NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - CRITIQUE OF WORK 322

IMPACT: OUR WORK SOCIETY MAKES A MOCKERY OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

THE OPPRESSION OF THE WORKPLACE MAKES ALL TALK OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY A MOCKERY

Bob Black, the abolition of work, 1992, FringeWare Review, 01:25 Bob Black, PO Box 2159, Albany, NY 12220; http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/ // acs

Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.

THE ORDINARY AMERICAN WORKPLACE IS MORE OPPRESSIVE THAN MOST DICTATORSHIPS, AND HAS MORE IN COMMON WITH THE PRISON THAN ANYWHERE ELSE

Bob Black, the abolition of work, 1992, FringeWare Review, 01:25 Bob Black, PO Box 2159, Albany, NY 12220; http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/ // acs

And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques.

THE OPPRESSIVE WORK SYSTEM IS FACTORY FASCISM AND OFFICE OLIGARCHY, AND DRAINS ALL AUTONOMY OUT OF THE PEOPLE

Bob Black, the abolition of work, 1992, FringeWare Review, 01:25 Bob Black, PO Box 2159, Albany, NY 12220; http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/ // acs

The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are "free" is lying or stupid. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid, and monotonous. work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home in the end, are habituated to hierarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the families they start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than one, and into politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain the vitality from the people at work, they'll likely submit to hierarchy and expertise in everything. They're used to it.