Work Sucks!

When I originally wrote this essay, I included Fordism as other aspect of the dehumanizing of labor. It was too long so I cut it but you can still see the remnants.

This video is part 1 of 3 but they can all be watched separately. This video raises all sorts of questions and hopefully I'll answer your questions in the next two shorts.

Much of this was inspired by Bob Black's, The Abolition of Work. You can read it at: http://www.zpub.com/notes/black-work.html Better yet, you can listen to it at: http://www.audioanarchy.org/antiwork.html Also, check out some of the other anti-work essays on the list. They are all pretty good. I actually downloaded them, burned them as a MP3 and listened to them while driving to work. Ironic, eh?

You can read, The Principles of Scientific Management at: http://books.google.com/books?id=X_5_AAAAMAAJ&dq=principles+of+scientific+management&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=lttRS53_A47YtgPkoo2CCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Also, check out Brendan Mcooney's videos on Frederick Taylor. He does a much better job than myself and goes into more depth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa4_ihxT9rI

Any free society should be based on the concept of voluntary action but

voluntary action alone does not lead to a free society.

Voluntarism has been popularized by the concept that you own yourself. If you own

yourself then you should be able to sell your time, body and hence

your liberty.

The problem with this argument is that you don't own yourself, you ARE yourself.

To say that you own something implies that there is an owner and a thing that

is owned.

You can't sell your labor because you ARE your labor;

otherwise people would go back to sleep when their alarm clock goes off while

their labor goes off to work.

While the arguments of self-ownership sounds interesting and even implies the concept

of liberty

the reality is the opposite.

The very idea of self-ownership turns people into commodities, it strips the

humanity out of humans, people can now be bought and sold in the marketplace.

On a larger scale, the commodification of human beings had striped the humanity out of society

leaving a landscape devoid of human qualities

and a people completely alienated from each other,

a society in which we exist in invisible cages.

The commodification exploitation of people has always existed

but it was capitalized by

Frederick Taylor and his theory of scientific management.

in the late 1800's Taylor complained that workers were lazy

and can produce exponentially more by tough management.

He studied the motions of workers

to find out how to increase their productivity.

It turns out that if an employee perform the same task over and over

then he can manufacture more product.

Anyone who refused to conform to Taylor's methods were fired and had their wages reduced.

Soon, a new class of managers emerged

while the highly experienced labor force

was transformed into unskilled workers.

It was Taylor's belief that all would be benefited by his methodology

To his surprise, with the increase of productivity and profits

the workers' wages were stagnant and even decreased.

Scientific management along with a new class of managers quickly spread

to all sectors of the economy.

all of society, the schools, the workplace, the government

could be turned into large assembly lines.

The fast food industry today epitomizes Taylor's legacy.

Behind the counter, kitchens are geared so the worker doesn't have to move or even think.

Each person performs the same repetitive task endlessly like robots.

The factory of yesterday has been transformed into the high rise and the cubicle

The factory foreman has been replaced by the suit and tie.

Almost every job including office work has been reduced to monotonous task:

typing, printing, going to meetings

and generating reports that no body reads.

It's all the same everyday:

these dungeons, stress, fluorescent lights, phony smiles, and mundane tasks.

We were told that if we went to college, we would be marine biologists, psychologists and writers.

With the exception of a few, nothing could be further from the truth.

The average student debt today is over 23 thousand dollars.

All those wannabe artists, sociologists and investigative journalists

have been prepped for the reality of the cubicle

not for their choosing, [but] because they must pay back their loans.

These people will be herded into sterile offices like animals

because the world doesn't want truly creative people.

The private sector needs people who can write memos, push papers and calculate profits and losses.

The managers will impose work tempos, production quotas.

You punch in, you punch out, surf the Internet, you'll stay late.

You'll day dream about what life could have been

because this isn't living. this is dying.

While the government is usually blamed for limiting the individual freedom

nothing attacks human liberty and sovereignty more than the workplace.

A person can buy you

and extract your labor,

an entire system of ultra-surveillance insures obedience to your superiors.

Regulations are all prevailing.

You are told when to show up to work, when you can leave

and what you must do in the meantime.

They watch over you, inspect you, spy on you.

They punish, forbid, correct, assess, number, and abuse.

You are told what to wear,

you are trained how to talk,

and you are forced to compete with other workers.

When you talk back or make a mistake

you can be disciplined or scolded as you are are an infant.

To paraphrase Bob Black: "Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital.

It is something historically original and horrible."

It was beyond the capacity of demonic dictators such as Nero, Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible.

For all of their bad intentions

they just didn't have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do.

This is the complete annihilation of human dignity:

transforming people into prisoners.

Even the most totalitarian states never had this much dominion over their subjects.

We used to get injured on the playground.

Now we get occupational overuse syndrome, musculo-skeletal disorders, repetitive strain, tendinitis,

cervical radiculopathy, ulnar entrapment.

We have problems with our eyes and our spine that even the best doctors can't figure out.

The sedintary lifestyle is the new trend

along with its legion of diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

Performing the same task day after day, week after week, year after year

is an assault on the human psyche.

Nothing can be more detrimental to human growth, creativity, personal progress, than the tedium of the work place.

When the person carries out the same monotonous job, they are naturally drained of energy at the end of each day.

it is no wonder then that the average person spends over 4 hours a day watching television.

Consider that! We spent eight hours at work,

eight hours sleeping,

and after preparing for work, commuting to work, and eating at home

we only have 5 hours for ourselves, and 4 of those are spent in front of the television.

We actually live in a society that nurtures and maximizes stupidity

and stunts human potentiality.

Repetition is the enemy of every worker; the chains of humanity.

Yet it is the liberator of the business executive and the managers.

Instead of using technology to free individuals, as it could be,

the private sector has turned people into gears and into commodities

while they are the beneficiaries.

These people make a living off of our lives, stripping us of our dignity, stealing our meaningfulness

and seizing our assets.

Frederick Taylor's legacy has become ubiquitous.

In the last 100 years, his methods have been studied, improved

and refined with immense precision.

Scientific management is today's god,

its technique has saturated everything.

Our schools, our workplace, the intelligentsia, the government

and even our lives are regimented with this insanity.

We can see it all around us, in the cars we drive, in the advertising we see, in the government that doesn't work

and in the homes we live.

With something that's so pervasive, we become entangled in its net.

Everyday is the same: a repetition with no end,

dulling the person until they feel like they are living in a dark haze underwater.

We were told that if we worked hard enough, we could experience the American dream.

What we weren't told is that there isn't one and there never was one.

A new reality awaits our young

where wealth inequality has been celebrated and diefied.

Yet inequality has created the separation of power, and power, more than anything, else limits liberty.

The workplace needs to be transformed, not by de-skilling labors as Taylor did,

instead we need to liberate workers.

Every employee should have the opportunity to participate in a variety of jobs from manual to intelligent labor.

Workers should have equity in the workplace so they can call it their own.

They should not be perceived as mere automata or commodities on a factory line

but as living beings. We should be building technology to liberate

not to enslave.

All tedious and unwanted jobs should be reduced or automated.

Most of all, we should be producing not for the market, but for people.

It is important not to completely dismiss Taylor and his methods,

productivity is important.

After all both the US and the Soviets under Lenin used Taylor's methods to pull themselves out of the dark ages.

However, there comes a time in every society to transform such barbaric and childish techniques with moderation and compassion.

That time is now.

We cannot talk about liberty, if we can't even mention the place that we spend a third of our life.

"But it's voluntary!" you say, that is always the answer repeated and repeated "It's voluntary,

we live in freedom!"

No, we don't live in freedom.

We live in invisible cages, we live in slavery.

While it is true that every free society should be voluntary

voluntarism is not enough.

Labor should be humanity's highest aspiration, the basis of one's dignity.

Until the day comes when the thinker works and the worker thinks,

free intelligent labor can emerge and humanity can once again be instituted.