Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general. To quote the evermore popular Karl Marx, is to say that by, scanning, bagging, and checking out our own merchandise at your local merchant we are alienating ourselves from ourselves.
The commodity in this case, is the act of scanning and bagging. Which of course is not really a commodity, it’s a service that used to be provided by the corporation that owns the store in which you’ve just bought a product from. Thereby, our labor is the commodity that was once a job. Marx never saw this coming. We need to add to Marx’s statement, “consumer becomes labor becomes product.”
Except, in this case, the “consumer”, i.e. self-checkout, is not sold on the open market so it is not really a part of the machinery, except that we give it freely. Like a gentle absorption. We are being absorbed into the fabric of capitalism. Stitched in doesn’t aptly suit the metaphor, else I’d use it, but because fabric also absorbs, it fits. This creates a conflict in the reader’s mind because you would normally associate being absorbed into something comfy like a cloud or a pillow, but not so in this case.
The biggest argument I hear advocating self-checkout, and this is from the Gen Z kids mostly at the schools I teach, is that it saves time. Precious time. The time we all waste frivolously scrolling, binge watching, and posting pictures online with? That precious time?
When you go to the store, any store that has the self-service checkouts, you are laboring for that corporation, not just for free, that would be tantamount to slavery. But you’re actually paying them to do their jobs for them. And you’ve taken away a human being’s job, however terrible a job it may be (I’ve been a cashier in several merchants). One day, we may be begging for these jobs back. But I’m no prophet. So when the best argument for checking your own merchandise out at the store is that it’s saving you time, and thus money, I’d say you’ve got yourself in the wrong tax bracket.
The very rich, and by “very rich” I don’t mean all that rich, don’t wait in any lines. They don’t even do their own shopping. I mean lawyers, doctors, politicians and the like. They have a service or a servant to do these things for them. Us? We got time to burn.
Don’t get me wrong. I love life. But I find that love in the little things. Shopping with my boys is one of them. Walking to the post office, the corner market, or the park down the road, that’s what I spend my time doing. I’m not rushing home to make an important investment or push a law through congress, or remove a spleen.
I’m not advocating or defending the rich, neither am I blaming them or chastising them who don’t do their own shopping or wait in any lines, I am simply pointing out that the lot of us who claim we’re self-checking our merchandise because “time is money” have skewed self-perceptions.
Yes, there are emergencies, late for a meeting, a pie in the oven, a kid sick at home, and you get in the wrong line at the supermarket and suddenly you miss your bus that won’t come for another half hour, or your drive home is peppered with red light after red light. These things do suck and again I’d remind everyone of us that this is the world we inhabit and all these ups and downs come with the territory.
Marx warned us. I always saw Marx as a lighthouse keeper, guiding us through the fog and darkness. People tell me he was a communist, but I don’t see him that way. He said, “The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things.” Aside from the binary non-inclusive language or use of the word “woman”, he’s speaking about our own “devaluing”. We’re chipping away at our ability to remain dignity-intact when we give away our labor so readily. I know there’s a counter argument to be had, that goes something like, “we’ve a finite amount of time to be alive, should we waste that in the name of our humanity?” Well that question answers itself. It’s about being thoughtful, I think they call it “mindful” now, about your life and appreciating all the moments, big and small, insignificant and significant.
I almost don’t want to dignify the opposition by stating this last point, but I will. When we labor for a corporation for free, (again not just free, we pay them for our merchandise and we labor for them so that’s not actually free, it’s indebted) we take away someone’s job. I know it’s as ridiculous soapbox to stand upon what with AI and robots already in our midst, but if humans refused to self-checkout and just stood in line and waited, and we did this around the world, they would have to use humans again. But, much like Orwell pondered, why the hell don’t the proles just stand up? I have the feeling I’m on the same forlorn road to progress in the name of…
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