I’ve been closely following various forms of industrial (etc.) journalism/forums/reviews/real-life discussions for over 10 years. During that time, I’ve heard various opinions about just every damned subject you can think of. But there’s always one word which crops up, which really makes me want to stab myself in the proverbial eye – “un/professional.”

Now before I get to this, I should mention that there’s a whole field of studies about changes in workplace environments from the shift of the 1940s Taylorist model to the 1970s and beyond post-Fordist model. This involves various spatial re-arrangements, a rapid increase in communication, higher knowledge requirements of workers, “friendlier” relations between employers and employees, psychotheraputics (industrial organization), and a plethora of words designed to politely terrorize and interpolate employees. One of these words is “professional,” and there’s a whole discourse surrounding its use and possible interpretations.

You find the word “unprofessional” a lot when it comes to the industrial scene. There seems to be an absurdly high bar set in the industrial scene for professionalism of operations of records labels, promoters, club nights, etc. The moment someone fucks up, word of it will spread through the internet at a viral pace. So whether rightly or wrongly, if a promoter is dubbed as “unprofessional” word of it will spread at rapid pace, and they’ll be put on a “soft verbal black list” (generally-not-recommended-to-work-with). Now don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate complaints issued (ex. someone didn’t get paid). But many of these complaints seem to demand for everyone to act like they’re in the “professional entertainment industry.”

…now… whether the “professional entertainment industry” is a good model to emulate, is another question in-itself. However, there’s one key difference between the industrial (etc.) scene and the entertainment industry — the latter makes money while the former bleeds money. In order to be “professional,” you should probably be turning a profit. So it’s really a bit baffling that anyone bothers to go through the professionalist-act. Industrial (etc.) scene promoters, bands, and record labels are all bleeding money. In fact, there’s a good case to be made for “teh scene” getting a federal bailout. Where would the army surplus industry, the alcohol industry, CD-printer, late night dining establishments, M-audio, and the good folks of Access Music (producing the synthesizer that has pretty much structured the EBM sound) be without industrial enthusiasts?

This is simply what happens when your scene owns no infrastructure, there’s no internal circulation of capital. So the industrial (etc.) scene can play-professional all it wants, while actual professionals make money off of it.