chapotraphouse

Most things are intelligible to most people, given the time and effort. Even notoriously brainy subjects like physics or math.

The range of intelligence among humans is not as large as those in power would like you to believe, because just like the chess community, it helps the ruling class legitimize a hierarchy.

Capitalist division of labor increases the intensity of this phenomenon. Specialization of labor increases with technological advance. The more specialized the laborer, the more dependent they become on a web of other specialists, and dependent more broadly on a particular technique of production.

Yet, as technology advances, lines of work “become antiquated before they can ossify.”[^1] The means of subsistence for the worker, ie their special expertise and education, is constantly being undermined by the incessant advancement of technology as capitalists chase after additional profits (relative surplus value).

On the one hand, specialization requires significant investment on the part of the worker; they identify with it as an essential aspect of their self. On the other hand, specialization becomes synonymous with precarity: the more specialized one’s expertise, the less easily it can be adapted to new techniques of production.

The result is that workers strongly identify with their skill sets, and find it in their interest to make their expertise as scarce and inaccessible as possible, or at least perceived as such.

The same thing happened with the guild system during feudal times, with the rise of the bourgeoisie which led to reactions by the guilds to artificially restrict knowledge of their trades (consequently restricting production of trade goods) except through official mentorship programs. Modern universities have their origin in the guild system. “Scholastic” guilds worked to advance knowledge as such, analogously to the trade guilds which refined knowledge of their respective trades.

For myself, I’ve been happier to drop this desire to identify with a hobby or career. I’m just a person who has certain skill sets like anyone else. I’m more in touch with my humanity now than I was when I was in school desperately trying to earn the respect to be called a [area of study]ist.

[^1]: The Communist Manifesto