The Arts Degree Problem

It is difficult to look at The future isn't working, the chapter from Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, and not find yourself considering the problems with what they're talking about without falling into a narrow "the problems with Marxism in general" mindset.

Partly due to this disclaimer, among other reasons such as not having done enough research to appropriately back my responses, in looking at this reading I actively avoided coming up to a response to the whole article. If I was to try, the piece is at least interesting, and they are obviously passionate about what they are saying. They are definitely optimistic which is nice in the arts world, and they are right about the title statement.

What I am comfortable talking about was an issue that comes up around page 90-91; something I will call the Arts Degree Problem. The writers are breaking down the "composition of the surplus population" they claim there are four different strata.

1. the capitalist segment: the unemployed and underemployed within typical capitalist circumstance.
2. the non-capitalist segment: the same segment minus any social safety net, people who cannot afford to be without work for long because of this.
3. the latent segment: qualified working people who might suddenly become not that through social development.
4. the inactive segment: disabled people, prisoners, students, etc.

Looking specifically at that third segment, Srnicek and Williams explain that:

"a third latent group exists primarily in pre-capitalist economic formations that can be readily mobilised into the capitalist labour market. This includes the reservoir of proto-proletarians, but this group also includes unwaged domestic labourers, as well as salaried professionals who are under threat of being returned to the proletariat, often through deskilling."

That last bit, the salaried professionals, that's us. The people who hold jobs that are produced by art degrees are the first thing to become obsolete with economic evolution. Less and less companies need sociological thinkers while the increase in demand for technically specified people is intense. This is an indirect result of automation, as discussed in the article, in that menial tasks are automated, with the automation itself creating a demand for technicians, and in the middle is a no-mans land of people whose education focused on thought and creativity, rather than technical and practical application, that are simply not relevant in a world based on linear practicality.

This is why people with engineering degrees give us a hard time, they saw that we basically got degrees in something fun, rather than something useful, based on that future we're going into that isn't working. To me, this means I need to look at adapting what I've learnt from arts to work as something I probably never thought I would.