Cabbage against Capitalism
Rethinking Labor in a Personal Sense
The current system does not work. Not for me, not for you, not for anybody. It is no secret. And yet, we all continue to hustle on our desks and in our workplaces, from morning till night, until we are mentally and/or physically exhausted beyond repair because we lack alternatives. Labor is seen as this unavoidable thing we all need to do, like taxes or cleaning the dishes or cutting our toenails.
Don’t get me wrong, having a clean kitchen and healthy feet is important. But work… is it really necessary? This thought has been haunting me for years.
What are you going to do?
When I was in university, I got asked this one question at least once or twice per week. I studied cultural anthropology, so a subject that most people have never heard of. They never asked what it was about or why I chose this degree over all the others. Their only question was:
„And what are you going to do with this? What job will you do?“
And to be honest, I had no bloody idea.
In my first year, I was relaxed about it and waved off those constant questions about my future. In my second year, I began to be annoyed and uncomfortable. In my third year, I was in full panic mode, as I still had no answer to this question and my graduation was around the corner.
I had chosen cultural anthropology because I found the subject fascinating. I have always been interested in other cultures and traditions from around the globe. So, maybe I should have said that I would become an employee for an NGO or as a diversity counselor for a big company, which seems appropriate for a cis-gendered white woman from Germany (yes, this was a joke).
In reality, I did not see myself in an office job, let alone a regular 9–5. I wanted to be a writer, an author, a storyteller. But every time I dared to say these dreams out loud, people would laugh or smile full of pity and immediately say: „No, but what are you going to do for your real job?“
What is labor?
The arts are real jobs. No matter if you are a painter, a writer, a musician, a potter, a dancer, a designer, an actor. No matter if you can afford everything you want or not make a dime. Art is a form of work. It is the expression of your soul, transformed by yourself with the utilization of your time, knowledge, creativity, effort and energy.
Somehow, we see work as something that pays you money. The more money you make, the more you have worked and vice versa. The reality is often the opposite. Someone who cares for children or the elderly is often working very hard and gets paid very little and the richest man on Earth, the one who shall not be named, does not need to work a single second of his life and flies to space instead, polluting a planet on the brink of a climate crisis. But that is a different topic for a different essay.
There are exceptions of course, like doctors, but in most cases, work, in the sense of actual effort, does not equal money.
The American Dream, or, as I like to call it, Capitalism, has made us live by a mantra none of us ever gave consent to. Work hard and you will succeed. And by working hard they mean the amount of time and energy you spend on something and by success they mean the number on your bank account. The whole system makes sure you cannot escape this, from taxes to inflation, to rising rent prices, medical bills and water sold in plastic bottles. And somehow, thanks to great marketing, it is sold as a dream, something to long for, something we should all want, even when the pathway to this ominous success is nothing but misery.
We forgot that work is not necessarily your job. A parent taking care of their kids is work, dismantling oppression and healing traumas is work, tending to plants and animals is work, learning new things is work, creating art is work, exercising is work, cooking, cleaning, helping others, going to a protest, damn, even cutting those toenails.
Everything that you dedicate your attention and effort to, is labor. Money has nothing to do with it. It is all about your energy and what you transform it into.
From a seed to a revolution
In 2020, the year of the pandemic, when many people woke up from this trance of office work and suddenly found themselves either unemployed or in the possibility of home office, which was denied to them prior due to invalid excuses, I had my first real, long-term office job.
Luckily, I got to work from home, but I still hated the strict times, the video meetings, the hierarchies, all of it. I felt like a puzzle piece forced into place, like someone pressing a ball into the pre-made cubic shape. I did not fit and was incredibly out of place and uncomfortable.
Looking around, I was not the only one. Except for a handful of people, most of them using work as an escape from their unhappy private life, none of my colleagues seemed fulfilled. We were all just here because we had bills to pay and because we were convinced that having a job was a necessity.
At the same time, I started to garden for the first time in my life. I watched and learned as those tiny little seeds became big plants with nothing but water, air, sun and love. I harvested my first vegetables and gazed over the flowers blooming. It taught me many things about patience, resilience and the true meaning of labor.
This led me to seek knowledge and conversations around climate change, regenerating nature and social justice, especially for indigenous communities. It is a process, a long way from complete. So far, it taught me stillness and how to listen, as well as to unlearn the parts of myself that the western society tries so desperately to infuse us with.
A simple seed had become the revolution of my mind. The cabbage in the garden had been the gateway to the path I had been looking for all along. A path back to nature and away from consumption and capitalism.
So, when I eventually lost my job, my mindset had already shifted and I knew that I did not lose something precious. On the contrary, I was being set free.
A Redefinition of You
In the for the wild Podcast, Gopal Dayaneni was interviewed and quoted: „The first rule of ecological restoration is the restoration of our own labor. Human labor is the precious natural resource, concentrated, controlled and exploited, that has been wielded like a chainsaw against the rest of the natural world. Because of this, we must take it back from the chains of the market and restore it to the web of life. This should be the basis of our organizing at every scale, from the school to the workplace; from grassroots organizing to trans-local movement building.“
But how do you redefine something that is so crucial to all of our lives? Within a system that is keeping us hostage with bills and taxes and obligations?
As an individual human being that is still learning, I do not have final answers. But I think it starts with simple acts, such as not asking young people every week what job they will do and rather opening doors to express their interests and learn about the things they find important. To open our eyes to possibilities beyond our current standards. It starts by listening to communities that live with little or no money and simply learn from their survival. It starts with questioning consumption, capitalism, your workplace, the economy and the systems you were raised in.
It also starts with acknowledgment. A redefinition of yourself and what your labor means and what you want to invest it in. If we realize how valuable our time and energy truly is — not to a company that would replace us within the blink of an eye, but to the world as a whole and our own well-being — we will quickly realize what is important and what truly deserves our attention.
If you are still lost, I recommend planting a seed. Just one. In a tiny cup of soil. Water it, watch it. Care for it with all the attentiveness that you can give. Let it revolutionize your mind, while you realize that labor begins within us and extends to nature, not to a paycheck. Only way down the line of priorities is actual labor in a work environment that feeds others more than ourselves. If it is on the list at all.
You do not need to begin with answers and solutions. You begin with raising questions. Only then can we move forward.
