Merrill Lynch, the Marxists?

I missed the 10:25 pm train, so I was stranded in South Station until the midnight train to Providence. Bummer. Good thing I had my work with me. I sat down at one of the many small tables facing the giant train schedule that hung from the high ceiling.

Every few weeks, South Station -- the whole thing -- adopts a new advertising campaign. A couple months ago, ads for Windows 7 overwhelmed the station. In the past few weeks, Merrill Lynch, the financial consulting firm has taken over. (And by Merrill Lynch, I mean Bank of America, which has recently absorbed the company.)

The ads are really peculiar. They feature men and women (with their heads cut out of the picture) in an office space holding signs that read: "Help 2 retire _________." In the blank space are a word or two -- maybe written by the worker holding the signs -- like "hesitation," "guesswork," "indecision," "distraction," "the rat race," and "the 6 am train."

It would not have been out of place had Merrill Lynch thrown up some signs that said, "Help 2 retire 'alienation,'" or, "Help 2 retire 'the bourgeoisie.'" The company is portraying indecision, distraction, and hesitation as predicaments exclusive to the capitalist worker. The campaign taps into an ubiquitous sentiment that work -- and capitalism in general -- is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. This is ironic coming from Merrill Lynch, the brokerage firm whose name has come to be synonymous with corporate greed.

There is an ambiguity here, though. Some of the signs could be referring to retiring from hesitation and indecision in the process of thinking about retirement, whereas others are referring to retirement from the commute to work every morning. Even if the messages were intended by Merrill Lynch to be distinct, the juxtaposition of images makes it so that the ads appeal to the idea that work is the root of most people's problems.

What does Merrill Lynch's campaign imply for democratic capitalism as a set of institutions meant to bring about general prosperity? If work within these institutions breeds psychological and physical discord, what is the point?

But this is probably looking at the issue the wrong way. Maybe we should assume that people under any set of institutions generally dislike working and would rather not be working. Marx was right: people typically don't like laboring for money. Marx idealized the act of working at one's "life-activity," though. Work "can be pretty stressful," even for those who take (disturbing) delight in their vocation, like the cheerful communist farmers.

It is most likely that, by incentivizing work, institutions of capitalism make being productive as attractive and fun as possible. For many people, work still isn't much fun, even with capitalistic institutions firmly in place. We can only imagine what it's like to work in the absence of institutions like private property. Probably doubleplusungood.