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What’s the first word coming to mind when you hear conscientious? Though it might be objector (an interesting topic for another day), in this post I’m focusing on conscientious workers and why, as a concept, it’s highly revealing of the rapid societal transformation we’re experiencing.

Inspiration for this post came from a remarkable interview the French-Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis gave in 1991. Castoriadis is not very well known in the Anglophone world – he wrote in French – but his societal analyses are remarkably prescient. If you haven’t done so, take a look at my post on the collapse of criteria – based on this very interview I’ll be examining today, too.

In a nutshell, Castoriadis makes an intriguing argument regarding conscientious workers as a dying breed. According to him, to work conscientiously is meaningless in capitalism from a systemic point of view. Capitalism relies on conscientious workers, but does not produce them; they are remnants of older societies.

It goes without saying that the repercussions are monumental – and dystopian.

Conscientious Workers: a Given that Is not Nurtured

Before we begin, let’s bring the primary material – Castoriadis’s interview – to the foreground. It’s in Greek and there are no subtitles but I will offer a transcript of the relevant excerpt below

Click to display the embedded YouTube video

The relevant portion of the video is from 15:27 to 16:33). Here is the transcript, slightly edited for readability:

Another condition of capitalism was that prior societies had created anthropological types, types of humans, with mental motivations, values, etc., that allowed the system to function. Such a type is, for instance, the conscientious worker who, when constructing or repairing your car, thinks “if I don’t do this properly, they might get killed while driving”. The same goes for the judge, the teacher, the public employee, and even the businessman.

Such types are remnants, they are inherited from prior societies. They are not created by the modern system. And they are rapidly disappearing. That’s the explanation, in my opinion, for the increasing corruption and decadence of the modern society.

This is a remarkable view indeed. But what’s interesting is perhaps understanding the role of capitalism in promoting the idea that conscientious workers are somehow needed, while it does not nurture them.

Why Should the Capitalist System Care about Conscientious Workers?

As Castoriadis explains elsewhere in the video, capitalism is value-agnostic: There is no morality in capitalism, and only money-making, quantifiable and objective, is what counts. There are of course laws, but their presence doesn’t depend on morality.

And as Castoriadis aptly asks, why shouldn’t a judge want to be bribed by the various parties in a court case, and then rule in favor of the highest bidder? What is the role of this not being allowed?

The issue is subtle but highly relevant: The capitalist system doesn’t recognize the validity of moral convictions yet still needs to pretend it does. The reason? Because the people who participate in a capitalist economy still individually possess moral convictions.

In other words, no politician, lawmaker, or decision-maker would ever explicitly say “From a systemic capitalist perspective, we see no reason why judges shouldn’t be bribed. But we can’t allow it because people will get upset and revolt. So we need to have certain laws and regulations, to keep the whole thing from imploding”.

A Future Past without Conscience

The wordplay of the subheading of course refers to the present – a “future past” – but with a slight twist (blame my academic interest in time). A “future past” is different from simply “present” because it entails the idea of historical reflection.

In other words, the key concept here is the idea that society not only willfully abandons conscience but does so fully aware of its temporal displacement.

In simpler, blunt words still: We’re in the era of “I don’t give a fuck, even if you did; boomer!”

The dystopian repercussions of this should be evident: We are fast marching toward a society where conscience, morality, art, ambiguity, the in-between are considered (and in a sense indeed are) relics of times past. The future-past us begin to embrace the capitalist systemic dynamics and chase after monetary gain with complete disregard for any sense of morality.

Who knows, maybe in 50 years it will be possible to do overtly what is often already possible, covertly: pay your way out of a court conviction.