Labor Day

"The Industrial Workers is organized not to conciliate but to fight the capitalist class. The capitalists own the tools they do not use, and the workers use the tools they do not own." — Eugene Debs

Eugene Debs, the socialist cum trade unionist cum troublesome man about town wasn't wrong about the split between labor and tools that had been opening throughout the second half of the 19th century. Is a computer the main tool of your productivity? Do you provide your own? I think my laptop would shut down faster than Grover Cleveland could break a strike if I plugged in my own keyboard.

Some workers, of course, been provided with tools they did not own for almost as long as there have been tools. If you were chucked into the Colosseum you could hardly be expected to provide your own lion for the show. Skilled work was different. Skilled laborers generally provided their own tools until the middle of the 19th century. A carpenter's self-made toolbox was as much a calling card as the novelty PCB business cards designed by hackers today.

One of the optical mice on my desk is around 15 years old. I had the same model on a different desk at a different job in 2010. I can't even go buy a better one at high markup from the company store. Sometimes it's hard to know if progress in the labor field is really a vector or just a magnitude.

Computing is one of those industries where it really is possible for a skilled tradesperson to furnish their own tools. My friend Vic died from leukemia in 2013 and I inherited his collection of books on computing. I think he was a sucker for any book with "working programmer" in the title, no matter how niche the topic. "Clause and Effect – Prolog Programming for the Working Programmer" is a real book.

I don't think I've ever been a working programmer in the sense that the program itself was the work product. I've been a researcher and an investigator and a program manager and the programs written along the way were usually a concrete demonstration of some insight or another. My only real minor labor rebellion is that I just won't use APIs that require some kind of developer token. I use ChatGPT from time to time and I give Apple money every month for access to their Music service. I won't use either programmatically. It's a shame, because I really would like to use a music service programmatically, and share open source software that you could run too. It's the main reason I haven't released the little program I wrote to create some listening stations for Vic's funeral.

I still have one of those stations in my house, running more or less continuously since that time on a first-generation Apple iPad from 2010. I look at it almost every day but I hadn't really thought about the code until I realized that the only remaining copy of the code was sitting right in front of me on a device that Apple stopped supporting 13 years ago. It's a web app hosted locally on the device with Kiosk Pro, really no more than nine playlists masquerading as software. The software is easy to share. The playlists are easy to share. It's hard to share a working example without distributing the music (basically thoughtcrime just to discuss), use a fragile web API with some kind of developer token, or license the songs from the musicians or through an agency. Licensing the songs directly is probably the option most connected to the spirit of this holiday, and not by coincidence also the most expensive. Perhaps I'll do that for Paper Tiger and treat you to the blog's namesake anthem and the playlists for Vic as well.

In the meantime, here's "[station 9] ravers and serious students" as an Apple Music playlist:

As we toil at the nadir of our wage slavery (an expression stolen from a placard at the defunct cafe Stella's in Ithaca) until Labor Day next and wonder what jobs the AI will keep us from doing and which we'll be glad to retire, I hope we're left with the kind of labor Kahlil Gibran captured in The Prophet as "love made visible".

poetrydb.org has a tokenless API that would allow me to retrieve the source poem were it in their database. Fortunately, the poem has entered the public domain. I got this copy from poets.org. I doubt they'll pester you for a login.

By the way, I must have missed the original announcement of Debian linux (I was a Slackware user at the time). I used to think it was a hardcore socialist distribution named for Eugene Debs.

On Work, (Kahlil Gibran 1883-1931)

Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.
     And he answered, saying:
     You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
     For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

     When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
     Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

     Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
     But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
     And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
     And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

     But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

     You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
     And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
     And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
     And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
     And all work is empty save when there is love;
     And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
    
     And what is it to work with love?
     It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
     It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
     It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
     It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
     And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

     Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
     And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
     But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
     And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

     Work is love made visible.
     And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
     For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
     And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
     And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.