Ludic Productivity in Vekllei

Part of the bulletin series of articles

Summary

• The Vekllei economy does not use money in everyday life, but this is not the only unusual thing about it.
• Vekllei people engage with work and employment primarily as a kind of play – a self-justifying social activity done to narrativise actions or amuse themselves.
• This ‘playful work,’ also called a ludic economy, has fundamental differences from work environments overseas.
• Understanding its specifics helps illustrate the motivations and characteristics of the Vekllei worker, and why their society continues to function in a social economy.

Work in Vekllei – in fact, most factors of life in Vekllei – is characterised by play. Play is a distinguishing characteristic of social creatures and it is all around us, even if we might not recognise it as such. It is not idealism or altruism; it is intuitive to all of us, and like other basic social motivations does not need to be taught or conceptualised. We play for entertainment, gratification and fun. Vekllei people work for entertainment, gratification and fun.

Yet bricks are still moved; the rubbish is collected; teachers show up in classrooms and clerks are at their desks. They produce forms of value for their country; physical labour, services, and yes, money-value. In this article we’ll look at ludic productivity in Vekllei, its features, and how it informs the character of Vekllei society.

Homo Ludens #

Play is a process of structuring freedom, or more specifically, free time. It is both spontaneous and organised, natural and structured. It is done for its own sake, yet it is also closely linked to the great achievements of human society – language, law, science, the arts.

Many foundations of human society, taken as immutable and preexisting in modern times, have their origins in kinds of play. Johan Huizinga (1935) argues that play is older than culture itself, occurring throughout the animal kingdom with no functional purpose – it is self-justifying, spontaneous, and establishes a space seperate from functionalism and utility. It may serve a useful purpose, but usefulness is not itself the reason for play. It is a driving force for human culture, which in turn has established the foundational – and very real – features of civilised society. Contests, duels, competition, symbolism, all inform culture and arise from play.

In Vekllei, they do not use money in everyday life. This society is known as the commons, or a social economy. Because a social economy cannot support wage labour as we think of it, productivity and work have to be structured and measured in different ways. In Vekllei, people commit to work for social reasons, many of which resemble what we might call play in the literal sense.

Example

Play arises naturally in Vekllei because the mechanisms of its social economy limit the kind of industrialisation that strips culture of playfulness. For example, films made in Vekllei are almost all low-budget, small-scale affairs. It is a scene dominated by amateurs with a camera, who have to work strenuously to meet the production values of even small-time Hollywood features.

Vekllei filmmakers cannot pay actors or rent sets, because they have no money. In any ambition, no matter how amateur, they leverage social relationships and hard work to achieve what they want. Because of these circumstances they sometimes have to put more effort in than foreigners to achieve their goals – and demonstrate that play can be hard work.

Vekllei people sometimes lament their provincial, aspirational culture, derisively calling it pretentious (‘arthouse’) or backwards (‘shoddy’). They have a lot in common with Americans in their good-natured optimism. But these economic limitations also prevent the industrialisation of cinema, and so in place of industry is the spontaneity and self-asserting nature of play. It is a good example of how economic structure can impart cultural traits, and vice-versa. It is not just that their culture encourages play; play is in fact an response to their economic reality.

This kind of democracy of culture applies to all kinds of achievements in Vekllei life – from athletes to novelists. It encourages the proliferation of community newspapers, magazines and sporting clubs. These limitations, arising from an economic inability to industrialise culture, characterises culture itself. It is more common than not to meet Vekllei people with professions outside of their formal occupation, working in hobby clubs, associations and individual creative work. In function they are no different to employment – they are structured, social and equally unpaid. Yet Vekllei people distinguish between them nonetheless.

As a result, Vekllei people are not just passive observers of sports and media but active participants in it. The line between hobbyists and professionals is blurred, and contributes to a staggering per-capita cultural output. This does not have much bearing on the quality of what they create, but a tremendous effect on the character of their society. Far from children stuck in an eternal, inconsequential, coddled play-state, Vekllei people are well-rounded, sophisticated and tuned in.

Living Through Play #

This produces naturally what Johan Huizinga¹ calls a play community, in the sense that there is a common form of ludic productivity. Like other forms of play, it has its own rituals – and in Vekllei, amusingly, these rituals imitate industrial productivity.

It should be no surprise that work in Vekllei looks much like work overseas. This is for the same reasons that Vekllei people use honourifics and insist on courtesy – they are people, not anarchists. To abolish the dress code, tea break and work-desk is to misunderstand ludic productivity – it functions in a liminal position between the fantasy and real, and depends on both in the structured fashion play often does.

• On one hand, ludic productivity is participating in the same fantasy as a child playing doctor or house – they wear these uniforms and perform these roles in imitation of the office overseas.
• On the other, Vekllei workers are adults and have adult expectations about professionalism, competence and productivity in the workplace

Both of these concepts feed into play. In industrial productivity, professionalism is an expectation – a burden. In Vekllei, it is foremost a social behaviour – nonetheless expected, but part of the play-fantasy. There are many kinds of work that do not directly participate in this play-fantasy, especially where they meet responsibilities that require procedures or technical decision-making, but they are nonetheless insulated in it. The procedure is the details, but the role of work – the ludic element of productivity – is as a ritual.

Example

Commercial airline pilots perform a technical, well-regulated role. Nonetheless, the specifics of their work and precision of their labour are insulated in the same ludic rituals encouraged by material benefit and the complex social rewards of Vekllei society. To be a pilot is a glamorous profession, and inspires respect. As such, its ludic elements are straightforward – the cap, pin, respect, and the achievement and responsibility of flying an aircraft all indicate the playful aspects of a technical role. Without a wage, the fundamental aspects of work are social or physical.

Play is not antagonistic to responsibility, technical proficiency, or productive output. In fact, all those things can contribute to its status as play. Part of the problem is the word itself, which we associate with children or at least childishness. It implies a kind of naivety – perhaps the adult-sounding ’ludic’ is more convincing. Nonetheless, the actual function of self-motivating activity is just as effective in technical roles as it is in social ones. And at its core, that is all play really is – a self-motivating action that narrativises a task or makes it more amusing.

In this sense, a ludic economy is no more unserious than any other cultural phenomenon. There is no functional reason a politician should wear a suit, yet they all do. Those that don’t are engaging with the same culture – making an anti-colonial, or an anti-establishment point. These are social factors, a kind of play culture, mostly seperate from the wage incentive of the individual.

Play Takes Over #

Read more: Economic Productivity in Vekllei

Like all industrial societies, Vekllei industry is preoccupied with efficiency and productivity. Vekllei is in fact a highly productive society, because it has efficient automatic systems and talented, motivated workers. Yet there is also considerable separation between the two.

Rationalism is a powerful thing, and it is necessary to design beautiful systems that can raise the standard of living fairly. But it is also antithetical to the social factors underpinning Vekllei workplaces. In this sense, industrial (automatic)² systems and human ones are antagonised, as they operate on competing economic logic. And there is economic logic in the ludic productivity, because it benefits the social behaviours – the underlying motivation – of effective work in their society. This is outlined in the bulletin linked above, but also demonstrated by the antagonised relationship between the automatic and human machinery of a workplace. The kinds of business logic that are effective in extracting value from workers overseas do not work in Vekllei because their workers are not coerced by money or law.³ Economic rationalism can be effective in automatic systems, however, and so is used in those contexts.

The machine, now evolving towards its final form as an independent, decision-making automaton, does not engage in play and has no place in a ludic economy. They should be considered fundamentally seperate – man and machine, working side by side, under totally segregated economic logic. Machines are treated as workers are overseas, used in strictly efficient ways that provide direct and measurable improvements to production. They are not more important than human workers, but they do provide fundamentally different services otherwise unable to work at scale within a ludic economy.

Exploring this play economy, which makes up the lived experience of most Vekllei people, we can examine broad trends in their working environment and the ways it arranges their lives:

• Many Vekllei people, perhaps three-fifths, work several jobs. A large minority may work three or four jobs a week, because work is more interesting that way. This is typical of entry-level work or roles of intermediate expertise.
• Social relationships are much more important in the workplace. People generally like their colleagues – it is common enough to hop between several offices before settling into one that fits you well. This also resolves harmful relationships quickly, since exiting work is generally much easier.
• Competence is demonstrated, not implied. Although many specialists in Vekllei work in fields close to their area of study, many others may have diverse or well-rounded resumes. There is no guarantee someone from a good school will be a good worker, and so trust is generally built internally and over time.
• Volunteerism – a somewhat arbitrary distinction in their society mostly used to describe public service – is considered a legal occupation. As such, someone may “work” three days a week across professional jobs and on the fourth volunteer as a firefighter or military reservist. This is extremely commonplace, and odds are more likely than not that any given person has at least one volunteer gig.
• Productivity tends to be measured by task accomplishment rather than timeframes. Scheduling is much more complex, but also much more efficient for ordinary people. Vekllei workers have much more freedom to be able to arrange their scheduled commitments to their liking.
• They have greater exposure to different kinds of people. Since so many people there work multiple jobs, they are exposed to many more kinds of people. This has an important effect on civic cohesion in society, and helps foster tight-knit communities in local work.
• People generally still take great pride in difficult work, but their sense of identity is complex and better rounded.

Vekllei workers are generally less reliable, better rounded, more transient, more satisfied, and more likely to specialise as they get older. Their complex working environments, usually built as portfolios of different interests, also help the cohesion of society. Class is as much a cultural phenomenon as it is an economic one, and the ludic economy suppresses it by exposing people to many different careers simultaneously. Professional careers, clerical work and physical labour mix freely in their lives, obscuring class antagonism between them.

Real Voluntarism #

Although ludic productivity is less coerced by material interests, it would be misleading to characterise it as voluntary. First of all, it simply is not voluntary – all working-age people in Vekllei need some kind of occupation by law, an obligation known as contributory service.⁴ That obligation however is commonly theoretical rather than material, since what they call work is a feature of life and occurs naturally and spontaneously.

Material pressures are not the only mechanism with which to coerce people, and Vekllei is a country of strong social pressures.⁵ It is quite possible to be coerced into social obligations with no material reward or punishment. A variety of normal interactions can produce nonmaterial, though very real, coercive behaviour.

As such, it is not accurate to describe ludic productivity in Vekllei as voluntary without qualification, in the fashion of orthodox utopian anarchy. Vekllei people sometimes do things they would not otherwise want to do, and this includes labour for others. Rather than indicating a corruption of voluntarism, however, this actually indicates an abolition of work. Because it now exists primarily in social dimensions, it lacks the material benefit and consequence of labour as labour, and so does not really resemble “work” as we understand it at all. Instead, the Vekllei use of the term defaults to one of two meanings.

1. Work is energy spent on getting things done
2. Work is the play-fantasy of going into a workplace and performing roles (ludic productivity)

As a consequence, these begrudging social obligations demonstrate that the physical obligation of work is gone (except, notably, for that distant legal obligation). The fact that Vekllei people continue to go into the workplace for no pay and under no threat indicates that work as we think of it does not exist at all.

The distinction is important, because the physical and blunt mechanics of industrial relationships, previously insulated behind the social rituals of work, are now absent. The physical coercion (the need to earn and eat) is gone, except in that distant legal obligation – a thorny but important caveat.

The role of that legal obligation is not really as a carrot or a stick. Make no mistake – it can be prosecuted, and you can be physically coerced into labour as part of community service. But that sort of blunt coercion is rarely necessary. Instead, it primarily indicates a social norm, and deviation from which invites derision and prosecution.

This indicates the general state of Vekllei pragmatism, which is generally untethered from absolutes (voluntary, freedom, hierarchy, autonomy, coercion) and is concerned with the function of independence, pleasure and dignity. If the absolute of voluntary work prohibits in function the wellbeing of ludic productivity, it is sanded off as needed until it fits.

A New Society #

So this is Utopia,
Is it? Well —
I beg your pardon;
I thought it was Hell.

– Max Beerbohm

Commonwealth society has triumphs and failures like any other. It has strict benefits and strict limitations. Those benefits – of ludic productivity, of democratic society, of dignity and independence – are the products of a system that has to curtail wealth, reward and expertise. These are people, not anarchists. They move on complicated emotions, and make good and bad decisions.

The triumphs of the ludic economy are obscured by its nature. The form dictates the product, and ludic economies are social in form. They are more satisfied by work, and work better because of it. They are more satisfied because their work is usually varied, aligned with self-interest, satisfies their curiosity, is easier to perform and rewarded holistically. Because of this, they are fickle, transient and self-directed workers.

It seems that moneyless economics are functionally dependent on types of play. They are linked to each other, as features of a more fundamental restructuring of life. The premises of Vekllei’s new society – a ludic society, a moneyless society, a democratic society – are better understood through their aspirations than their dogma.

• Independence
• Pleasure
• Dignity

Each of these things contribute to the nature of play as an economic form, but also reflect it as the outcome of independent, happy and dignified people. Rather than distracting from productivity, they contribute to it as the natural instinct of educated, satisfied people with not much else to do. Not all people are equally good and not all are equally productive, but so what?

The real evidence is in their ways of living and the new society that facilitates it. Almost all the machines they use are designed by them, as are their cities, as are their clothes. They are produced mostly by robots, sometimes here, sometimes overseas. And on the days they aren’t designing cars or cutting fabric, they can become a footballer, filmmaker or soldier for a day.