crit′ical mass′
n.
1. the amount of a given fissionable material necessary to sustain a chain reaction.
2. an amount necessary or sufficient to have a significant effect or to achieve a result.
[1940–45]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
I started thinking about critical mass on a bike ride at the weekend. I was cycling in unison with a large group of activists to demonstrate outside an Israeli owned drone factory. It was important to do this because the Israeli defence force uses drones against Palestinians.
Cycling gives me great pleasure; I like the rhythm of pedalling, the cyclical turning of pedals and wheels, the pace; fast enough to cover distance but steady enough to enjoy the smells and sights and sounds in the environment along the way. But there was tremendous joy and energy generated by riding en masse that day, it felt to good to be riding as a collective. Recently I heard Jannis Varoufakis in an interview say that humanity only exists in the collective, this was qualified by pointing out that the word idiot comes from the Greek word for individual and so it follows that acting alone is idiotic whereby collective action demonstrates the workings of a civil society. So, we were cycling together, as a collective with a common purpose, and we chanted
End apartheid
Cycling gives me great pleasure; I like the rhythm of pedalling, the cyclical turning of pedals and wheels, the pace; fast enough to cover distance but steady enough to enjoy the smells and sights and sounds in the environment along the way. But there was tremendous joy and energy generated by riding en masse that day, it felt to good to be riding as a collective. Recently I heard Jannis Varoufakis in an interview say that humanity only exists in the collective, this was qualified by pointing out that the word idiot comes from the Greek word for individual and so it follows that acting alone is idiotic whereby collective action demonstrates the workings of a civil society. So, we were cycling together, as a collective with a common purpose, and we chanted
We will ride 100 miles and
We will ride 100 more
And we will ride for Palestine
And we will end Israeli war
End apartheid
End apartheid
End apartheid.
But how does all this relate to book packing?
Well, we are soon each to be harnessed to headsets, wristbands and a finger scanner. Pickers on the line will work in isolation, communicating only with his or her machine. We will no longer have the facility to communicate with one another, the mass of workers will be fragmented to a series of idiots wired up to and controlled by the system and pitted against each other by performance evaluations while 'team leaders' in pink vests do the job of an overseer.
'Overseer', I think that's the word that was used during the slave trade to describe those who had the job of extracting forced labour on the sugar plantations of the 18th and 18th Centuries.
Well, we are soon each to be harnessed to headsets, wristbands and a finger scanner. Pickers on the line will work in isolation, communicating only with his or her machine. We will no longer have the facility to communicate with one another, the mass of workers will be fragmented to a series of idiots wired up to and controlled by the system and pitted against each other by performance evaluations while 'team leaders' in pink vests do the job of an overseer.
'Overseer', I think that's the word that was used during the slave trade to describe those who had the job of extracting forced labour on the sugar plantations of the 18th and 18th Centuries.
An overseer in the past
An overseer today
The need for an overseer both in the past and today is because of numbers; those doing the work far outnumber those whose job it is to extract work from the labour supply. A large number of workers has the potential to constitute a critical mass so from the point of view of slavery it would follow that such a system would need strictly control of its workers.
During the slave trade this was done with various barbaric methods. Nowadays things are different, for example whipping is no longer routine. However, there are is a complex system of contracted labour supplied through agencies that exploits people to serve productivity and maintain discipline in the workforce (this can be explained in more detail in another post). In the place where I work the overseers have started to wear very bright pink vests, and there's a large screen at the entrance to the warehouse that displays our overseers standing together and smiling in their pink vests; I think it's a stupid picture, but there it is, each time we enter the warehouse we're reminded that they are in power. But we need to remember that we are many and that we too have power too.
On the day I rode my bicycle to Shenstone with 200 other people, the drone factory was closed down for the day, so our common purpose was achieved, our demonstration was effective.
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