Beyond the crisis

Whom Does My Work Serve?
In this very difficult period, when jobs are at risk and widespread uncertainty prevails, it seems that a certain conception of reality (and the economy) is suddenly manifesting all its limitations. And yet this moment also offers a great opportunity for re-discovering ourselves, facing the toil of a task, as testified by the contributions in the following pages

edited by Davide Perillo

The idea’s been circulating for some time, well before the current financial plunge. There was a lot of talk about subprime mortgages, but the word “recession” was still muttered under our breath, buried in the downturning graphics and the darkened tables. Clearly, those numbers talked about cuts, a lot of them, and painful. But there’s the clear impression that little attention was given to the people hidden behind those figures the economy spoke of, while ignoring the maker: man–or, in other words, needs, questions, and desires, the will to build and fulfill oneself. How? Working. Yes, this was the impression, that there was the risk that work would be the great forgotten subject of recent years. Not so much–and not only–as number of jobs and salaries at risk, but precisely as expression of self and one’s relationship with reality, as opportunity for growth. The idea that the value of work is to know others and yourself better, engaging with what Fr. Giussani once defined “an energy that changes things according to a plan,” had disappeared, as for many of us work had become mere deadweight, a time clock to punch, a parenthesis between the weekends when you can finally live.
Then the storm hit, and it became even clearer that the impression wasn’t mistaken. If one sure datum emerges from the chaos of these days, it’s precisely the manifestation of the tragic forgetfulness that has infected recent years, eroding the foundations–and, thus, the balance sheets–of companies and even nations. We saw that the money was there, but the “I” was missing, that markets enlarged, but the use of reason shrank more and more (just look at the abstractness of the models proposed by certain editorialists to force reality to fit their explanations), that systems so perfect as to make “the human factor” superfluous simply don’t hold up. Sooner or later, they collapse.
So, now that reality is taking revenge and the prospect of a poorer world, unfortunately, isn’t unrealistic at all, it becomes even more urgent to focus on the subject of work. Is it true that one of the reasons for the crisis is the loss of this idea of work as a healthy relationship with oneself and reality? Does this have something to do with the famous “financialization” that pressured all too many people to pursue futures, hedge funds, and stock options instead of rolling up their sleeves and dedicating themselves to the “real economy”? If so, how? Given that it’s not a matter of demonizing the financial world, money, or much less the work of those who move it, is it possible that the crisis can afford us an opportunity to regain our consciousness of, and rediscover the value of work?
We’ve put this question to two people who know something about work, to put it mildly. One is Giulio Sapelli, Professor of Economic History at the University of Milan, one of the greatest experts in Italy and abroad on the world of the business firm. The other is Bernhard Scholz, President of the Companionship of Works Association (COWA), a network of 34,000 companies (not-for–profits and for-profits), which dedicated its November 16th annual assembly to the subject of work (with a talk by Fr. Julián Carrón, the leader of CL). The ensuing dialogue centered on the crisis, on work, and on the crisis of work.

How are these factors interwoven?
Sapelli: The crisis arose for certain reasons that are intrinsic to globalization, but certainly, in the past twenty years, there’s been a colossal transfer of wealth from profits to interest earnings; from capital that’s invested to what produces capital. The profits of firms have shot to the stars, while workers’ salaries have tanked. But, above all, there’s been the silence about work, as an object of study as well–not one serious book has been published on the subject. Once, work was a metaphysics. There was an ontology, an anthropology founded on work. In recent years, this has disappeared.

Why is that, do you think?
Sapelli: In this nihilistic vortex, to give meaning to work is to give meaning to the subject. This is why nobody talks about it anymore. Instead, we need to return to studying and respecting it. When a family feels ashamed to have their son employed as a factory worker or manual laborer, it means we’re really badly off. 
Scholz: It’s true. The disdain for manual labor is a grave symptom. Work is no longer considered a value in and of itself, but only something that serves to achieve success and income as soon as possible, with the consequences that work either is endured as a means to an end, or becomes a drug. Think of young people. In those looking for work today, you see a constant pursuit of stimuli, as if work were reduced to a carrier of continual “emotivity.” They don’t realize that only in long-term continuity, dedication, and construction can man grow and mature. We need to return to experiencing work as a process of knowing, even when it’s repetitive. Nobody can tell me that a homemaker who washes dishes thousands of times doesn’t mature humanly, if she does it with an ideal criterion. We often try to avoid toil, but toil is the condition for growth.
Sapelli: I often tell my students this. When I started work at the Olivetti Office of Studies, I was 19 years old, and for the first six months I worked in the factory, starting my shift at 6:15 in the morning. But so did all the college graduates. Well, these six months were among the most interesting of my life. I understood that before knowledge, there’s experience. Or better, that experience and knowledge are linked. It isn’t necessarily true that just because someone does repetitive work, he’s not free in his consciousness.

Yes, okay, but what is the source of this freedom?
Scholz: The question is about this subject who works, about who I am. Christianity has always said that work is the expression of the relationship with the Mystery. I believe that this key is decisive.
Sapelli: I came late to understanding this idea of the sanctification of work. I understood the centrality of the subject, but I didn’t see how revolutionary it was compared to today’s conception. You accept reality, but you don’t let it condition you, precisely because there’s this obligation toward someone greater than you. It’s true. This is a fundamental aspect to be recovered. But I’m not so pessimistic. I see a great deal of suffering in business firms, almost a sense of anguish, as if the meaning of what one does were lost. A paradigm of this is the fact that one works just for money, as we’ve seen in the degeneration of stock options. However, suffering can also make you aware. Also, I have faith in what is coming forth in young people. I see that, once again, there’s the desire to do things not just for oneself. I see young managers who leave finance and want to return to work in production. These are people looking for a better quality of life. Maybe these are weak signs, but they make you understand that something is changing.
Scholz: In this sense, the current crisis is also an opportunity, an occasion for reflecting on the meaning of work itself, and a moment in which we can once again grasp the fact that if you do something with a minimum of ideal, you build. I agree, it’s a good moment, a suffering that leads to conversion, to looking beyond.

That leads people to search, to yearn…
Scholz: And, above all, in young people, there is a search. Maybe they’re a bit weak, but they’re looking, listening. They’re no longer dug in behind the trenches of ideological barriers. They’re more defenseless, more vulnerable, but they’re searching for meaning for their lives. 
Sapelli: Perhaps more than a time of crisis, it’s a time of expectant awaiting. However, you have to be able to respond, otherwise, there’s the risk that the old ideologies will return: work tied to social regeneration, with openness to violence or to government domination.

However, there are some counter-examples. I’m thinking of the Companionship of Works…
Sapelli: Yes, but along with examples, a metaphysics is needed, a strong system of thought. A great cultural investment is demanded–reading, studying. The day I see around a lot of novels like those of Doninelli, dedicated to the world of workers, or theses, or books on the subject, then I’ll be able to say that we’ve begun again to do a metaphysics. After all, what has the COWA been doing in these years? It’s been resisting. It’s been resisting this wave of nihilism. The very fact of its existence already has cultural impact. But what’s going on now is an anthropological battle, and we need to assemble our equipment.
Scholz: I’d call it a toilsome reconstruction of new forms of life. You do this without huge support from the great thinkers on high. You just get yourself out there, roll up your sleeves, and build, piece by piece, authentically following your desire and responding to the reality before you, embracing the meaning of everything in everything. I believe it’s the only road available, the road Fr. Giussani taught us, the one that enables you to return to work understood not as a series of theories to apply but as a continual discovery. Work itself, if lived well, provokes you to discover your talents, calls you to responsibility, to stay in front of reality for what it is. This brings out the fullness of yourself: engaging yourself, risking, making sacrifices, you understand that it’s more beneficial for you, that it’s more advantageous.

What’s needed to “work well,” to recover this perception of its usefulness for yourself?
Sapelli: A long old-fashioned season of education is needed, founded on example, good practices, good books, planning, and processing. It’s a road of testimony.
Scholz: True. And, in fact, where an entrepreneur or a collaborator demonstrates real interest for the person, even the most off-track young worker can begin to find interest in himself again, gusto.

It always comes back to this: it’s a problem of education, then.
Sapelli: Yes. What’s involved here is the construction of the person, which–as Jung said, and it’s no coincidence that he was a Christian–is a challenge that accompanies you throughout your life, be you the doorman or the owner. In work, you see it. You build your person with work, always. However, there has to be self-examination, reflection–which is nothing more than the good old examination of conscience, really. If you begin to say this in businesses, or better, to put it into practice, then you rebuild. It’s a “micro” work; you don’t carry it out by founding political parties or labor union organizations. However, it is mission territory.
Scholz: Education is decisive. Also, you have to keep in mind a factor that I’m discovering more and more, when I focus on work: time. In our frenzied lifestyles, we don’t embrace time as a friend anymore, something that helps us grow. If it’s true that our life is given for building something, and that our entire life is a discovery, you need time in order to discover. Instead, the most widespread idea today is: “I want it all, and right away.” So you get worn down; you don’t grow. You don’t express yourself; you express a mechanism. In order to rediscover the gusto for work, you also need to regain possession of time for yourself as the favorable condition, not as the limitation to break down.

It’s another maltreated factor in recent years. Deep down, this is true usury, more so than that of interest rates: it’s a ruthless “commoditization” of time, as if it were ours to sell. It has to do with yield, with the rush to make money on the stock market, with the avarice of certain managers...
Scholz: We’re often impatient with ourselves because it doesn’t cross our minds that God Himself thinks of us, giving us time. Time is the condition for letting the “I” emerge. Without time, I can’t emerge. A robot doesn’t need time; a person does. But even this is something you discover, over time. And here we return to the heart of Christianity, which, paradoxically, gives you everything right away, but as a promise that already today fills reality. Now you have the certainty that you will have everything, because you’re already in relationship with Everything.

In his talk at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, speaking about work, the Pope started out from exactly this point, from the historical influence of the monks and, above all, their goal of “Quaerere Deum,” seeking a relationship with Everything. What was your reaction?
Sapelli: For me, the arrival of Benedict XVI was very satisfying. He combines intelligence with pastoral practice. I see that he comes from far away. I see his teachers. And what he says finds me much in agreement. He is restoring the centrality of the need for a strong system of thought that unites. Without such a strong system of thought, you can’t build.
Scholz: I was very struck by what the Pope said in Paris, the idea that work was born not with the self at the center , but with the search for God as the focus, which is identical with the search for the truth of yourself. It’s true; it’s a metaphysical question. The purpose of work is man. Work has meaning in the realization of yourself, and at no moment in life can this realization do without the relationship with the Mystery. Otherwise, it doesn’t exist. Work becomes an exploitation of man if it lacks something that goes beyond.

What gives you gusto in your work?
Sapelli: My history. My education. And the example of my father, who was very religious, even though he was left-wing. He united work and freedom. I’m a son of factory workers. My father was fired in retaliation for his labor union involvement and was unemployed for two years. I had to leave high school, the Technical Institute, and go work for a period, before resuming my studies. But in my family there was such dignity that I don’t remember those years as hard. They were beautiful. For me, work is a condition of life.
Scholz: My father was decisive for me, too. He was a judge. He transmitted to me a great sense of responsibility, but also great appreciation for what is called recreation, the time for re-creating yourself. Another important thing was working summers at my uncle’s farm when I was a high school student, and working summers as an electrician when I was in college. Important moments. They taught me the value of manual labor, which is fundamental: it makes you perceive that man is one, body and spirit, and that he expresses himself as a whole. Then, the encounter with Fr. Giussani filled all this with a meaning that brought everything to fulfillment.
Sapelli: I also had the great fortune in life of meeting people who cared about me. They made me understand that you can work with great differences of hierarchy and knowledge, but well. Every morning when I get up, I say my prayers and express my gratitude.

Which, perhaps, is the true antidote for nihilism…
Sapelli: Gratitude? In a certain sense, yes. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Scholz: In fact, it gives you an impressive energy, even in hard times.