Last night I read Ministry of Truth's I just got a job as a paid Progressive Activist, and while I am happy for MoT that he feels like he's making a difference, and that he got out of a situation that frustrated him, I have also worked for Fund-model organizations (not thank G-d, in the canvass), and I see a lot of the fair critiques that greg bloom raised way back in 2006 on MyDD. There are reasonable answers to those critiques, but I'm not here to talk about the Fund and its brethren specifically.
Instead, I want to talk a little bit about something that's often derided in the netroots, although frequently by assumption: the idea that working for a business or "going corporate" is somehow bad. I don't think it necessarily is.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I don't practice what I preach. I'm currently working as the Executive Director of a very small non-profit in Kentucky. Because my position is funded through the Corporation for National and Community Service, I'm subject to the Hatch Act, and thus this diary should not be read as political activism of any sort.
A lot of people in the comments on MoT's diary made comments like "finding a job is great. Finding a job you can stand is better." MoT himself said he couldn't work for "that corporatism I abhor." I'm not disparaging those sentiments. If you honestly think that a corporate environment is one where you simply do not fit, then you should not work there. Having met some Kossacks at Netroots Nation this past summer, I would agree that some of you definitely don't fit in the suit-and-tie world (I won't name the guy who tried to pass me a joint, although I know he doesn't care). And that's fine.
But some of us can fit into a corporate world, and if we can get jobs there (granted, a big if these days), maybe we should take them. There are three reasons we should do this if we can: first, the trickle-down effects; second, our influence on corporate social responsibility; and finally, okay, I just sat here for ten minutes trying to think of a third reason. Maybe there's only two...we'll see as the diary goes on.
First, there's the trickle-down effects of selling out. Don't worry - I'm not buying into voodoo economics, because I'm not talking about economic growth in aggregate. Instead, I'm talking about a specific choice. Corporations will pay their corporate salaries to someone (for a given value of "someone" - obviously right now, "somebody" is frequently "nobody"). Those salaries are frequently high enough to create disposable income (at least in management). Wouldn't it be better if someone like you got that salary and that disposable income, rather than someone who would spend it on Glenn Beck books or memberships in the Family Research Council? And MoT's job depends on him getting random people to write him checks (although it sounds like he's going to try and improve his odds by tweeting where he'll be soliciting); since his success depends on a) finding people who support his causes who b) have disposable income, the more liberals there are who have jobs that afford them disposable income, the more likely he (and by extension, progressive organizations in general) are to succeed.
Thus, by selling out, we get the funds in our hands to enable us to keep body and soul together and also to give generously to the causes we support. Yes, it may cause some cognitive dissonance if we assume that people are driven by "rational self-interest," but I prefer to think of my rational self-interest as encompassing a broader scope (as a white-collar worker, it's in my interest that blue-collar workers be able to afford the things that make my work necessary; as a person of relative wealth, it's in my interest to prevent class warfare via redistributive taxation - see Sarah Lawsky's discussion of declining marginal utility at Prawfsblawg). All of that is to say that my work isn't the only place to do good. The National Lawyer's Guild explicitly tells law students that if they can get a big firm job and they can enjoy that work, they should do it; it's "doing good by doing well."
However, there's more to it than just making sure we can fund the causes we believe in - we can actually import our values into corporate America. I spent one of my summers in law school in-house at a corporation, and I was very pleased to work with an extremely progressive general counsel's office. During my summer, we moved the company into a Creative Commons licensing scheme for its intellectual property, discussed some potential liability for the corporation from a substantial justice standpoint, and generally worked to be a good corporate citizen - because we believed it was part of our obligation as good citizens and good attorneys.
Someone I know works in a heavily regulated industry (it's not banks, and no I won't tell you what it is). Their job is to take products that are not yet ready for commercialization, and prepare them for commercialization, including regulatory compliance. They have pulled the plug on billion-dollar projects before, because they believe in the regulatory scheme, despite pressure from their supervisors to maintain the project and not inform the regulator of the issues that prompt them to pull the plug. That's the power of one liberal in a position to make a difference on the inside.
I'm not suggesting that we all go out and get jobs as soulless corporate drones; far from it. But maybe it's helpful not to pooh-pooh jobs we don't want. Someone in MoT's diary did a very responsible thing (if I may be permitted to pass judgment): they found a job they didn't want, for whatever reason, and instead of saying, "This is corporate, who'd want this?" they posted it as a comment. You can argue over whether that was the best venue, but the fact remains that the right response to someone getting a job is a simple congratulations. I'm not sure that it's useful to talk about how awful the corporate world is, even when the diary-writer himself implicitly gives permission.
The fact is that corporate America, for all that it has serious problems with its goals and its methods, has also accomplished a lot of good things, including building our (still-evolving) cellular infrastructure, the transcontinental railroad system, and...okay, it's really hard for me to come up with a list of corporate accomplishments that doesn't end with "setting the whole world on fire and laughing while it burned then selling buckets of water." Probably the best thing that can be said about corporate America is that it can pay better (no guarantee that it does).
But if you have the opportunity to get a corporate job, and you think you could like that work, you should take it. This isn't an opportunity that many of us get (I, for one, would take a corporate job in a heartbeat - Sallie Mae is calling my name). If it comes along for you, you should seriously consider it. If, on the other hand, you can't get or don't want a corporate job, maybe you shouldn't dismiss those who do. But all work has dignity, and all work deserves honor.
I'd like to finish with some grand flourish, but I don't really have one. The sum total of this diary seems to boil down to "don't be a hater to people who probably aren't reading your comment anyway," which seems kind of a waste of time, but there you have it.