By Chidima Anekwe ’24
Editor-in-Chief
A spectre is haunting Spotify…
The woman, the myth, the legend, Mitsuki Miyawaki (more commonly known as Mitski) has recently blessed us all with her sixth studio album, Laurel Hell. The lead single, “Working for the Knife,” marks Mitski’s grand return from her two-year hiatus, a period in which, seemingly, she had become sociopolitically radicalized. “Working for the Knife” can be read as a Marxist critique of the capitalist hellscape (Laurel or otherwise) in which the working class is forced to produce labor.
Mitski wrote “Working for the Knife” back in 2019, and just a few weeks before doing so, she had revealed she would be leaving the music industry indefinitely. In a tweet announcing her final performance, Mitski stated that “[i]t’s time to be a human again. And have a place to live.” These dreams were quickly put on hold when her record label, Dead Oceans, reminded the artist that she was contractually obligated to release another album. Laurel Hell, one of the most anticipated albums of the year, was the mere consequence of an artist being unable to get out of a work contract.
In his time, Karl Marx emphasized two key aspects of the working class experience: alienation and exploitation, both of which Mitski gives voice to through the song. His theory of alienation describes the involuntary estrangement (Entfremdung) of human beings from their human nature as a direct result of the socioeconomically stratified class society in which we live. When human nature, what Marx refers to as Gattungswesen (species-essence), is actualized, an individual is free to fulfill their internal desires and engage in activities that promote their psychological well-being. Within the capitalist mode of production, however, the worker loses the right to perceive themselves an autonomous, self-realized being. They are no longer the dictator of their own actions.
In Marx’s theory of exploitation, he holds that profit under capitalism is merely the unpaid labor of the working class. Exploitation occurs when the value produced by the worker outweighs the value paid to the worker by the capitalist in the form of wages. Because the worker does not own the means of production, they have no choice but to sell their labor power to capitalists as a means of survival, who then appropriate the value of their labor. As such, the worker never truly produces labor voluntarily.
The first verse begins with Mitski desperately yearning for creative fulfillment. She begins, “I cry at the start of every movie / I guess ‘cause I wish I was making things, too.” This lyric describes what Marx refers to as Entfremdung, as Mitski is alienated from her innate desire to create. This alienation is then qualified as the direct result of her role as a worker under capitalism, which she seemingly equates to “the knife” (“But I’m working for the knife”). Through the lens of Marx’s exploitation theory, the knife alludes to the illusion of choice for the worker. As the working class is forced to produce labor to survive, Mitski does not truly work voluntarily, but instead for the knife, as if held to her throat.
The second verse moves into a development of Mitski’s creative aspirations in storytelling (“I used to think I would tell stories.”) Capitalist society has further estranged Mitski from this innately human desire for its supposed lack of profitability. If her stories are unable to produce value from her labor power, they cannot be appropriated by any capitalist and thus, become unauthorized (“But nobody cared for the stories I had about / No good guys”). Even what may appear to be a personal act of creative indulgence becomes classified as involuntary labor when it is the means of making a living. If art is created with the intention of being sold to support oneself, it can no longer truly qualify as a form of Gattungswesen actualization.
The third verse comes with commentary on the working day. The capitalist must try to maximize the length of the working day, increasing the rate of exploitation (the ratio of surplus labor time to necessary labor time), as the the time in which the worker produces labor is the time in which the capitalist reaps the benefits of their labor power. Thus, Mitski states that “[she starts] the day high and it ends so low / ‘Cause I’m working for the knife.”
The fourth verse expresses the feeling of perpetuity to this involuntary, characteristically monotonous labor. The worker is sentenced to a near lifetime of work under capitalism: “I used to think I’d be done by twenty / Now at twenty-nine, the road ahead appears the same.” As the worker must dedicate their lives to the production of labor, they become further alienated from their humanity. Individuals are required not only to work but to become workers. This becomes clear with Mitski’s new shift from “working for the knife” to “living for the knife” in the verse’s final line. Capitalist society leaves little division between work and life; they become one and the same: to work to live is to live to work.
The final verse ends the song on a defeatist note. Mitski reflects on regrets in career path, seemingly offering commentary on the concept of the illusion of choice (“I always thought the choice was mine”). She then moves into admitting to her own denial over her hostage situation in coerced labor under capitalism (her false consciousness) before finally acknowledging that she is not only “living for the knife” but dying for it, too: “I start the day lying and end with the truth / That I’m dying for the knife.” The very act which she must do to survive is fated to bring about her own demise in the end. A cruel paradox central to capitalist exploitation.
Mitski could’ve written the Communist Manifesto, but Marx couldn’t have written Working for the Knife.