12 months ago I became a PhD in Creative Writing - the end of a journey that started 11 years prior when I was, or had become, a bit of a mess.

At 29, I was unemployed, broke, and living alone, still recovering from a mental health crisis I had endured between 2009 and 2012. With no prospects, no job, no ideas and, honestly, absolutely no clue of what was going on in the world around me, I applied for a place on the University of Bolton’s Creative Writing programme on a bit of a whim. Well, not exactly a whim but not exactly not a whim, either, acting on a suggestion from my stepdad who must have remembered my weak poetry and cringingly bad rap lyrics of my teenage years. But I was also a kid who’d like to read, and who once impressed a school teacher, aged nine or ten I’d say, with a story about a missing key. Or something like that. I vaguely remember it as a Goonies style escapade into some subterranean lair. But for whatever reason, and despite the fun I had in my imaginary world, I never stuck with writing as a kid.

Yet I’ve always felt myself to have an artistic mind, though I hesitate to put it like that for fear of sounding pretentious. I’ve never considered myself an artist until very recently. More on that later.

I say artistic mind, however, with no delusions of grandeur. Having an artistic mind does not automatically make an artist. All I mean is that I have always felt compelled to stop and linger on something, being hyper-fixated on imagery, and the emotions and feelings it conjures up. I was the kid in the classroom constantly staring out the window. I used to love sitting in the back of the car on a long journey, soaking up each and every bit of scenery. I was, as so many of my teachers would say, a dreamer.

But as a dreamer I never did anything practical with my artistic moments. It was always just in my head, inside of me. Why this is, I don’t really no. Maybe I was always anxious, as I am now, of being laughed at or derided. Or maybe I was just more interested in other things, like football and video games and hanging out with mates.

Whatever the reason, the sense of being an artist, specifically a writer, is one that has only really taken hold as I have gotten older. At the start it was just a romantic notion, one that compelled me, in my late teens, to choose Performing Arts for college, two years that remain two of the best of my life. But still, I got on that course with no set objective, just a vague desire to be creative in some way. And though it was apparent I was no actor, I enjoyed the creativity, and I enjoyed getting high whilst creating. Unfortunately, that enjoyment of getting high took precedence. Though I don’t regret it entirely. I had a very good time, after all.

However, I do regret the dominance that weed held over me in my 20s. I say this with mild embarrassment, as who gets dependent on weed? It is very pathetic and weak-minded in many ways. Though in hindsight, and with my behaviour around anything dopamine related - from alcohol to chocolate (don’t laugh!) - I see that I have an addictive personality. Nothing is done conservatively. I don’t, or can’t, just have a little taste, I have to gorge or, at best, have a ritual indulgence. In this sense, I am quite lucky that weed was my drug of choice. If I was the kind of person who sought the buzz of something heavier I could well have been in a lot of trouble. But as everyone knows, weed is the safest of drugs (though that doesn’t mean it is, in fact, safe), which significantly minimised any risk.

I also recognise, in hindsight, that my dependence on weed to do anything was a form of self-medication, or a coping mechanism. As I settled into a life of employment the depression that had always threatened to consume me really began to take hold. There are multiple factors in this, which I don’t want to go into here. But aside from the self-loathing and general melancholia that has always afflicted me was a genuine hatred, and resentment, for time wasted in employment. Struggling with the demands of it all, I went through a flurry of different jobs. Call centre jobs, warehouse jobs, retail jobs, I despised all of them. But as painful as these experiences were, without them I would never, I don’t think, have developed the understanding, and hatred, of capitalist society that I have today.

My hatred of capitalism pre-dates my understanding of Karl Marx. At that point in my life I hadn’t read a word of Marx. I knew who he was, and I knew of Communism, but only in the anti-Russian, totalitarian sense in which we are taught through films - a teaching that has produced the totally illiterate critiques against Marx’s ideas, and Communism itself, that now dominate mainstream political discourse . I don’t recall ever coming across Marx in school, either, or anything, for that matter, that would question Capitalist society and its class-based structuring.

Again, I don’t know why I struggle with employment the way I do, or why I never had the strength to “get on with it” that so many employed people have. It is worth distinguishing here, for clarity, the difference between employment and work. Simply because many people won’t consider my aversion to employment as actually being a systemic one, but a simple case of being workshy and lazy. Even spoilt, or self-entitled, perhaps. I know in myself that I am none of those things. To be employed, especially in the region of bullshit job, is to be entirely subjugated. To be employed is to be put under a tyrannical order. I believe this whole-heartedly. The structural apparatus of employment imprisons the worker in an arena where every bodily function, every basic urge, is regimented and denied for a set period of time. It is a sick joke, then, to hold any notion of being free in such a life. Even outside the workplace, off the job, the tyranny dictates what we do and when. We have to be in bed at a certain time in order to function most effectively. Our hobbies and interests are essentially neutralised by a loss of time, as any activity outside of work has to be planned around work. For those workers with young families, there is simply no time at all. Entire weekends (entire being an exaggerative description, consisting of a period even less than a measly 48 hours) are simply obliterated.

On the flip side, for those who do have fun activities, activities that provide fun for all the family, the fun has to be squeezed into that measly timeframe. Everything feels slightly rushed, as a consequence. There is an underlying, mostly supressed angst to it all. And before you know it, it is Monday again.

For the childless worker, weekends are less manic. But this is where the synergy between work and alcohol is most acute (though it does of course exist within family routines). Curiously, this synergy was established in industrial times. Being the centre of the Industrial Revolution, it is no surprise that this link between weekend drinking after a working week was developed in Manchester, with the Saturday “half-holiday” being introduced to allow workers to blow-off steam, so to speak, at a time that would least impact on worker productivity. Before this, workers only had Sunday as a day of respite (though there was the practice of “Saint Monday” - a tradition of absenteeism among workers that affected factory outputs), with the other six days consisting of 12-hour shifts. Naturally, perhaps, workers used this day not just to go to church and rest. Instead, many of them would get absolutely wasted, before turning up at work on the Monday morning either still pissed or suffering an almighty hangover. This Saturday “half-holiday” then, which was fervently opposed by factory owners dismayed at the thought of having their machinery “laying idle,” had to be justified as “leisure time” - a recognition that the human worker needed to have some fun, in any capacity, in order to keep up productivity. One day of rest, when nothing was open and with nothing to do, was not enough.

In The Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels wrote in great detail about the excessive drinking habits of workers, which, following the establishment of the Saturday “half-holiday,” allowed space for intense drinking to be squeezed into a single timeframe. This would typically be from the end of the Saturday shift at 1 or 2pm, until either pubs closed or, in many a tragic case, the exhaustion of an entire weeks wage.

Yet not all of the riff-raff who made up the working-class would obliterate their suffering, and memories of the working week, in a marathon drinking session. Once the Saturday “half-holiday” had been set firmly in place, workers found time to indulge in other activities. Cricket and Football clubs, for example, were set-up, starting out originally in local communities - hence the local, somewhat tribal, affiliation with your local club. The most famous of all pioneering exponents of this community-based activity were Sheffield-based, where the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield F.C. (not to be confused with Sheffield Wednesday or Sheffield United), was formed in 1857.

Being a much healthier outlet than binge drinking, the establishment of football clubs were supported by the owning class, with some factory owners providing workers with equipment and paying for travel to away games (football matches would kick-off at 3pm, an hour or two after work, establishing a tradition of 3pm Saturday kick-offs that persists to this day). As football increasingly became the chosen sporting activity of the working-class, mass participation led to the formation of the Football League in 1888 (in case you ever get this in a pub quiz, the first league champions were Preston North End).

Other activities/traditions that were formed out of the Saturday “half-holiday” were the frequenting of parks and other places of recreation, and shopping (the latter coinciding with the fact that Saturday was also pay-day). All of these activities, like the football, still form the basis of working life and routine.

To my mind, such a regimented, routine based society, dependent on the obligation of having a job in which to “earn” money to then spend is not a free society. That is not to say we are enslaved peoples with no freedom at all. There are some freedoms, including, of course, the freedom to be unemployed. Yet this freedom, above all others, has constantly been challenged by politicians and the owning class (as well as by many workers themselves, who have developed a disdain for anyone seen as “sponging” off the State and, therefore, off others). The most common tactic used to beat the unemployed is that of shaming, though specific policies have in recent times been drawn up and implemented to reverse the notion of a “welfare State” that, according to many in power and among the owning class (and, again, among workers themselves), sees unemployment benefits, or “handouts,” as some kind of reward for refusing to work (as if all unemployed people refuse to work or, indeed, that a paltry sum of money given to cover life’s essentials could even be considered a “reward”).

This culture of shaming the unemployed has developed over the last forty years or so, in the UK at least, and has led to the design of a benefits system that makes it practically impossible for a single person of working age to survive without a job, despite, of course, there being not enough jobs offering full-time and/or adequately paid work. This reality has led to another (alleged) crisis, that of youth unemployment, where young people, seeing the cause and effect of long-term employment and insufficient wages had on older generations as, rightly, one that has been detrimental to both physical and mental health and general happiness, have decided against putting themselves through such a banal, meaningless life. However, this does provide its own detriments - isolation, ill health (the diet of the unemployed is worse than that of the minimum wage worker), and a general poor standard of living/life experience. Though such a stance may be a rationale one in some respect, it doesn’t improve living standards or even guarantee more freedom. There is, in fact, arguably less freedom among the unemployed, unless they are making a living from crime or other hidden means, than there is with those employed full-time.

Other freedoms include the freedom to change jobs and to “better oneself” in the form of obtaining a career in a chosen profession. This is where talk of freedom and employment balance can get more complex, as someone working in a chosen profession has, indeed, chosen that profession, in many cases out of a love or passion for their work. Then there are essential professions, such as healthcare and waste removal, as just two of many examples. Yet it is these workers who are exploited the most. Being invaluable, healthcare workers at base level face the most difficult working conditions for the most inadequate pay, rather than being looked after and provided for as would be the case in any society that does actually value hard, meaningful work.

In this area of chosen professions I would also argue that the routine based structure of society erodes any legitimate claim of freedom. The how and when work is undertaken remains strictly regimented, with the same control had over bodily functions and rest breaks.

Ultimately, the worker with the most freedom is the self-employed - a status desired by many a worker. To find a trade, or specialised skill, and to be one’s own boss is the dream, I imagine, for most people. Being self-employed gives a worker some control over their own working hours and general time management. But even here, financial demands and cost of living add pressure to find enough work to keep the worker comfortable, and their business afloat. This means that self-employment can be precarious depending on the profession and the level of need for it, something that a self-employed Creative Writing tutor knows all-too-well.

And that brings me back to the point - the artist can rarely make a living from their art alone. Art is not really considered work in the sense of how we understand work i.e. as employment or trade. Art and writing is more in line with leisurely activity or, even worse, hobby. This means it is not a feasible or advisable endeavour income-wise. Parents, understandably, go crazy when their deluded children talk about forming a band or becoming a great and famous actor. And so they should. It’s crazy talk, more often than not.

Though should it be?

The opinion of art as not being classified as work can only be held by people who either have no artistic inclinations, which I highly doubt considering human beings are extremely creative, or see either no value or practicality in a society that puts that innate human creativity first.

In essence, there is a needs must attitude towards the arts and the level of importance placed on it (it’s the economy, stupid). Who has the time to be sitting around producing art all day when we have a global economic system to upkeep and an 8-9 billion population to provide food and energy for? And think about all the manpower needed to manage operations. The number of people needed to be made available to provide support for other people (people hired to act as advisors to people acting as consumers). Such a system is so indescribably vast as to comprehend the level of human sacrifice needed to keep it running for profit. Again for emphasis - for profit.

As disagreeable as it may be to many, I can’t help but wonder if AI has the potential to solve/end the human/employee/alienated abomination of post-industrial, capitalist societies. But as with anything capitalism-related, the best place to start would be from a Marxist perspective - would Marx be for or against AI as a means of eradicating certain forms of employment (the bullshit job) in order to create more time for humans to partake in meaningful work/activity.

For clarity, I am neither an AI advocate or AI opponent, except, funnily enough, for artistic purposes. When it comes to art I am as opposed to AI, or generative AI as anyone else. But as a tool to alleviate the drudgery of the employed worker’s day, or as a tool to aid research in sectors such as healthcare? I’m currently leaning, in the absence of any arguments otherwise (I’m open to credible arguments) towards it. And I think Marx would too, under certain conditions.

The major concern we have with AI in capitalist society is the very fact that AI is being used to serve the interest of the capitalist billionaires who rule over capitalist society. As a result, and compounded by mindset of billionaire tech bro psychopaths like Elon Musk, the chances of AI being used to alleviate employee suffering in favour of a more manageable form of what is called “work/life” balance are quite slim. It is why all the talk of Universal Basic Income, a logical, and Socialistic, proposal if ever there was one, is met with scepticism. From the both the political Centre and Right then question is who will pay for it?, as if a general redistribution of wealth wouldn’t pay for it. While the question from the Left is will anyone want to pay for it?, which is the more logical one.

UBI, if ever implemented, will under the current system, be a meagre one attached with certain conditions (number of hours worked, provisions for what the money can be spent on, etc). It will, just as with the introduction of the Saturday “half-holiday” back in the 1840s, be given through begrudgingly. Yet we know that redistribution of wealth is possible, that at the very least, government programmes are available on demand. We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic, albeit with a load of fuss and scaremongering about the economic impact.

But my attraction to AI is its potential use in a Marxist sense, in a post-capitalist society. In other words, the benefits of AI can only be realised if and when the private ownership model of capitalism is replaced by a more sustainable alternative, where wealth has been fairly redistributed from the accounts of those who profit from worker exploitation back into society. This, to state the obvious is pure anathema to the ownership class and the politicians who wield power in capitalist society. It is, realistically speaking, not going to happen any time soon. Looked at from this perspective, why am I even bothering to write so many words on it?

Because anything that doesn’t hinder our ability to create with pressure exerted by a tyrannical source is welcome. Because we are not living in a free society. Because we are subjugated when employed, and subjugation is a bad thing. Because the world we have made for ourselves is unjust and unnatural. And because an end to all this is actually possible.

Hegelian alienation - Imposter Syndrome - Scorsese on redefining yourself as an artist

“There’s an urge