Work Reform

Reminds me of a particularly powerful passage from the Grapes of Wrath.

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the things you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate - "We lost our land". The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none". If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the sidemeat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket - take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning - from "I" to "we".

I have always been very negative of Tiktok, but maybe the format of people talking face to face makes it possible for it to facilitate the transition from "I" to "we" even in an online platform, which is what traditional social media has failed so miserably at.

Maybe, by trying to play the game of surveillance capitalism, the Chinese finally - accidentally - helped the workers of the world unite.