlikely to make a fully transformative action, but it’s not the wrong direction. Negotiated contracts aren’t just about monetary compensation. They can cover a wide variety of protections. I don’t think it’s fair to say that writers don’t care about this, or won’t push for it. Most writers aren’t the people in power that perpetuate these crimes. The last strike didn’t do anything about it, but labor action has been weak as shit for decades. It’s only recently that any real teeth have started to remerge, and either way, enhancing the power of workers can only give them a stronger position to fight abuse.
This is the way dialectics works, they are at once opposed and supportive, with the balance drawing from context. I’ll walk you through the thought process.
I’ll start with the idea of ‘social revolution’, where one class upsets and grabs the balance of ownership of the means of production from another class. This is not a social revolution. Nothing is fundamentally changing about the power dynamics of the situation, the union is the union, the corporation is the corporation. This is not ‘more worker power’ because the workers are not seizing ownership, they are asking for a larger slice of the pie and residuals. So that leaves us with two questions. What does that mean and does that make it bad?
What it means is that assuming that because the workers are going to have a larger share of the pie they will be subject to less constraints is a false equivocation. It may happen, but the likelihood is low. And we can even verify this from their demands, none of which are asking for greater creative control, or democratic control over production scheduling. There is nothing here that removes the abuse from the sets, it simply makes it tolerable through greater payoff.
So does that make it bad? Well, depends on what your goal is politically. If you are seeking harm reduction, then no, it is not bad, people getting paid for their work is good. On the other hand, if you think the entire edifice is corrupt and cannot be redeemed, then all this does is reinforce the socio-political structure through payments, which are still far under the value that is being created. Upton Sinclair described it thusly, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It is bad because it is buying off the tension, again, not removing the shit, but sprinkling sugar on top to make it palatable.
To me, Hollywood and professional writing in general is a cesspit that excuses some of the most heinous abuses and, tragically, mostly doesn’t even produce anything worthwhile because of it. The vast majority of these cultural products will be memory-holed within the next three years, maybe to be brought up again in seven years by the YouTube review raccoons that paw through and monetize the detritus.
Essentially, it is a good that they are striking, but to make it really good, an unequivocal good, they should be demanding more. Why cause such a fuss if you aren’t going to actually go for it and try to fix the problems at the root of the industry? Otherwise we will just be back here again in another decade (or less at this rate), fighting over the payment of the creation of even shittier cultural products.
The writers are highly visible and might inspire others. And most of what the machine demands most of us make is shit.
Building the union is worker power. More money for workers, is, actually worker power, or can be. Getting from there to flipping the whole table is something no one in the Failed States has figured out, but that shouldn’t mean don’t bother or it isn’t unambiguously good because it might make life less horrific for some working people.
Ah, I see, basically, by being reformist, it’ll ultimately amount to naught. Fair point.
Refreshing to be critiqued from the left — it’s so good to have hexbear federated here now