On this occasion, I’d like to discuss the relationship between prisons and labor. There are many facets to this relationship, from the use of prisons to enforce work discipline, to prisons as sites of slave labor, to the role of police and corrections officers unions in pushing for increasingly coercive criminal justice policies.

Prisons and Work Discipline

Prisons have been used to enforce work discipline for centuries. In his book The Enterprise of Law, Bruce Benson explains how England transitioned from customary law to authoritarian law controlled by the state. He notes that prisons were first used in England primarily in order to control the poor and force them to work:

“Houses of correction” were first established under Elizabeth to punish and reform able-bodied poor who refused to work. A “widespread concern for the habits and behavior of the poor” is often cited as the reason for the poor laws regarding vagrancy and the establishment of facilities to “reform” the idle poor by confining them and forcing them to work at hard labor. But Chambliss reported that “there is little question but that these statutes were designed for one express purpose: to force laborers (whether personally free or unfree) to accept employment at a low wage in order to insure the landowner an adequate supply of labor at a price he could afford to pay.” Such laws clearly reflected the transfer function of government.

In this case, prisons were used as institutions of violent coercion meant to establish work discipline, enforce the work ethic, drive down wages, and thus transfer wealth from poor and working people to landowners.

The Slavery Connection

Slavery did not experience a clean and straightforward end in the United States. Rather than prohibiting slavery universally, the 13^th Amendment prohibited slavery “except as punishment for a crime.” In the South, this was followed by the passage of the Black Codes, which criminalized a litany of innocuous actions specifically for blacks.  So rather than abolishing slavery, the 13th Amendment simply changed its form.  This created forced labor that was arguably worse than chattel slavery. As Angela Davis explains in her book Are Prisons Obsolete?:

Slave owners may have been concerned for the survival of individual slaves, who, after all, represented significant investments. Convicts, on the other hand, were leased not as individuals, but as a group, and they could be worked literally to death without affecting the profitability of a convict crew.

This convict lease system was truly appalling, and allowed for the enslavement of former slaves under similarly brutal and racialized conditions to the ones they had supposedly been emancipated from. While prison labor is no longer as brutal as it was under the convict lease system, it still persists.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola, is literally a converted slave plantation where inmates are forced to toil in the fields. Companies like Walmart, AT&T, and Starbucks all profit from prison labor. So do war profiteers like BAE, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. The racism of slavery persists; according to the Sentencing Project, 60% of prisoners are people of color, with 1 in 3 black men experiencing imprisonment in their lifetime. America incarcerates on a mass scale, with more than 2.4 million people imprisoned. The abolitionist movement has some unfinished business here.

Prisoners have their rights violated repeatedly, and that’s true with respect to their labor as much as anything else. While most labor unions either ignore this or simply focus on how competition from prison labor drives down wages outside prisons, the Industrial Workers of the World seeks to organize in solidarity with striking prisoners.

Marginalization from the Labor Market

James Kilgore argues that the main labor problem entailed in imprisonment today is not slavery inside, but marginalization outside the prison. Kilgore points to a litany of ways marginalization from the labor market intersects with incarceration. First, he notes how it fuels incarceration, writing “The chief labor concerns about mass incarceration are linked to broader inequalities in the economy as a whole, particularly the lack of employment for poor youth of color and the proliferation of low wage jobs with no benefits.”

Kilgore then notes the numerous ways that those who have been incarcerated are marginalized from the labor market. He explains:

People with a felony conviction carry a stigma, a brand often accompanied by exclusion from the labor market. Michelle Alexander calls “felon” the new “N” word. Indeed in the job world, those of us with felony convictions face a number of unique barriers. The most well-known is “the box”-that question on employment applications which asks about criminal background. Eleven states and more than 40 cities and counties have outlawed the box on employment applications. Supporters of “ban the box” argue that questions about previous convictions amount to a form of racial discrimination since such a disproportionate number of those with felony convictions are African-American and Latino. Advancing these Ban the Box campaigns will have a far more important impact on incarcerated people as workers than pressing for higher wages for those under contract to big companies inside.

However, even without the box, the rights of the formerly incarcerated in the labor market remain heavily restricted. Many professions, trades and service occupations which require certification, bar or limit the accreditation of people with felony convictions. For example, a study by the Mayor of Chicago’s office found that of 98 Illinois state statutes regarding professional licensing, 57 contained restrictions for applicants with a criminal history, impacting over 65 professions and occupations. In some instances, even people applying for licenses to become barbers or cosmetologists face legal impediments.

So here we see criminalization producing a stigma that excludes people from employment in many careers, both due to the judgement of employers and the exclusionary nature of occupational licensing laws. The IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee has condemned these forms of exclusion.

Furthermore, Kilgore notes that “the very conditions of parole often create obstacles to employment. Many states require that an employer of a person on parole agree that the workplace premises can be searched at any time without prior warning-hardly an attractive proposition for any business.  In addition, tens of thousands of people on parole are subject to house arrest with electronic monitors.  All movement outside the house must be pre-approved by their parole agent. This makes changes in work schedule or jobs that involve travel an enormous challenge.” In It’s About Time: America’s Imprisonment Binge, criminologists James Austin and John Irwin note that these parole policies lock ex-convicts out of legitimate employment and thus make them more likely to reoffend, not less. 

Immigration Detention and Exploiting Migrant Workers

One of the largest segments of imprisonment in the United States today is immigration detention. Immigrants are locked up in detention centers without charges, trials, or often even access to counsel.

Undocumented immigrants outside of detention centers live in constant fear of being caught, imprisoned, and deported. This fear can easily be used by employers in order to intimidate, abuse, and exploit migrant workers.

A recent documentary from Frontline, Rape in the Fields, exposes how immigrant women are vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse on the job, largely because fear of deportation deters them from reporting such abuse.

In addition to making migrant workers vulnerable to violence, abuse, and exploitation, immigration restrictions trap third world workers in poverty. As Bryan Caplan puts it, “Most would-be immigrants are desperately poor, but could easily work their way out of poverty if they were here.” 

The effect of immigration restrictions is bad for immigrant workers and bad for consumers. Not only are workers trapped in poor countries where they can’t earn much, but their production is also restricted accordingly. As Caplan explains, “Immigration laws trap people in countries where workers produce far below their potential.”

So total production decreases dramatically because of these coercive laws that trap people in poverty and leave violators vulnerable to exploitation and violence.

Unions for the Prison State

While most of this post emphasizes how workers are harmed by incarceration, it’s noteworthy that particular workers benefit from and actively lobby for mass incarceration. Corrections guard unions and police unions are concentrated interest groups that benefit directly from criminalizing the public, expanding prison populations, and expanding the state’s violent powers. These groups engage in persistent rent seeking, lobbying for authoritarian policies. In a sense, imprisonment is a mechanism of plunder, by which these concentrated groups of workers benefit at the expense of most other workers. The prison state means enslavement, exploitation, marginalization, and structural poverty for workers around the globe, but for guards and police it means being given extraordinary power and extracting rents through the state.

I had of course labored before this day, but this experience sticks out because I was fortunate enough during my time on the mountain to wake up every day and enjoy my labor. I enjoyed the manual exercise, crafting trail, working lightly on the land and exploring the forest. These activities were required of the job, but they did not feel like work. I viewed these tasks favorably, I was disposed towards these activities – to labor with the rock and soil of Earth. The job felt different from anything I had done before, it fit with my belief system and attitude towards life. I was practicing conservation and further developing a sense of wildness.

During this service year I befriended a fellow corps member by the name of Nicholas Wooten. We would talk science and philosophy, argue politics, talk about how things could/should be and would sometimes just get wild and drunk. Most of the time, however, Nick and I talked philosophy (and still do). During one of our conversations, Nick shared with me a quote that is rather important to him – it is now rather important to me. It is from the work of Marcus Aurelius in his piece The Meditations:

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?- But it is necessary to take rest also.- It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labour?

How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility

There is much to say about this quote. Personally, it has helped me mold together an idea that I call inclined labor. I write about inclined labor often but I have never defined the concept. It is my wish to do so in this blog post.

To be inclined is to feel a willing to accomplish, or a drawing toward, a particular action belief or attitude. Labor is physical or mental exertion – but it is very different from work. Work is a series of tasks that must be completed to achieve a certain goal – be it to gain a wage or to see that something functions properly. Labor is categorically different. Individual labor happens on its own terms, willed by the desire to complete a task. Work must be done, it is an intended activity. Inclined labor, however, is the physical and mental exertion that human beings are drawn to.

Inclined labor, then, is directly tied to the opening of Marcus Aurelius’s passage:

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?

Inclined labor is the true work of a human being – and it can only be actualized in liberty.

Today we work plenty but struggle to find time and energy to award ourselves the opportunity to truly labor. Work for economical means is a relatively new activity of human beings. Every civilization has had to work – chores need to be carried out for society to function. For the vast majority of our 200,000 year history as a modern species, however, our societies were much more egalitarian. In our early history there was much more labor – individuals knew their interests and carried out their functions and roles within their communities. It was not until the rise of power structures in the age of the ancients that human labor was viewed as something to command and control. Such authority has only exacerbated under the rise and fall of nation-states. Work as we know it today has only been dominant across the whole of society since the advent of industrial capitalism. Work is no longer something that is shared cooperatively for the functioning of society – work now defines a controlled economic system.

But we are a vigilant species. Over the millenia, and ever persistent today, human beings have continued to labor. How could we not when labor is inclined?

Imagine an economic system crafted by liberated human beings. What are the possibilities of humanity? How would the products of self directed labor progress and build society? What can we craft together during our time in the sun? What will liberated labor gift to future generations as we progress for millenia to come? How wondrous our civilizations and progress will be!

Inclined labor, whether a physical or mental exercise, is the creative expression of our interests and ingenuity – it is what we are driven to do. Our labor deserves to be liberated for it is ours and solely ours. Inclined labor is the true calling of human beings.

Sometimes you come across an article that so perfectly encapsulates something you have been obsessing about that you have to dust off your blog and throw out a minor rant. Latina Lista published just such an article this week.  So here we go.

According to a study by the (in no way biased) Prudential, “Latinos’ love of family today could spell financial trouble for retirement years.”

We are trained to be in constant fear. Fear of losing our jobs. Fear of losing our homes. Fear of medical bills. Fear of  ending up some solitary, elderly person eating cat food in a hovel. The answer, as is jammed into our heads, is to get on board with the system and try to hoard as much as you can. Don’t let those family and friends dip into your cash. Security comes with obedience and accumulation. Security comes by giving what little money you have to the dipshits at Prudential.

So how does that work out for people?

For one thing, going along with the system is not going to save you. My parents did everything they were supposed to do. There was a small business and a chamber of commerce membership.  There was a house and retirement savings. But along came Office Depot to squeeze my father’s business out. Then medical bills from a massive stroke. And of course there was some middle class lifestyle debt. When the IRS came around looking to take our house, did going along with the fear system help? Nope. You know what did help? Friends who lent my parents money.

Contrary to what we are told, security is mostly an illusion. And what security we do have comes from relationships, not possessions.

But the system desperately needs us to buy this lie. If we stopped fearing, if we stopped thinking we are in it alone, then nothing could keep us doing what we are doing. Nearly everyone I know is quietly plotting their freedom. We hate our jobs so much that we have to escape for bathroom cries. We have insomnia and anxiety. We are constantly medicated and looking for bullshit distractions.

And those are just the people who have enough privilege to still have jobs and something to fear losing. The truly amazing thing about the system is that we are fodder no matter what. If you have a job, you spend most of your waking hours away from the people and things you love in order to make money for greedy bastards. That isn’t enough though. They also want you to hand over some of what little money you make to “secure your retirement”. By which they mean that they want to invest your money in things that will make them money and hurt you. How?

Let’s say you have a retirement account. You’ll have a selection of mutual funds to chose from. Some of them may even say that they are “socially conscious.” What that means, generally, is that they will avoid one or two problematic sectors (like arms dealing). Everything else – sweatshops, union-busters, private prisons – they are all on the table. In short, these Prudential people are working on getting Latinos to give less money to their family and instead invest in the private prison corporations that put them in immigration detention.

When some investment banker tells you to stop giving money to your people and start “investing in your future,” what they are really doing is using you and your fear to finance your own oppression. And if you can’t benefit them through your labor or contributions, then they’ll throw you in prison and make money off of you that way.

I’m not going to tell you that, if you walk away, everything is going to be o.k. The other lie we are told is that we will be rewarded for doing the right thing.  You probably won’t. In fact, doing the right thing often means suffering. Just ask all the political prisoners out there.

Do it anyway.

And try to make it easier for other people to do it too. Let your friends and family and community know that you have their backs when they want to take a risk. Let them know that, so long as you have a roof and some food, they won’t starve or have no place to sleep. Nothing will change unless we are willing to risk something. We can’t make things safe. But we can make it a little easier on each other if we do the exact opposite of what that article is trying to get us to do.

And maybe, just maybe, if we could help each other get over our fears and take care of each other a little bit better, enough people would walk away to make the whole thing coming crashing down.

“Work!” –Maynard G. Krebs, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, circa 1960

From the start, Americans have had a love-hate relationship with work. We tend to rhapsodize about labor, but, at least in our personal lives, we praise labor-saving devices and condemn “make-work” schemes. (Unfortunately, public policy is another matter.) Emerson and other pillars of American culture — whom for these purposes I will call the moralists — associated work with dignity and purpose. Historian Thaddeus Russell teaches us that when the slaves were freed from the Southern plantations, they were pounded with the gospel of work. “Slaves generally considered work to be only a means to wealth, but after emancipation, Americans told them that work — even thankless, nonremunerative work — was a virtue in itself,” Russell writes in A Renegade History of the United States. He reports that the Freedman’s Bureau admonished the former slaves, “You must be industrious and frugal. It is feared that some will act from the mistaken notion that Freedom means liberty to be idle. This class of persons, known to the law as vagrants, must at once correct this mistake.” Russell notes that “thousands of black men were rounded up for refusing to work.”

The message was that work is not just an honest and proper way to obtain the necessities of life without mooching off others. The activity in itself is a source of goodness, even saintliness, and should be engaged in unceasingly, taking time out only for eating sleeping, other bodily functions, and tending to one’s family duties. One didn’t work to live; one lived to work.

Whites had been subjected to the same harangue for ages: work was a reward in itself, apart from remuneration, because “idle hands are the devil’s playground.”

We must be clear that the message was not merely that work could be a source of satisfaction apart from the money. The message amounted to a vilification of leisure, indeed, of consumption. (Some conservatives seem to hold this view.)

In a good illustration of the “Bootleggers and Baptists” phenomenon, the moralists were joined in their labor evangelism by employers, who needed uncomplaining workers willing to spend long hours in unpleasant factories. People preferred leisure and looked for every opportunity to indulge in it. Hence, “Saint Monday,” which, as Russell notes, Benjamin Franklin sneered at because it “is as duly kept by our working people as Sunday; the only difference is that instead of employing their time cheaply in church, they are wasting it expensively in the alehouse.”

We get a different picture of labor from the economists. The classical economists and the Austrians (at least from Ludwig von Mises onward) stressed the unpleasantness — the “disutility” and even sad necessity — of labor. Adam Smith and other early economists equated work with “toil,” which is not a word with positive connotations. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith writes,

The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it and who wants to dispose of it, or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour, as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money, or those goods, indeed, save us this toil.

Frédéric Bastiat carried on this tradition by emphasizing that exchange arises out of a wish to be spared labor. One accepts the terms of an exchange only if obtaining the desired good in other ways would be more arduous.

For Bastiat and other early economists, exchange was the foundation of society. “Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges,” Destutt de Tracy wrote. It follows that the penchant for economizing effort  — the preference for leisure — is a beneficent feature of human nature. (Somewhere, the science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein has a character say that the wheelbarrow must have been invented by a lazy person.)

Further, Bastiat explained, technological advancement is valued precisely because it substitutes the free services of nature for human toil. In his uncompleted magnum opus, Economic Harmonies, he wrote,

It is characteristic of progress (and, indeed, this is what we mean by progress) to transform onerous utility into gratuitous utility; to decrease [exchange-]value without decreasing utility; and to enable all men, for fewer pains or at smaller cost, to obtain the same satisfactions.

By onerous utility, he meant utility bought with sweat and strain; by gratuitous utility, he meant utility provided by nature free of charge. When ingenuity is applied to the making of a good, “its production has in large measure been turned over to Nature. It is obtained for less expenditure of human effort; less service is performed as it passes from hand to hand.” Needless to say, this is a good thing. Of course, some of the freed-up time will be devoted to producing other goods that were unaffordable yesterday, but some will be devoted to consumption, or leisure. The proportion set aside for leisure will likely increase as living standards rise (assuming government interference doesn’t deny workers their rewards for higher productivity).

The goal of all men, in all their activities, is to reduce the amount of effort in relation to the end desired and, in order to accomplish this end, to incorporate in their labor a constantly increasing proportion of the forces of Nature.… [T]hey invent tools or machines, they enlist the chemical and mechanical forces of the elements, they divide their labors, and they unite their efforts. How to do more with less, is the eternal question asked in all times, in all places, in all situations, in all things.

(Bastiat elaborates on this in his remarkable chapter 8, “Private Property and Common Wealth,” which was the subject of my article “Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth.”)

Bastiat agreed with Adam Smith, who wrote, “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.” Hence the economists rejected the moralists’ view that production is an end in itself.

We see this same lack of enthusiasm for work in John Stuart Mill, an influential classical economist as well as philosopher. In 1849 Thomas Carlyle published an article lamenting that the end of slavery in Great Britain meant that white people couldn’t make sure that blacks worked enough (for whites). (“Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, December 1849.) Indeed, this is why Carlyle dubbed economics, which was premised on free labor, “the dismal science.”

Mill wrote an anonymous response (“The Negro Question”) in the following issue. He protested Carlyle’s suggestion that blacks were meant to serve white people. Then, as I wrote previously,

Mill … turned to “the gospel of work,” praised by Carlyle, “which, to my mind, justly deserves the name of a cant.” He attacked the idea that work is an end in itself, rather than merely a means. “While we talk only of work, and not of its object, we are far from the root of the matter; or, if it may be called the root, it is a root without flower or fruit.… In opposition to the ‘gospel of work,’ I would assert the gospel of leisure, and maintain that human beings cannot rise to the finer attributes of their nature compatibly with a life filled with labor … the exhausting, stiffening, stupefying toil of many kinds of agricultural and manufacturing laborers. To reduce very greatly the quantity of work required to carry on existence is as needful as to distribute it more equally; and the progress of science, and the increasing ascendency of justice and good sense, tend to this result.

In Mises and Murray Rothbard we find similar views: work is to be economized. Mises devoted an entire chapter in Socialism to refuting the state socialists’ claim that work is unpleasant only because of the market economy, and that it would be blissful if private property were abolished and the market were replaced with state central planning. Under any system, Mises wrote, labor may afford a small (and insignificant, he thought) measure of direct satisfaction, but that soon passes. Yet people must keep working to obtain its indirect satisfactions, the goods it enables them to buy.

Mises may overstate his case here, as did his mentor Carl Menger in the other direction (in 1871, mind you): “The occupations of by far the great majority of men afford enjoyment, are thus themselves true satisfactions of needs, and would be practiced, although perhaps in smaller measure or in a modified manner, even if men were not forced by lack of means to exert their powers.”

Mises mocked the state socialists by putting scare quotes around the words joy of labor, asking, “If work gives satisfaction per se why is the worker paid? Why does he not reward the employer for the pleasure which the employer gives him by allowing him to work?”

What people often take for the “joy of labor,” he said, was actually the satisfaction of finishing a task, the “pleasure in being free of work rather than pleasure in the work itself.” Mises quoted the medieval monks who appended to the manuscript copies they had just painstakingly produced, “Laus tibi sit Christe, quoniam liber explicit iste” (which he translated inexactly as“Praise the Lord because the work is completed”).

For Rothbard, leisure is a “desirable good,” a consumer good, which people will forgo only if at the margin the fruits of a unit of labor undertaken are preferred to the satisfaction that a unit of leisure would afford. Rothbard acknowledged that labor can be satisfying and wrote,

In cases where the labor itself provides positive satisfactions, however, these are intertwined with and cannot be separated from the prospect of obtaining the final product. Deprived of the final product, man will consider his labor senseless and useless, and the labor itself will no longer bring positive satisfactions. Those activities which are engaged in purely for their own sake are not labor but are pure play, consumers’ goods in themselves. Play, as a consumers’ good, is subject to the law of marginal utility as are all goods, and the time spent in play will be balanced against the utility to be derived from other obtainable goods. In the expenditure of any hour of labor, therefore, man weighs the disutility of the labor involved (including the leisure forgone plus any dissatisfaction stemming from the work itself) against the utility of the contribution he will make in that hour to the production of desired goods (including future goods and any pleasure in the work itself), i.e., with the value of his marginal product. [Emphasis added.]

Rothbard’s mentor, Mises, made a fundamental point about human action when he wrote, “Even if labor were a pure pleasure it would have to be used economically, since human life is limited in time, and human energy is not inexhaustible.”

That being the case, I will reserve further thoughts on work for another time. Meanwhile, Laus tibi sit Christe, quoniam liber explicit iste!

In the latest regurgitation of the “marginal productivity” argument Eric Raymond (“Fixing the fast food strike,” Armed and Dangerous, August 30), an iconic figure in the free and open-source software movement who writes a lot of sense on information freedom and network organization but little else, says “in order for you to pay a worker $15 per hour, that worker has to net you more than $15 an hour in revenue.” And “flipping burgers is not neurosurgery. The job procedures are simple and mechanical; adding a lot of value with a human touch is hard.” So what franchise owners can pay “is constrained by economics. The wages they can pay are effectively bounded above by the amount of revenue each employee can capture.”

This is both circular and backwards. According to John Bates Clark’s marginal productivity theory, the “marginal productivty” of a factor or input is what it contributes to the final price of the product. So the “marginal productivity” of a factor is simply what it can command. This means that the market price mechanism is secondary to the nature of the institutional structure of power that controls the production inputs. When an economic ruling class uses state power to enforce a monopoly on production inputs, their “marginal productivity” is nothing more than the rents they are able to extract, and pass on to the consumer, from enclosing access to those production inputs.

So to say that the return on factors is determined by marginal productivity, but marginal productivity depends on the return the owner of a factor is able to command, is circular.

At the same time, it’s backwards. Labor is different from other factors of production in one regard. Owners of land and capital will dispose of their full supply, guided only by one consideration: Revenue maximization. If labor were governed by the same law, workers would work as much as they were physically able to on a sustainable basis. But in fact there’s a backward-bending supply curve of labor because, unlike using land and capital, expending labor — at least after a certain point — is unpleasant. Labor, unlike a piece of land or a lump of coal, has to be persuaded to supply its own productive services — to crawl out of bed in the morning and go into a place it would rather not be.

Since the main source of equilibrium price for reproducible commodities is the cost of factor inputs, it’s more accurate to say that the productivity of labor in a free market would be the price required to overcome the disutility of labor.

The fact that workers toil under such conditions for so little money is not the effect of the free market pricing mechanism. It’s the result of the structure of power that controls the factors of production. Historically, as Franz Oppenheimer argued in The State, it is impossible to exploit labor so long as employers are forced to compete with the possibility of self-employment. Exploitation only becomes possible when unoccupied land is no longer freely available for independent production. And the land is nowhere near being fully occupied by natural means — i.e., actually using it. Instead, it’s enclosed by a privileged class of landlords, who control access to vacant and unimproved land. Other forms of productive property are likewise enclosed for rents by an economic ruling class, with the help of the state.

The purpose of the state, since its origin, has been to enforce such artificial scarcities and artificial property rights on behalf of the economic ruling class. The rents of the propertied classes result not from their contributions to production —  i.e., actually producing something — but from enclosing and controlling access to productive opportunities. The great share of income, under capitalism, comes not from production but from controlling the conditions under which others are allowed to produce.

The result is that, by artificially restricting independent access to the means of production and subsistence, the supply of wage labor is artificially inflated compared to the demand for it.

So in a truly free market, the main source of commodity value would be the requirement to pay labor enough to make it worth their while, in their own subjective perception, to engage in production.

Our goal as market anarchists is not to “force” anyone to pay labor more, but to tear down the enclosures that force workers to accept wage employment only on the terms offered by the economic ruling class.

$2.00 for the first copy. $1.00 for every additional copy.

The Anarchist press of the late 19th and early 20th century published more than just a series of newspapers, tracts, pamphlets and polemics. Besides analytical journals like Liberty and Mother Earth, and besides radical papers like The Alarm and The Blast, Anarchists and labor radicals also worked to build a broad culture of solidarity and resistance. Theoreticians, workers, story-tellers and dreamers also made cartoons, posters, poems, stories and labor songs. One of the most prolific of these authors was Jo. Labadie (1850-1933), who published radical labor pamphlets, tracts on Anarchist theory, and collections of his poetry and “labor songs” from his home print shop in Detroit, Michigan. Labadie’s songs and poems included Doggerel for the Underdog, “A Jaunt Along the River Rouge,” The Red Flag and Other Poems, and this standalone chapbook, “I Welcome Disorder,” a typical example of his radical poetry, which appeared in three editions in 1910, 1911, and 1933.

“I welcome disorder in the world of work!”

Jo. Labadie (1911)

Jo. Labadie was a working printer and a typographer, a leading labor organizer in Detroit, and the author of many tracts, letters, poems, and other writings on individualist Anarchism. Known in town as the “Gentle Anarchist,” Labadie worked as an organizer for the Knights of Labor, the Detroit Trades Council, Detroit Typographical Union 18, and the Michigan Federation of Labor. Labadie corresponded frequently and worked closely with Benjamin Tucker, the editor of Liberty, and developed a massive collection of writing, pamphlets, correspondence, and ephemera from his years in the labor movement and the Anarchist milieu. His collection, bequeathed to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, became the basis of the Labadie Collection, one of the largest and most important archives of radical literature in the united states.

Standardization

Firms crave predictability. The modern corporation applies Taylorist, reductionist and mechanistic methods to the production process. Where a craftsperson would produce every item uniquely, massive bureaucracies like Wal-Mart, Standard Oil, McDonalds and Monsanto needed every product to be identical. Firms seek to minimize risk, and the dual bedfellows of risk are uncertainty and variability.

“It is essential that most of the basic factors in the social environment of the corporation be stable enough to be predictable into the future—factors such as the value of the dollar, the fiscal and regulatory policies of the government, the law under which they do business. This stability is a prerequisite to a second need for corporate enterprise—the ability to plan and affect the future. […] Freedom of action—discretionary power—minimizes external interference with its decision making process. Potential sources of intrusion are owners and creditors, workers, consumers, and the government.” [1]

In their quest for hegemony, dominant companies have reaped great reward from standardization. Monsanto has standardized cotton quality and maturation time, and every MacDonald’s Big Mac is the same. [2] Rockefeller was known for his dependable Standard(-ized) brand kerosene, which were easily identified by his branded blue tin barrels:

“On January 10, 1870, five men, led by Rockefeller and Flagler, established the Standard Oil Company. At the time, kerosene of widely varying quality was sold. The name was chosen to indicate a ‘standard quality of product’ on which the consumer could depend.” (Italics added). [3]

Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the world, has managed to standardize more than merely the products it sells. Wal-Mart has ensured predictability by externalizing inventory-holding costs onto their small suppliers. Wal-Mart has even commoditized labor and made it divisible into smaller chunks. The company is deeply dependent upon state violence for profitability, and the consequences of Wal-Mart’s strategy for the United States economy are dire.

Supply Flows

Thorstein Veblen referred to the control of supply chains as “managing the interstices” of business. Wal-Mart’s first major boon was the use of information technology (even buying their own satellite) to manage supply flows.

There is a carrying cost to holding excess inventory, which Wal-Mart minimized and externalized onto their smaller suppliers – not contributing to global efficiency but actually extracting value in a zero-sum game.

“[…] [T]he most powerful element of the entire Wal-Mart system [is] control over their suppliers. Crucial to this control is something called ‘Retail-Link,’ which was implemented in 1991. This system allows suppliers to use  the internet to get daily updates on the quantity of their products selling at each Wal-Mart, to download purchase orders, and to check other aspects of their dealings with the firm. […] Wal-Mart’s ability to demand lower costs, tagged products, and, more recently, radio-frequency identification tagged products, and to place orders for specified size of shipments to minimize re-sorting costs in Wal-Mart distribution centers are all a result, in some large measure, of their monopsonistic power, power similar to that enjoyed by Standard Oil in their dealings with the suppliers of crude.” [4]

This is known as the “Wal-Mart Squeeze Cycle,” where it is awful to be a Wal-Mart supplier but also awful not to be one. It all began with lean production and “just-in-time” inventory management, which

“[…] gained its greatest early fame in manufacturing industries when Japanese automobile manufacturers, and later Boeing and Dell and other companies in the US, began to manufacture output in rapid-fire response to changes in  demand, thus avoiding the costs of holding inventories.

The perception was that such manufacturing would reduce overall costs to the economy because fewer goods would be held in idle status. When, however, this approach is employed in retail and with multiple suppliers, many of them of small scale, the saving is more likely to be to the purchasing firm, Wal-Mart in this case, and the aggregate effect one of shifting rather than saved costs.

A simplified example will suffice: If Wal-Mart does not want shipment of shirts until the last possible minute and if those shirts take some days to cut and assemble in a far-away factory, then the factory owner will have to assume the costs of having money tied up in the shirts (money already paid to workers but not yet received from Wal-Mart) and of storage.” [5]

Government Privilege

“The more state intervention, the greater incentive business has to intervene in the economy.” – Haggard, Maxfield and Schneider, in Business-Government Relations: An Overview of Alternative Views of Business.

“By one account, over $1 billion in state and local subsidies, in the form of free or reduced—cost land, tax reductions, infrastructure assistance, job training and recruiting funds, and assorted other assistance programs, were granted to Wal-Mart prior to 2004.” [6]

Multinational corporate bureaucracies are inflexible and suffer diseconomies of scale, but they are more agile than states. Therefore, even if politicians were willing to enforce the aggregate interest of the people, states are disadvantaged in outmaneuvering corporations. States are quite adept in buttressing corporate power, however. Fortunately the motives of politicians are not always in line with corporations. Thus, to manage and predict potential state interference, bribery becomes an operational expense.

Concern should lie not only with overtly illegal corporate action (like using the CIA as a political tool in Latin America), but also with  activities that are legal and even widely accepted as legitimate. The acute offenses are bad, but structural corporate protections and opinion-molding enable chronic, ongoing injustice.

“Business interests have increasingly seen the advantages of utilizing governmental power to further their own economic interests. For example, as Gabriel Kolko points out, the early legislation on meat inspection came at the instigation of the large meat packers, who needed enforced standards of purity in order to take advantage of a growing export market. [Also to erect capital-intensive barriers to entry to their smaller competitors]. The Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission were either created for or utilized by corporate interests. Rather than being a restraint by government, these agencies have often provided a more accessible framework for the exercise of corporate power.” [7]

Wal-Mart did not pull itself up by its bootstraps; the company enjoys considerable state advantage. Wal-Mart relies upon publicly funded highways to truck its goods. The company uses these roads intensively but does not pay for them. In effect, the taxpayer subsidizes Wal-Mart’s transport costs. [8] The subsidization of petroleum has a similar effect. Wal-Mart also benefits from low-cost labor thanks to Chinese state repression, which lowers manufacturing costs.

The company has been accused of underpaying labor and inducing US workers to depend on welfare and government aid – costs that Wal-Mart would have to pay if the state were not ready to pick up the bill.

Finally, Wal-Mart employs “illegal” immigrants that can’t bargain for higher wages. If state immigration policy were not so punitive, these workers would have more bargaining power. “In a widely publicized story that appeared in 2005, Wal-Mart paid $11 million to settle a federal investigation into the use of undocumented workers who were employed ‘off-clock’ to clean stores.” [9] [10] This humiliation of labor relates to Wal-Mart’s next innovation.

Labor Commoditization

Wal-Mart has commoditized labor and split it into smaller denominations (part time, on-demand work without benefits, at peak hours). Wal-Mart’s monopsonistic leverage gives it the power to demand these conditions.

“Wal-Mart has led the way in reducing the availability of full-time, well-paying jobs for the American labor force. […] Workers became just-in-time suppliers of hourly labor, wages were kept low, and benefits minimal. Computer tracking of hourly sales volume in the different stores made very close management of hours worked technically feasible, and the drive to sell goods as cheaply as possible provided the imperative. From the standpoint of workers, this has meant part-time work for those called by Wal-Mart ‘peak-time associates,’ with schedules built around in-store demand rather than accustomed rhythms of life as dictated by school schedules, social obligations, and family life. To an extent not fully implemented in many other places in modern capitalist societies, labor has been successfully transformed by Wal-Mart into a commodity just like any other. Rather than hiring people, Wal-Mart has successfully hired units of labor in quantities that they can vary with the need of the company and have done so on a large scale.” [11]

Wal-Mart expropriates small business owners and makes the community dependent upon the company. Although Wal-Mart claims that it creates 100,000 new jobs a year, wages actually fall in counties where new Wal-Marts open up. [12]

The mechanism of Waltonization: Wal-Mart first seeks concessions from local governments in the form of tax breaks or eminent domain seizures. Then, the “every-day-low prices” undercut small businesses and force them to close. Some of the competitors and their employees, now jobless, must go work at Wal-Mart. This abundance of labor lowers bargaining power. Now that the competition has been cut down, Wal-Mart is free to raise prices or lower benefits. Since the company is the dominant force in the community, they hold sway over the local government for even greater privileges.

“Wal-Mart … supplies about 25 percent of the U.S. apparel market with goods that are virtually all imported from abroad. While Wal-Mart’s provision of cheaper and cheaper imports is unquestionably a boon to the apparel consumer and to the economy at large, virtually every aspect of the firm’s behavior has drawn protests, and the very behavior that gives consumers a windfall is at the same time the target of critics.
Protestors want Wal-Mart to stop their union-bashing, and to improve its pay and benefits for employees. The company is also criticized for its merciless squeeze on supplier pricing, and for its failure to effectively monitor the working conditions in the overseas factories that produce the apparel for its stores.” [13]

Wal-Mart is the de novo company store, imposing predation not by price-gouging but by enticing with low prices and subsequently destroying competition (and bargaining power). The goods do cost less, but worker paychecks are reduced more than the margin of cost savings.

“Wal-Mart [has] led the way in reducing the availability of full-time, well-paying jobs for the American labor force. What Wal-Mart did was to extend the managerial practices developed for its suppliers to those who worked in the stores.

[…] Wal-Mart’s squeeze on its American suppliers has bankrupted them, and led the firm to China where it squeezes Chinese suppliers, who in turn squeeze their own suppliers as well as their sweatshop workers. At the end of the squeeze cycle, we can buy our T-shirts for 25 cents less, so on average we are richer, but at what cost?” [14]

Mobility and Monopoly

The movement of capital is not bad in and of itself, but the relative immobility of labor is. Even if states ever intend to manage the conduct of businesspeople on behalf of their subjects, large corporations and their trade networks span borders and contract out the unsavory sweatshop work, activities outside any one state’s jurisdiction.

Quicksilver capital results in a race to the bottom vis-à-vis wages. Labor cannot move freely due to social constructs called “borders” and “citizenship.” Wal-Mart benefits from the existence of “illegal” people, or undocumented laborers. If they attempt to unionize, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency will be called in—the Pinkertons of the early 20th century.

The state is not good at disrupting monopoly, only market competitors are. If the state breaks monopoly firm A into two firms, B and C, these firms may not compete with each other because they are de facto still one firm.  But if another firm, D, enters, with no allegiance to the members of firm A, the monopoly may be disrupted. Typically, though, the state is instrumental in protecting monopoly and creating artificial scarcity with licensing laws, barriers to entry and patents. The breakup of Standard under the 1911 Sherman Anti-Trust Act did not effectively ameliorate the anti-competitive practices, nor did it punish the perpetrators.

“Neither Rockefeller nor other standard oil executives suffered meaningful punishment for their decades of evasion. The Supreme Court decision actually multiplied Rockefeller’s wealth. Because he held approximately 25  percent of Standard Oil stock before the atomization of the corporate structure, he received that percentage of stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey in addition to cash from each of the thirty-three spinoffs formed in response to the Supreme Court mandate. Anticipating a boom in automotive travel, investors eagerly bought into the new companies. As the stock prices rose, Rockefeller’s net worth tripled, and then quintupled, making him almost certain the first billionaire in America’s existence. Four years after the Supreme Court had seemingly given Roosevelt what he wanted, the former president noted acidly the presumably unintended consequences, ‘No wonder that Wall Street’s prayer is now: Oh Merciful Providence, give us another dissolution.’

In other words, the impacts of the Supreme Court ruling were far-reaching but slow moving. In 1923, twelve years after the ruling, Tarbell wrote ‘the price we pay for gasoline is the price fixed by the Standard Oil Company. Although the components of this company were segregated by the U.S. government in 1911 with the  expectation that thereafter there would be open competition, its control over the production and price of oil is as great as ever.’ ” [15]

To this day, the oil sector is still monolithic enough to drive the nation to war, restrict high-speed rail development, [16] and suppress higher efficiency vehicles. Evidently, the Sherman act did not suffice. Similarly, Wal-Mart has leveraged its political power as the largest private company in the world to reshape the interstices of the global economy, a level of central planning akin to the U.S.S.R. (albeit more effective).

“Wal-Mart’s systems make possible a completely Stalinesque organization involving an astonishing [2.1] million employees. It is wonderfully ironic that the dreams of the Soviet central planners have come true – thanks to modern information technology – in a worldwide empire run from a small town in Arkansas rather than from Moscow. (Baily, Hall: 2002: 187).” [17]

The Unsustainable Corporate-State Model

“One classic problem of political life looms large—the problem of accountability. Modern economic organization and technology have vested enormous concentrations of resources in relatively few hands. These resources are readily translatable into political power; and that power is hardly accountable even to the nominal owners, let alone the larger community.” [18]

Wal-Mart’s success has been exceptional, and its actions prove shrewder than past retailers. The company has become the largest private employer in the world, with an army of 2.1 million workers. [19] Wal-Mart is certainly an outlier. But perhaps Wal-Mart is an outlier in the sense that it is merely the first to establish their global exploitation model – in the way Columbus was an outlier in “discovering” the New World (omitting native people who lived there, or the Vikings and Asian seafaring cultures before him). Perhaps Wal-Mart is an outlier because it is leading the charge in reviving a neo-feudalist Gilded Age of sharecropping serfdom. The question is not whether Wal-Mart is an aberration, but to what extent this model will be copied going forward.

The corporate-capitalist ownership structure is inherently oppressive. Corporations are chartered by the state and enjoy legal and tax protections. There will always be antagonism between the boss and laborer, and profit itself is the result of an unfree market. Under perfect Walrasian competition, prices asymptote to cost and profits toward zero. Within the current paradigm, the state intervenes on behalf of politically connected capitalists. In a just, truly socialistic stateless system, workers receive the full product of their labor. This is best accomplished through private contracting and worker’s cooperatives, where there is no employer to extract surplus value from his laborers. Instead, workers share in the revenues of their co-owned enterprise.

Multinational corporations are disconnected from the communities they parasitize / service, and the corporation’s sole motive of profit without concern for others is literally psychopathic.

“A wide range of activities that influence the lives of workers and consumers are excluded from [economic] analysis. The omissions are serious because negative public reactions to both Standard Oil and Wal-Mart, two firms who did, after all, lower costs to consumers, show clearly that people care about far more than the prices of products produced.

People are part of the production and distribution processes as much as they are consumers. They live in communities with others whose well-being affects their own. Standard Oil, by its power over the location of refineries, its differential treatment of railroads, and its decisions about distribution affected where people could live and prosper. Wal-Mart, in like manner, determines the commercial landscape of great portions of  America. Decisions made in Bentonville, Arkansas, determine not only whether or not a particular small town will be one of reasonably prosperous service establishments, while a neighboring town will die, but also much else about the lives of those who supply the Wal-Mart stores and work there.” [20]

In one of his rare bursts of insight, Paul Krugman wrote in 2005 that Wal-Mart has become “the symbol of the state of our economy, which delivers rising GDP but stagnant or falling living standards for working Americans.” Not even rising GDP is certain – only a rise in Wal-Mart’s share price.

Wal-Mart’s state-conferred advantage must be revoked in order to revive the U.S. manufacturing sector. This would result in a revitalization of the middle-class and an increase in aggregate demand. Consumers would have less cheap-toxic-plastic crap, but would be better off in the long run because wages would rise. As it stands, the poorer consumers / workers get, the more desperately they depend upon Wal-Mart’s “every-day low prices.” It is a vicious cycle of dependency.

Human beings are not so good with deferred utility—they prefer the instant gratification of upfront price savings (discounts) even if they suffer a greater decline in purchasing power later (lower wages). Hopefully, consumers and workers will wake up to the scam, organize Wal-Mart’s labor and selectively patronize local businesses instead. To be truly sustainable, such a castration of corporate power must occur in conjunction with the dissolution of the state power that underlies it.

“If employers can’t be trusted with power, how on earth can politicians and bureaucrats be so? The solution is to smash the structures of government-imposed privilege that put workers into a position of dependency on employers in the first place.” – Roderick T. Long [21]

Notes:

[1] Nadel, Mark. Corporations and Political Accountability. Heath Publishing. 1976. (9-10).
[2] Charles, Kenny. The Big Mac Theory of Development. Bloomberg Businessweek. 2012.
[3] Yergin, Daniel. The Prize. Simon & Schuster. 1991. (40).
[4] Mayhew, Anne. Narrating the Rise of Big Business in the USA: How Economists Explain Standard Oil and Wal-Mart. Routledge. 2008. (27-28)
[5] Mayhew (120).
[6] Mayhew (112).
[7] Nadel (17).
[8] Carson, Kevin. Mutualist Political Economy. 2004. (234).
[9] Mayhew (58).
[10] Barbaro, Michael. Wal-Mart to pay $11 Million. Washington Post. 2005.
[11] Mayhew (57).
[12] Neumark, Zhang, Ciccarella. The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets. NBER. 2005.
[13] Mayhew (121).
[14] Mayhew (121).
[15] Weinberg, Steve. Taking On the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller. 2008. (257)
[16] Dorsey, Thomas. America Must Build Interstate High Speed Rail. Soul of America (2010).
[17] Mayhew (131).
[18] Nadel (8).
[19] The Economist. “Defending Jobs: Employment.” 2012.
[20] Mayhew (104).
[21] Libertarianism Means Worker Empowerment. Bleeding Heart Libertarians. 2012.

O artigo a seguir foi escrito por Gary Chartier e publicado em Libertários Confrangidos, 13 de novembro de 2012.

Os professores Horwitz e Shapiro suscitam, ambos, perguntas oportunas e bem pensadas acerca da persistência da hierarquia numa sociedade sem estado.

Obviamente não tenho como mostrar de modo inequívoco, praxeologicamente, que haverá muito menos hierarquias nos locais de trabalho de um mercado emancipado—que deveríamos esperar, definitivamente, numa economia livre, mais emprego autônomo e maior proporção de parcerias e cooperativas. Permitam-me, porém, mencionar alguns motivos para achar que isso poderiaacontecer.

Grandes firmas hierárquicas parecem tendentes a serem acossadas por aqueles problemas de incentivo e conhecimento que complicam a vida dos planejadores centrais do estado.

Quanto maior uma organização, mais provável será que os gerentes careçam de informações cruciais. Isso se dá tanto pelo fato de que haverá múltiplas camadas separando vários agentes detentores de informação adequada (com pressões institucionais prejudicando a exatidão) quanto porque não haverá sistema de preços codificando a informação e utilizável para cálculo.

Ademais, o problema do principal-agente acossa grandes empresas em múltiplos níveis, promovendo formas de ineficiência na medida em que os trabalhadores—gerentes de alto nível ou empregados de linha de frente—perseguem suas próprias metas em vez da lucratividade da firma.

Assim, parece razoavelmente claro que, sendo iguais todas as outras coisas, quanto menor e mais horizontal for uma firma, de melhor qualidade será a informação disponível para todos os participantes. Quanto mais as decisões de produção se basearem nos preços reais do mercado em vez de em preços simulados de transferência intrafirma, maior será a probabilidade de elas serem mais eficientes e capazes de reação rápida e positiva à realidade. E quanto mais o trabalhador tiver recursos próprios aplicados no jogo econômico, mais provável será que ele tome decisões precavidas, eficientes e com reação rápida e positiva em relação ao cliente.

Pareceria, assim, poder-se esperar que firmas menores e mais horizontais fossem mais competitivas do que as maiores e mais hierárquicas. Não vemos, porém, muitas firmas menores e mais horizontais no mercado. Significará isso que, contrariamente às expectativas, as firmas maiores em realidade sejam mais eficientes?

Se é assim ou não dependerá, em grande parte, de perguntas empíricas que não podem ser respondidas a priori. Parece, contudo, que diversos fatores em nossa economia poderiam tender a ajudar as grandes firmas a não serem afetadas pelas deseconomias de escala que, de outra forma, as tornariam insustentavelmente ineficientes. Regras e regulamentações tributárias tendem a estimular concentração de capital e portanto aumento do tamanho da firma. Subsídios reduzem custos com os quais firmas ineficientemente grandes, de outra forma, teriam de arcar—e firmas grandes podem mais facilmente mobilizar os recursos necessários para capacitá-las a extrair riqueza do processo político do que firmas pequenas. E os trabalhadores amiúde não têm acesso aos recursos necessários para começar firmas, precisamente por causa do furto sancionado pelo estado e do privilégio garantido pelo estado. Parece provável que a eliminação desses fatores viesse a tornar mais viáveis alternativas à grande firma corporativa.

E se elas forem mais viáveis, pode-se esperar que se tornem mais comuns. A liberdade em relação à autoridade arbitrária é um bem de consumo. Dada a repulsa e a frustração com as quais muitas pessoas veem as tiranias mesquinhas do local de trabalho contemporâneo, suspeito tratar-se aquela de um bem de consumo que muitas pessoas gostariam de comprar. No presente, o preço é alto; há muito poucas oportunidades de trabalhar em parcerias ou cooperativas ou de escolher emprego autônomo. Portanto a pergunta é: o que poderia reduzir esse preço?

Esse preço é parcialmente afetado pela frequência relativa dos locais de trabalho hierárquicos versus não hierárquicos. Portanto, eliminarem-se escoras à hierarquia porá mais alternativas sobre a mesa. Ao mesmo tempo, as pessoas amiúde não escolhem essas alternativas, em virtude dos riscos associados com fazê-lo. Dizer adeus ao emprego corporativo significa assumir responsabilidade pessoal por assistência médica e aposentadoria (se, obviamente, você for trabalhador que, antes de tudo, sequer tenha essas opções, visto que muitos trabalhadores pretensamente de tempo parcial não as têm), requer que a pessoa disponha do capital necessário para tornar possível a criação de uma nova firma, e força a pessoa a encarar o espectro do desemprego se a nova firma que criar falir. Contudo, assistência médica e aposentadoria estão associadas a emprego corporativo precipuamente por causa do atual sistema tributário; e a assistência médica, em particular, seria mais acessível, de longe, na ausência de regulamentação estatal e cartelização promovida pelo estado, de tal modo que o desafio de cuidar da própria saúde em conexão com uma rede de ajuda mútua, digamos, seria muito menos intimidador do que no presente. O capital para nova firma estaria mais disponível se recursos confiscados pelo estado fossem postos no mercado e terra absorvida pelo estado fosse tornada disponível para apropriação/estabelecimento, e seriam menos necessários, de qualquer forma, se as regulamentações do estado não elevassem as exigências de capitalização. E o desemprego seria mais suportável se regulamentações do estado não elevassem o custo mínimo de vida, e poderia ser administrável por meio de apoio proporcionado por ajuda mútua.

Ademais, para mim não fica claro que seria impossível levantar dinheiro em mercados de ações e em bancos de investimento para parcerias, cooperativas e iniciativas de risco individuais. Há maneiras de garantir investimentos que não envolvam participação em governança—e obviamente significativa quantidade de ações à venda, atualmente, não necessariamente é acompanhada de direito a voto.

Portanto, pessoas que desejassem optar por locais de trabalho sem chefes achariam fácil fazê-lo na ausência de escoras para a hieraquia, erigidas pelo estado, e de barreiras ao emprego autônomo e a emprego em parcerias e cooperativas erigidas pelo estado . E o fato de elas fazerem essa opção, de tal maneira que as opções sem chefes se tornassem cada vez mais visíveis e numerosas, teria consequência também para locais de trabalho dominados por chefes. A disponibilidade de alternativas que oferecessem às pessoas mais dignidade, mais previsibilidade, mais segurança e mais oportunidades para participação em tomada de decisões exerceria pressão de mercado sobre as firmas corporativas convencionais, estimulando-as a tornar os locais de trabalho teoricamente dominados por chefes mais parecidos com outros tipos de firmas. As diferenças não desapareceriam, mas poderiam ser significativamente reduzidas.

Além disso, firmas dominadas por chefes poderiam ter a experiência de maior pressão para democratizarem-se em virtude da sindicalização. Na medida em que os acordos do estado com os sindicatos têm sido, todos os fatores considerados, desfavoráveis a ação coletiva no local de trabalho, a eliminação da regulamentação estatal do trabalho poderia abrir oportunidades para ação direta no estilo dos Trabalhadores Industriais do Mundo a qual poderia aumentar a sindicalização e, em decorrência, oferecer aos trabalhadores mais ampla proteção no local de trabalho. Repetindo, mesmo em empresas sem sindicatos, haveria pressão de mercado para reprodução de pelos menos algumas das facetas das firmas com sindicato, tanto para não perderem trabalhadores para aquelas primeiras quanto para conterem preventivamente iniciativas de criação de sindicato.

Persuasão moral normalmente não deve ser vista como provocadora principal de mudança social. Entretanto, apoio ativo público à dignidade e equidade do local de trabalho poderia obviamente levar a mudanças nos padrões e nas expectativas sociais, as quais reduziriam em muito a percepção do chefismo como legítimo, e estimulariam a profusão de alternativas.

Uma sociedade livre não eliminará e não poderá eliminar firmas de propriedade do investidor ou dominadas pelo chefe—nem deveria fazê-lo, não apenas pelo fato de que interferência violenta nesses padrões de propriedade e controle seria injusta mas, também, porque os trabalhadores poderiam amiúde beneficiar-se da faculdado de jogarem o risco para cima dos empregadores e investidores. Entretanto, eliminação do privilégio garantido pelo estado e remoção da agressão sancionada pelo estado poderiam criar oportunidades significativamente maiores para emprego autônomo e trabalho em parcerias e cooperativas.

A pedido dos Libertários Extremados, os comentários serão desligados aqui a fim de poderem ser redirecionados para o artigo original.

Artigo original afixado por Gary Chartier em 5 de novembro de 2012.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Per the request of BHL, the comments will be turned off here so that they can be redirected to the original article.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Além do Chefismo.

Dark Satanic Cubicles foi originalmente publicado em 2005 em Loompanics Unlimited, escrito por Claire Wolfe.

Você carrega dezesseis toneladas, e o que ganha com isso?
Outro dia mais velho e mais afundado em dívidas.
São Pedro, não me chame, porque não posso ir.
Devo minha alma à loja da empresa.
– Merle Travis, refrão da canção Dezesseis Toneladas

Em 1955, o voz-de-trovão Tennessee Ernie Ford gravou essa canção como lado B de um disco. Logo, ninguém conseguia lembrar qual era o lado A. Disc jockeys do país inteiro começaram a tocar o disco – e dentro de dois meses de seu lançamento Dezesseis Toneladashavia-se tornado o maior disco de lado de música única jamais vendido nos Estados Unidos.

Dezesseis Toneladas é uma fábula no estilo de John Henry acerca de um mineiro de hulha forte e determinado – um punho de ferro, o outro de aço. Ele é capaz de fazer o trabalho fisicamente mais pesado e derrotar qualquer oponente. Contudo, embora trabalhe nas minas desde o dia em que nasceu, não consegue ir para a frente. Merle Travis escreveu e gravou a canção em 1946. Até entretanto Ford tê-la interpretado, Dezesseis Toneladas não havia rendido nada a Travis.

Longe disso. Embora Travis fosse um patriótico jovem do Kentucky, o governo dos Estados Unidos achava que qualquer canção que reclamasse de trabalho duro e de dívida insolvível era subversiva. A canção rendeu a Travis ser rotulado de simpatizante do comunismo (rótulo perigoso naquele tempo). Um executivo da gravadora Capitol que fora disc jockey em Chicago ao final dos anos 1940 lembra-se de um agente do FBI ter ido à estação e adverti-lo para não tocar Dezesseis Toneladas.

Muita agitação por causa de uma pequena canção.

Em 1955, quando a canção finalmente alcançou enorme sucesso, a maioria dos estadunidenses já não tinha empregos do tipo mina de hulha. Era a época do Homem de Terno Cinzento, o homem da corporação, o especialista em eficiência, e de tremenda angústia devido à necessidade de conformidade – por parte de pessoas que continuavam impotentemente a viajar de casa para o trabalho e vice-versa, a consumir, a cooperar, a enquadrar-se – e a engolir seus calmantes Milltown e a procurar médicos para tratar suas úlceras geradas por tensão. Era um mundo distante, muito distante das minas de hulha, com um conjunto de tribulações aparentemente muito diverso.

Contudo, de algum modo aquele coro ainda ressoava: Outro dia mais velho e mais afundado em dívidas.

Além de toda a letra fantasiosa acerca de ter sido criado no canavial por uma velha mamãe leoa, Dezesseis Toneladas ainda ressoa.

Não trabalhamos para companhias de mineração que pagam em papéis só resgatáveis na loja da empresa. Trabalhamos como mouros, porém, e acabamos com cartões de crédito que nos atingem com 19,99 por cento de juros, $40 dólares por pagamento atrasado de taxas, e outras cobranças ocultas tão pesadas que é possível – comum, até – pagar durante anos e na realidade dever mais do que no início.

Trabalhamos horas ainda mais longas do que nossos pais, pagamos tributos mais altos, dependemos de dois salários para manter uma casa, empurramos nossos filhos alienados para creches ou acampamentos educacionais do governo, vemos nosso dinheiro ser sistematicamente consumido pela inflação, e sofremos enormemente de uma penca de doenças mentais e físicas relacionadas com o emprego.

Podemos não fazer trabalho manual. Trabalhamos, porém, mais horas do que nossos pais, pagamos tributos mais altos, dependemos de dois salários para manter uma casa, empurramos nossos filhos alienados para creches ou acampamentos educacionais do governo, vemos nosso dinheiro ser sistematicamente consumido pela inflação (enquanto a TV nos diz que o índice de preços ao consumidor está-se mantendo estável) e sofremos enormemente de uma penca de doenças mentais e físicas relacionadas com o emprego.

O que mudou, senão os detalhes? Apesar de todas as nossas posses materiais, estamos no mesmo velho ciclo de trabalho, ansiedade, e perda.

E embora o FBI possa não nos visitar para reclamar a respeito, rebelar-se contra empregos ainda é uma ameaça para as autoridades.

O governo não tem muito com que se preocupar no tocante a rebelião, porém. Pois hoje estamos programados, desde o momento em que acordamos até o momento em que vamos dormir, para valorizar empregos, grandes corporações – e as coisas que os empregos nos compram – acima dos reais prazeres – e das reais necessidades – do ser humano.

O noticiário diz-nos, todos os dias:

• 130.000 empregos foram criados em julho. Empregos = Bom.
• Estamos perdendo empregos no exterior. Perder empregos = Ruim.
• Os principais indicadores econômicos dizem. Indicadores econômicos (que diabo possa ser isso) = Importante.
• A média industrial Dow-Jones subiu… O mercado de ações = Vital.

Todo dia, na mídia, a saúde da nação é medida – por vezes medida quase exclusivamente – em empregos e ações, emprego e corporações.

Não pretendo implicar que renda, produção e outras medidas da espécie não sejam importantes. São importantes – em seu lugar. Em perspectiva. Entretanto, por que nós (via nossa mídia) acreditamos que esses poucos fatores sejam tão vitalmente e exclusivamenteimportantes quando se trata de determinar a saúde econômica de nossa sociedade?

Tomamos como dados que empregos = bom, que ações em alta = bom, e que trabalhar arduamente e gastar muito dinheiro = mais empregos e ações em maior alta.

Então disparamos para empregos que, na maior parte dos casos, detestamos. Ou dos quais gostamos, mas que nos tornam ansiosos, nos furtam de nossas famílias, e tornam nossas horas no lar num fardo fora de controle, no qual temos de lutar para fazer tudo, desde entreter-nos até criar tempo para afeição artificial com filhos que mal nos conhecem.

Há alguma coisa errada nesse cenário.

Em nossa atual organização econômica, a qual é um desdobramento evolucionário, não revolucionário, de há 250 anos, quando começou a Revolução Industrial, sim, os empregos são importantes. Contudo, isso é algo semelhante a dizer que a quimioterapia indutora de vômito é importante quanto você tem câncer.

Oh, sim. Melhor, porém, não ter câncer, certo?

Numa comunidade humana saudável, os empregos nem são necessários nem desejáveis. Trabalho produtivo é necessário – por razões econômicas, sociais e até espirituais. Os livres mercados são também algo estupendo, quase mágicos em sua capacidade de satisfazer biliões de necessidades diversas. Empreendedorismo? Excelente! Mas empregos – partir para um cronograma fixo para desempenhar funções fixas para outrem, dia após dia, por um salário– não são bons para corpo, alma, família ou sociedade.

Intuitivamente, sem palavras, as pessoas sabiam disso em 1955. Elas sabiam disso em 1946. Elas realmente sabiam disso quando Ned Ludd e amigos despedaçavam as máquinas do início da Revolução Industrial (embora os Ludditas possam não ter entendido exatamente por que precisavam fazer o que fizeram).

Empregos são maçantes. O emprego corporativo é fastidioso. Passar a vida enfiado em caixas das 9 às 5 é uma porcaria. Cubículos cinzentos são apenas uma versão atualizada dos sombrios moinhos satânicos de William Blake. Certo, os cubículos são mais iluminados e arejados; são porém diferentes mais em grau do que em natureza dos moinhos da Revolução Industrial. Ambos, cubículos e moinhos sombrios, significam trabalhar nos termos de outras pessoas, para os objetivos de outras pessoas, com sujeição ao arbítrio de outras pessoas. Nenhum desses dois tipos de trabalho usualmente resulta em tomarmos posse dos frutos de nosso trabalho ou termos a satisfação de criar algo do começo ao fim com nossas próprias mãos. Nenhum dos dois nos permite trabalhar em nosso próprio ritmo, ou ao ritmo das estações. Nenhum dos dois nos permite acesso a nossas famílias, amigos ou comunidades quando necessitamos deles ou eles necessitam de nós. Ambos isolam o trabalho de todas as outras partes de nossa vida.

E, puxa vida, especialmente se você trabalha para uma grande corporação, pode ter certeza de que Ebenezer Scrooge se importava mais com Bob Cratchett do que seu empregador se importa com você.

No decurso dos últimos 250 anos, as autoridades sempre temeram que entendêssemos isso tudo e tentássemos fazer algo a respeito. Por que outro motivo tentaria o FBI suprimir uma obscura pretensa canção folclórica? A história estadunidense está cheia de histórias veladas de milícias privadas ou do estado usadas para reprimir rebeliões e greves de trabalhadores. No dia dos Ludditas, o governo britânico chegou ao ponto de tornar sabotagem industrial crime capital. Em determinado momento coroa e parlamento puseram mais soldados para trabalhar massacrando os Ludditas do que tinham tido no campo combatendo contra Napoleão Bonaparte.

Agora, seria o caso de temer por você.

Nos dias de hoje, porém, não há motivo de preocupação. Tornamos a escravatura dos salários parte tão inconsútil de nossa cultura que provavelmente nem ocorre à maior parte das pessoas haver algo de anormal em separar o trabalho do resto de nossas vidas. Ou em passar nossas vidas de trabalho inteiras produzindo coisas que nos dão apenas satisfação pessoal mínima – ou nenhuma satisfação.

Somos felizes! É o que dizemos a nós próprios. Somos as mais prósperas! livres! felizes! pessoas a viver na Terra! Temos vidas mais longas, somos mais saudáveis, mais inteligentes, e de modo geral vivemos em melhores condições materiais do que qualquer pessoa, em qualquer época, no planeta Terra. Continuamos a dizer isso para nós próprios enquanto nos abalamos para nossos compromissos de aconselhamento profissional, tomamos nosso Prozac, ou fitamos os sedimentos no fundo da última garrafa de vinho.

Ora essa! Vocês sabem como soamos, quando afiançamos a nós próprios nossa boa sorte? Soamos como as vozes mecanizadas sussurrando para os bebês de proveta pré-programados no Admirável Mundo Novo de Aldous Huxley:

Crianças Alfa… trabalham muito mais arduamente do que nós, porque são extremamente inteligentes. Estou realmente muito feliz por ser Beta, porque não trabalho tão arduamente. E somos muito melhores do que os Gamas e Deltas.

Para acreditar no quanto somos felizes temos de ignorar nossos índices ascendentes de abuso de drogas, nossos índices em disparada de depressão, nossas dores nas costas, nossas síndromes do túnel carpal, e nossa síndrome de fadiga crônica. Temos de ignorar os biliões de dólares e biliões de horas que passamos sob o efeito de drogas psicoativas, aconselhamento profissional relativo a abuso de drogas, remédios para dor de cabeça, entretenimento voltado para escapar da realidade, creches para crianças, compra de status, pratos nostálgicos não saudáveis, acessos de compras descontroladas, e tratamentos com médicos para todas as nossas doenças vagas, não específicas, físicas e mentais.

Você acha que é dessa maneira que uma pessoa feliz gasta seu tempo e dinheiro? Tenha paciência!

Pare de ouvir aquele pequeno sussurro mecânico corporativo-estatal que diz a você o que você deveria considerar importante – que diz a você que os empregos deveriam ser o foco central de sua vida. Pare de ouvir aquela voz que diz a você que você é feliz, quando seu corpo e sua alma inteiros estão berrando para você que você é infeliz.

Eis aqui algo para você gritar para si próprio: Empregos são uma porcaria! Empregos fazem mal a você!

Grite isso até realmente ouvir-se gritando-se isso – em seguida caia fora da loucura do emprego, da escravidão dos salários, da moenda que mantém você devendo ao governo, ao chefe, ao banco, e à empresa de cartão de crédito.

Oh, mas espere! Você morrerá se não tiver um emprego, do mesmo modo que um paciente de câncer poderá morrer sem quimioterapia. Em nossa sociedade, se você não tiver emprego, estará às portas da miséria. Será um pobre infeliz. Um parasita preguiçoso. Será um sanguessuga. Um perdedor. E, realmente, na verdade, se você não tiver um emprego fixo de algum tipo, poderá acabar completamente falido.

Como indivíduo, obviamente você poderá escapar da armadilha do emprego, em certa medida. Como escritora autônoma, tenho conseguido. Ainda tenho de trabalhar para outras pessoas, mas consigo fazê-lo em ritmo natural. Quando o sol brilha, amiúde posso sentar-me no deque ou dar uma caminhada.

O homem que por vezes corta minha grama em certa medida escapou. Ele pode programar seu próprio dia sem ter de pedir permissão ou sem subverter a linha de produção de ninguém.

Meu ex-namorado o engenheiro de software também escapou. Ele trabalha em seu quarto de dormir extra e consegue viver e trabalhar no mundo de fantasia de computador que é do que ele mais gosta.

Eram assim as coisas para a maioria das pessoas, antes da Revolução Industrial. Talvez elas trabalhassem arduamente e não ganhassem muito. Como em toda época, elas tinham de conviver com a selvageria das lutas de poder da elite, com as guerras dos governantes, e com o confisco de propriedade pelos poderosos. De maneira geral, porém, elas podiam atravessar seus dias da maneira que as estações e suas próprias necessidades (e as necessidades de suas famílias e comunidades) ditassem. Mantinham conexão direta e pessoal com os bens que produziam e os serviços que prestavam.

Revendedoras Avon, carpinteiros autônomos, consultores de segurança, pessoas que ganham a vida vendendo bens no eBay, profissionais de reflexologia, vendedores em reuniões de troca e venda de produtos, jardineiros autônomos, lenhadores que trabalham por contrato, traficantes de drogas, tricotadores domésticos, médiuns – nos dias de hoje todos eles conseguiram escapar parcialmente da armadilha do emprego.

O escape, porém, poderá ser perigoso. Quando você é autônomo, amiúde não tem comoproporcionar-se a ‘rede de segurança’ que vem com o emprego (seguro-saúde, férias, subsídio de doença, seguro-desemprego etc.). E o problema ainda mais profundo é que a sociedade – essa abstração difícil de definir de modo preciso, mas vitalmente importante – ainda inflige seus valores e seus problemas a aqueles dentre nós que desenvolvemos nossos melhores esforços pessoais para escapar deles.

Você e eu podemos ser inteligentes e ter sorte suficiente para criar para nós próprios emprego sob medida que não nos force a cubículos cinzentos, a rotina das 9 às 5, a deprimentes viagens de casa ao trabalho e vice-versa, a almoços indutores de indigestão engolidos em nossas mesas de trabalho, colegas e chefes que escangalham nossos nervos, ternos com colete, meias-calças, e total exaustão ao fim do dia.

Você e eu, porém, os cautelosos autônomos, ainda assim somos aguilhoados pelas consequências de um sistema que produz crianças negligenciadas e defeituosamente criadas, uma cultura de consumo desenfreado, corporações impessoais, abuso de televisão e de drogas como meio de amortecer a dor, vizinhos e membros da famílias infelizes e não realizados e muitos, muitos problemas mais que nos atingem com tanta força quanto a com que atingem detentores de empregos.

Será possível, pois, criar uma sociedade na qual o trabalho seja mais satisfatório pessoalmente e se insira de maneira mais natural no resto de nossas vidas? Será possível criar tal escolha para todos aqueles que quiserem fazê-la?

Praticamente todo escritor que defende a abolição dos empregos e o elogio do lazer repete o mesmo punhado de mensagens interessantes, mas ligeiramente inúteis.

Primeiro, eles chamam a atenção para sociedades de caçadores-extrativistas (trabalhando, em média, 3 a 4 horas por dia) e dizem: Se eles podem, por que não nós? Deixam de observar que caçadores-extrativistas, quaisquer sejam suas outras virtudes, não inventam vacinas, não constroem dispositivos de alta tecnologia, nem gozam de amenidades tais como canalizações dentro de casa.

Os escritores contra empregos também falam de tornar o trabalho numa espécie de divertimento. Esse outro grande traço das sociedades de caçadores-extrativistas. É fácil divertir-se colhendo amoras ou caçando veados com um grupo de amigos. Ninguém, porém, constrói equipamento médico de precisão por diversão. Nem desce uma milha abaixo do solo para ‘carregar dezesseis toneladas de hulha número nove’ por diversão.

Finalmente os escritores contrários ao emprego são entusiastas da teoria utópica: A sociedade poderia funcionar muito bem se, apenas, se, somente. As propostas utópicas são inevitavelmente deficientes no tocante a detalhes fundamentais. Elas deixam de levar em consideração como nos desmamar da cultura de empregos corporativos sem coerção. Elas deixam de notar como os modernos bens e serviços poderiam ser produzidos sem as grandes, bem-financiadas – e alicerçadas em empregos – instituições que proporcionam tanto da vida moderna. (Você não consegue combinar genes, cindir átomos ou fabricar chips de computador em sua graciosamente antiquada oficina Amish.)

Portanto as perguntas são:

1. Será possível ter-se uma cultura natural de trabalho e lazer sem resvalar para sobrevivência em nível de subsistência?
2. E será possível termos os benefícios da tecnologia avançada sem ter de sacrificar tanto de nosso tempo, nossa individualidade e nossa sanidade para obtê-los?

Na medida em que o governo e seus fortemente favorecidos e subsidiados corporações e mercados financeiros governam nossos dias de trabalho, as respostas a essas perguntas nunca virão. Só poderemos encontrar nosso caminho rumo a uma sociedade de trabalho e lazer humana por meio de experimento e experiência. E seremos capazes de levar a cabo esses experimentos apenas em conjunção com (perdoem-me usar a expressão lugar-comum, mas precisa) mudança de paradigma. A atual cultura do emprego, que nos aprisiona nos grilhões de prata dos benefícios e nas cadeias da dívida, espreita sinistramente em nosso caminho.

A indispensável transformação profunda parece, hoje, muito longínqua. No entanto, paradigmas mudam. Instituições desabam. E amiúde caem exatamente quando o velho paradigma parece mais entranhado ou as antigas instituições parecem mais imutáveis.

Parte do maquinário da mudança já pode estar assestada. Por exemplo:

• Embora a automação ainda não tenha nos alijado dos empregos, ao contrário do que se supunha faria, ainda assim ela tem o potencial de eliminar muitos tipos de trabalho tipo escravo.
• Embora o trabalho relacionado com o conhecimento não tenha capacitado milhões de nós a sair do mundo corporativo e trabalhar em casa (ao contrário do que, repetindo, acreditava-se que faria), esse é mais um problema de psicologia do poderio corporativo do que de tecnologia. Nossos chefes temem deixar-nos trabalhar permanentemente em casa; afinal de contas, nós poderíamos tomar pausa para café de 20 minutos, em vez de 10! Mas e se, digamos, uma crise de combustíveis ou epidemia tornasse imperativo que a maioria de nós ficasse em casa para fazer nosso trabalho? O paradigma poderia mudar tão depressa que nossos chefes cairiam.
• Uma atitude de larga escala também poderia subverter a estrutura tradicional de emprego. E isso, também, poderá já estar acontecendo. Quantos pais e mães não estão olhando e dizendo: Essa porcaria de dois empregos não está-nos levando a lugar nenhum? É apenas um pequeno salto dali à verdade real: a porcaria de um emprego só também não satisfaz nossas necessidades reais. Quantos de nós gastamos 10 ou 20 ou 30 anos investindo no engodo empregos = bom; gastar = bom, só para no fim decidir distanciar-nos do labirinto do rato e fazer algo menos lucrativo mas mais gratificante?

Vocês veem muitas pessoas choramingando pesarosamente depois de se distanciarem do mundo do emprego e de criarem uma vida mais centrada no lar, na família, na aventura, no espírito, na comunidade? Apenas aquelas poucas que, por planejamento falho e muito má sorte, tentaram e não conseguiram.

Mesmo antes de a ilusão maior emprego = bom se despedaçar, é certamente possível que milhões de pessoas vivam vidas mais naturais sem a escravidão do emprego. À medida que mais pessoas declaram sua independência, mais redes de apoio surgem para ajudá-las (por exemplo, seguro de saúde acessível para os autônomos, ou proporcionadores de cuidados de saúde optando por proporcionar serviços mais acessíveis por meio de programas de pagamento unicamente em dinheiro como o Simple Care.)

E podemos começar a cogitar: Que tipos de tecnologia nos permitem viver mais independentemente, e que tipos de independência nos permitem tirar proveito de tecnologias de enriquecimento da vida mantendo-nos ao mesmo tempo fora daarmadilha do emprego degradante de nossa vida?

Arranje um emprego, e você terá vendido parte de você próprio a um dono. Você terá acabado de excluir-se dos reais frutos de seus próprios esforços.

Quando você é dono de seu próprio trabalho, édono de sua própria vida. É objetivo digno de muito sacrifício. E de muita reflexão profunda.

No entretempo, infelizmente, qualquer pessoa que grite Os empregos não são necessários! Os empregos não são saudáveis para adultos e outras coisas viventes! estará gritando no vazio. Nós os Elias e Cassandras podemos ter a certeza de que seremos tratados como idiotas minoritários. E qualquer pessoa que comece a apresentar algum plano sério que comece por derruir os alicerces da estrutura de poderio estado-corporação pode esperar ser tratada como Inimiga Pública Número Um e melhor fará em olhar por cima do próprio ombro. Porque, como Merle Travis e Ned Ludd,ela ameaça a segurança daqueles que têm poder sobre os outros.

Artigo original afixado por Claire Wolfe em 20 de setembro de 2012.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.