The development of online communication and the culture of memes contributed to a kind of cataloging of phrases and codes that circulated through oral tradition and popular culture and functioned as forms of recognition of common everyday experiences. These experiences certainly include those with "masters". It is about those, to use the pandemic jargon, essential workers/entrepreneurs, which include plumbers, tilers, electricians, servicemen of air conditioners and various other devices, and contractors of smaller or slightly larger construction works. All of them have the common name master, and the proverbial sentence that is attributed to him, and today lives in memes, is the one he utters immediately after arriving at your home and seeing the problematic situation: 'Who did this to you?
In addition to that, the frequent first lines in the dramatic meeting with the master, some other experiences close to everyone circulate on social networks in the form of memes, and among them, those that narratively precede the very arrival of the master are particularly represented. We have all probably witnessed those situations in which the father tries to fix something in the house or apartment, but he does not do well and risks further damage, both to the broken device and to his own health, and the mother shyly suggests to him: let it go, we will call the repairman . The father's acceptance of the suggestion is determined to a crucial extent by the degree of patriarchal pride that guides his actions. Men who belong to the generation of so-called millennials, and probably younger ones as well, will remember that discomfort and fear when the iron law of patrilineal transmission of knowledge assigned them the unwanted role of apprentice. Each of my father's instructions or orders, depending on which pedagogical school of thought he belonged to, when repairing a certain appliance or household infrastructure, was marked by apprehension: would I choose the right tool he was looking for? And how much of my manhood will die with the wrong choice?
Specific patriarchal layers are not the only feature of the somewhat mythical social role of the craftsman. The simple fact that the craftsman charges for his work dictates that this role be considered from an economic and class perspective. The masters definitely belong to that class that we traditionally call the petty bourgeoisie. Considering the Marxist analyzes of the historical role of that class, especially in the interwar period and the rise of fascism, the petty bourgeoisie became more of a discrediting label than a social and analytical category. Which, as always, is quite a shame. Especially in this case, because it is a category that includes a rather complex and heterogeneous social group, prone to different ideological rationalizations of their own position. Just the initial hesitancy to label craftsmen workers or entrepreneurs suggests a somewhat more cautious approach. In addition to the fact that they are often self-employed who do not hire additional workers, and thus escape the standard class categorization, historically, as Marx himself emphasized, they often varied in their political leanings towards labor and bourgeois parties. Admittedly, they were more inclined to the latter, but not enough to establish the laws of social physics.
Mythic status background
But let's leave the "methodological" disclaimers and return to our master. Its economic and social role is decisively determined by several things. Unlike many other professions and industries, construction and related professions have not been affected by automation and deskilling to such an extent. Therefore, workers and their skills are still necessary when it comes to, for example, the introduction of electricity and water or the installation of various devices. And so is their repair. In such a context, it is generally not worthwhile for larger companies to keep numerous craftsmen employed and they are treated as hired subcontractors on projects. Also, repair and maintenance jobs are not really "designed" for larger business systems and it is a niche dominated by self-employed or business owners with a few employees. A large number of them are, of course, employed in communal services and public infrastructure companies, but that is a completely different story.
Under such conditions, the craftsman "enjoys" the advantages of autonomous and free work, which puts him in a completely different position from the classical hired workers and brings him closer to the world of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, he does a fair amount of manual work, and he does it in overalls and work suits, which today, in relatively speaking post-industrial societies with lower levels of at least visible, manual work, gives him the aura of a real worker, that who has acquired everything with his own hands and as such is immune to the accusations that usually accompany the murky affairs of the upper class. In this meandering between different class statuses, both real and perceived, it is necessary to highlight a kind of technocratic dimension. Masters have skills on which the flow of everyday life in every form literally depends. They function as custodians of private and social infrastructure, highly specialized workers without whom society, at least as designed, cannot function. Especially in the context of the increasingly pronounced demographic dominance of those frightened apprentices from the beginning of the story and still very strong gender barriers.
These class-economic roles directly affect their socio-moral status. Almost all masters, even excellent ones, are accompanied by the status of unreliability. You never know when he will actually come, how much work he will do that day, how long it will take in total and what the price will be in the end. Regardless of the degree of veracity of those stories, they do not stem from the master's character traits (although, of course, they can also play a role due to the specific one-on-one business relationship and staying in your apartment) but from the aforementioned nature of their autonomous work. They can decide for themselves how much and when they will work and how they will distribute the work. In that calculation, they will factor in costs, earnings, reputation, their own preferences, the availability of competition and crucially, the skill that makes them irreplaceable. That's why it's not surprising, especially in big cities, that we often come across cries on social networks looking for a reliable and good handyman, and it's also not surprising that platforms advertising themselves as "Uber for handymen" have appeared. In smaller towns and areas where market anonymity does not play a role when hiring craftsmen, some special rules apply. You simply have to be good with masters if you want them to be at your disposal at a crucial moment. And those moments, especially in tourist places in the season, can, in the long-term case of a broken boiler or air conditioner, bring considerable financial damage to their class neighbors from the rentier sector - the renters.
All these economic-ideological-everyday intrigues make masters a bizarre underclass in contemporary capitalism. It is clear why this role was "assigned" to them considering the business organization and profit interests of larger companies, but they still function relatively close to pre-modern artisans and their social status far surpasses imagined economic-meritocratic criteria. Pre-politically, they often vacillate between worker pride and entrepreneurial image, their historical-political inclinations are often determined by family-mediated "muscle memory", and the predominantly male membership contributes to the further normalization of the figure of the male hand as the guardian of private and public infrastructure, the basis of a serious life. The masters are therefore both our cultural treasure and a specific subclass of the petty bourgeoisie and often "authentic" evidence of supposed ideological spontaneity and normality. And another niche of the living world that the left regularly bypasses in its images of the world.
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