Day of the Shock Worker

The following essay was re-engineered for the use of you frustrated office workers on those gloomy Dogbert days when you "just feel", as you claim, pooped, frustrated, or on the verge of "burn out". This is not a piece to excuse or palliate such feelings - it has been specifically designed to crush them. We firmly believe that the power of a strong social ethic can shame even the laziest cubicle-bound fatalist into productivity.

Any red lines represent the excision of formalist or capitalistic subversion that found its way into the original essay. 

Comrade, have you ever confronted your own productivity? Looking back over a long stretch of "everyday activities" (whatever they may be), have you ever asked yourself, "exactly what kind of worker am I?" Some of you might know quite well. When one thinks of the different "types" of worker, many common expressions come to mind, for instance:

• Easy-going
• "Hard" worker
• Perfectionist
• Enthusiastic
• Back-room worker
• Lazy
• Group thinker etc.

You might have never been quite able to fit yourself into these categories. Perhaps, like so many over-educated people, you are a little bit of hard worker. Perhaps you are even a self-designated  "perfectionist" - which implies you have a reluctance to finish something until it is polished as a work of art - a rather bourgeois and egotistical style of working!

But is there not something subtle to be gained from this critical and cynical style of the modern office worker, who hates what she does but does it anyway with a sardonic smile? Perhaps  there are some advantages to the egotistical capitalistic style of working - personal pleasure, emotional persuasion, the joy of exploiting an intern. But  no amount of cynical pleasure can fill up the entirety of our complex human existence. , We must push aside all such positive feelings, despite how wonderful and easy to grasp they might be. On this subtle point we must not at all be too dogmatic. And we should always bear in mind the excellent lessons pointed out to us by Comrade Trotsky MindApe, so long as we do not do so uncritically and without well-considered qualification.

One thing you rarely hear mention of in the 21st century office-and-mousepad world is classical "productivity" - getting something done as fast and near-standard as possible. You are often seduced by the idea of adding a personal touch, of mulling it over, of not trusting the plain model even when it is the best solution.

But today we proclaim: bitchy office workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your back-pains!

In the battle for a victorious completion of the Bolshevik Five-Year Plan. Be in the front ranks of the shock workers of the brigade, the workshop and the factory!

Don't be fooled - customization is decadence. Shake yourself out of classificatory torpor! Forget the need to tickle your own ego with opiates like "self-satisfaction" and "loving your work". Douse your face in some cold water, have some raw beets and carrots, and remind yourself of the great Soviet "Shock Worker" movement of the 20's and 30's.

"Shock worker!" What a term! It must sent shivers of proletarian awe down your spine as soon as you read it. Derived from the Prussian "Shock Trooper" , it was adapted to the cause of worker productivity, enrolling a huge swathe of Soviet workers into "shock worker brigades", whose mass achievement was the hyper-production of quotas, sometimes earning the rank of "500" or "1000 percenters".

The marrow of this upbeat ideology can be found in Lenin's own article "How to Organize Competition". Lenin thinks the working class are too "timid" compared to the military and bourgeoisie - that workers need a new competitive and militarized ethic, a heroical persona to give them self-confidence.

Could not the following paragraph suit any modern business setting?

Competition creates the opportunity for employing it on a really wide and on a really mass scale, for actually drawing the majority of toilers into an arena of such labor in which they can display their abilities, develop their capacities, reveal their talents, of which there is an untapped spring among the people...

So long as we tart up, perhaps, the final sentence:

...and in which capitalism is crushed, suppressed and strangled in thousands and millions.

Are we to take Lenin at face value?  Absolutely not, without a critical outlook. Certainly his policies, and the policies that derived from them by Stalinists resulted in the actual over-working of thousands of already taxed soviet workers. Yes, it is a powerful rhetoric and the symbolism and propaganda which grew out of his teachings are an excellent stock-set of cultural motifs, indeed some of the most interesting history has heretofore produced - but we must not be overly seduced by a nostalgia for a false set of fairy communistic ideals that never really existed in real life.

Do you want to? Join! Hurry and join the shock group of model labor. Do you want to fight against the cold? Do you want to defeat hunger? Do you want to eat? Do you want to drink?

1000 percenters! Are you not shamed by such numbers, you kulak dog? You sweat butter and laziness - the shock worker sweats oil and blood! You yawn the yawn of a thousand bloated yaks - the shock worker breathes necessary amounts at the efficient interval! He would replace his heart with a engine, his legs with wheels, his arms with a general sort of swiss-army knife contraption, apt for screwing in bolts and cutting pizzas alike.

For the modern office drone, there is no more salutary outlook than this of the shock worker. Consider: since you have been misled by the mythology of an ergonomic, parasitic existence, you have noticed silly things, un-productive things, like back pains, eye strain, boredom, frustration, loss of libido etc. You feel these things because you are resisting the march of dialectical materialism.

Now let us look at the modern office shock worker. What does he know of these petty complaints? His back is like a rod of iron, his ass hard like the steel of the railroad. He sits in his cubicle like a perfectly machine-built cog - there is no clutter, there is no single unnecessary item. As soon as his hand touches the mouse and keyboard, he is at once a part of the machine - his deepest viscera vibrate in sympathy with the glowing spreadsheets and the dance of PowerPoint graphs.

Look him in the eyes, just try to make small talk with him! You will hear only calculated and glorious grunts of triumph as he flies through the work of ten kulaks such as yourself while you dally away your lunch hour with caviar and Tsarist champagne breaks. You who grasp so hard at the threads of your own "personal growth", and all the while decay in the muck - ask the shock worker how he grows!

"I? I? I is the letter of the reactionary. It is IT that grows, comrade, and it alone with the productivity of the organization!"

And you asked him what he does on the weekend!

Anybody with work today and a social and incorruptible mindset must immediately identified himself with the title of "shock worker". It is exactly this kind of militarized courage in the work place that you should depend upon everyday. A pride in completing something, or having the ability to complete it, with a powerful, even intimidating efficacy.

Maybe there is room for humanity, humour, and urbane cynicism in your off hours. Maybe there are days when you do indeed need to step back from the black hole of labour and ask yourself on an existential level what it is all about. Your ego should not be entirely ignored. But remember that collective, futuristic identification with machine-like efficacy is a powerful and fun way to get yourself through some rather bland days.

No pat on the back or "great job!" for you! You must want your work to be so highly charged as to "terrorize" with its quantity, and the fierce speed with which it was accomplished. But it is not yet enough! Faster comrade, and faster still! Before the inevitable screensaver of history blacks us all out.

October 1 - the All-Union Day of the Shockworker. We have a report! We are completing construction of the foundation of the socialist economy!