There is no 'middle' between working and owning

Why is it that many tech workers don’t really see themselves as workers?

As a member of Techwerkers, I have a pretty clear idea of what kind of a world I and my fellow members like to live in, and which direction to go when building such better world. But to make sure we’re on the same page and that we’re not wandering aimlessly, having lost track of our goals, together we’ve decided to actually write down our vision and mission statements. I can recommend doing this. As you go through the process of explicitly formulating your vision, and brainstorming strategies, many patterns become clear.

During one of the brainstorm meetings, there was a single virtual sticky note that stood out to me. It said that an obstacle to many, many of our goals and aspirations is that tech workers often don’t really see themselves as workers.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Of course we’re workers, it’s in the name! We go to work most days of the week and what we do there is work. So, what else could we be? Yet at the same time I see colleagues and online strangers actively rooting for the filthy rich tech oligarchs, hoping they’ll become billionaires any day now, and cheerfully embracing technologies explicitly aimed at automating us out of our jobs.

So let’s explore what I mean by that. Let’s talk about the difference between doing work and accepting our shared position as the working class; let’s talk about the myth of the ‘middle class’.

One startup away from being a millionaire #

Many workers in tech are quite privileged compared to other workers. We’re generally well-paid and have good job security. We have cool jobs and skills, we’re the ‘magicians’ who know how to make your phone do all the cool thing it does. We’re the engine of the industry that has transformed the modern life and produced countless massive corporations, billionaires, and a trillionaire.

In such an environment, it’s no wonder that many of us keep aspiring up. We’re just one great idea, one successful startup away from becoming millionaires, aren’t we? We obviously have more in common with the tech bro oligarchs than the janitors that clean public bathrooms, right? The fact that we don’t actually own multiple villas, luxurious yachts and don’t hold power over global politics and economy is just a temporary inconvenience after all!

But at the end of the day, we’re unimaginably more likely to become homeless than to become one of the winners of the game of capitalism. There’s literally a shortage of 396.000 houses in the Netherlands, while there are merely 14 billionaires living here. As tech workers we are just as vulnerable to market changes beyond our (individual) control as any of our neighbours is. How many of us make a decent salary, but still feel inexplicably stuck in the economy – not even owning the roof over their heads due to the housing crisis, constantly worried about the livelihood of their family whenever the next round of layoffs comes and our jobs get automated away, constantly feeling exhausted and burnt out no matter how cool their job looks from the outside?

The labour you provide #

What makes this outlandish dissonance materialise – despite it being so outlandish – is arguably our shared belief in the existence of ’the middle class’. There’s no clear, universal definition of that term, there’s no material distinction between this class and the others – just a vague feeling that someone’s not poor, but not rich either. Just like us! The Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, for example, even claims that the Netherlands have seven distinct social classes, with bizarre class labels and as a collection neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive.

But when you start digging deeper, trying to understand where the middle class actually begins and ends, you quickly realise that it’s just an illusion. Ultimately, people’s economic situation boils down to just two things: the labour they provide and the assets they own.

Of course, that distinction doesn’t always hold on the individual level. There are people who do a salaried job while also running a business on the weekends. There are people that Marx would call petite bourgeoisie: small business owners who own their means of production, but still have to work to survive. But even with the nuances considered, the point is that our actual place in the economy isn’t determined by some number fitting into an arbitrary income range – but the question of whether or not you have to work (or rely on state or community support) in order to survive.

If you suddenly get fired, you can probably live a few months on your savings and on welfare – but ultimately you’ll have to find another job in order to pay your bills and feed your family. If your health gets worse and you’re unable to do your current work anymore, you might be forced to switch to a completely different industry or rely on government programs and help from your support network.

But if one of the big shareholders of your company for some reason can’t keep doing what they’ve been doing? No big deal. They might have been choosing to work, but ultimately, they don’t have to. They probably own a big house, a vacation home, and a bunch of rental properties that ‘passively’ provide them more income without lifting a finger than your hard work ever could. They probably have a portfolio of assets that ‘work for them’ in the infinitely growing stock market. They probably received a golden parachute and still receive dividends from the shares of the company you work for. You are not the same… There’s a separate economy for those people who own assets and those who have to sell their labour to survive.

Starting from solidarity #

I get it. It feels glamorous to think of yourself as a future rich person. It feels like a failure to still not have become one. It feels shameful to be closer to the bottom of the social ladder than to the top. It feels safe to escape into dreams of a better future that’s just around the corner. It feels scary and exhausting to speak up against the people in power.

But ultimately that approach can’t work. It obviously doesn’t! Regular people are struggling, our economy is in one crisis after another, next generations are worse off than previous ones – while the stock market is booming and property prices keep rising. The system keeps working exactly as intended: making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

There are many things we can do about it, ranging from simply speaking up against the inequality, to organising ourselves in unions, fostering workplace democracy, demanding a fair share in our companies and in the wealth that our labour creates, all the way to implementing Fully Automated Luxury Communism. But doing any of those things has to start from a place of solidarity. Solidarity is not just being there for each other in hopes that others will be there for you when you need them. Solidarity is also recognising who’s on the same boat as you are, and who’s actively trying to sink it.

We won’t go far in ensuring that everybody can lead a dignified life without embracing the inherently antagonistic relationship between the owning class and the working class; without realising that some people directly benefit from the suffering of others. We need to reject the notion that we, the tech workers, are ‘middle class’, sitting comfortably in the middle of the social ladder – because ultimately the ladder itself is unfair and hurtful.

And while the title of this post makes for a good slogan against the myth of the middle class, the truth is that there actually is an alternative to the dichotomy of either having your labour exploited or doing the exploiting. It’s possible for the workers to meaningfully own their companies: there are multiple examples of thriving enterprises like that. Take Mondragon from the Basque Country, which is the largest worker co-operative federation in the world. But it can also be as simple as employees owning stock (not stock options!) of their companies in the amount that gives them a meaningful impact on the decision-making.

It’s one thing to be a cog in the machine, constantly worried about becoming a victim of the next round of layoffs for the sake of shareholder profits – and another thing to be a valuable contributor to the business who has a say in difficult decisions like layoffs and gets a slice of the pie that we’re collectively baking.

It’s your decision which one you’d rather be. If it’s the latter – welcome on board! Let’s join our efforts and build a fairer world together!