Sometimes I start with the most obvious things to deconstruct. Recently I asked myself: What do people spend a lot of their time and energy doing? My answer in that moment was, work. People work. We spend several hours everyday and expend a tremendous amount of time in our jobs working. So I decided to deconstruct work, which led to a myriad of trails. One of those trails compared work to slavery. What is a slave? A slave is commonly regarded as a person who is the legal property of another and is bound to absolute obedience. The legal lie that is created when we speak of a worker’s capacity to sell property in the person without alienating her or his will allows us to maintain the false distinction between a worker and a slave. A worker must work according to the will of another. A worker must obey the boss, or ultimately lose the job. The control the employer has over the employee at work is absolute, There is in the end no negotiation — you do it the boss’ way or you hit the highway. It is ludicrous to believe that it is possible to separate out and sell “property in the person” while maintaining human integrity. To sell one’s labour power on the market is to enter into a relationship of subordination with one’s employer — it is to become a slave to the employer/master. The only major differences between a slave and a worker is that a worker is only a slave at work while a slave is a slave twenty-four hours a day, and slaves know that they are slaves, while most workers do not think of themselves in such terms... Terms like “master” and “slave” are not often used when describing the employment contract within capitalist market relations; however, this does not mean that such terms don’t apply. By avoiding such terms and instead insisting that the employment contract is fair, equitable and based on the worker’s freedom to sell his or her labour power, the system itself appears fair, equitable and free. One problem with misidentifying the true nature of the employee/employer relationship is that workers experience work as slavery at the same time that they buy into it ideologically. No matter what kind of job a worker does, whether manual or mental, well paid or poorly paid, the nature of the employment contract is that the worker must, in the end, obey the employer. The employer is always right. The worker is told how to work, where to work, when to work, and what to work on. This applies to university professors and machinists, to lawyers and carpet cleaners: when you are an employee, you lose your right to self-determination. This loss of freedom is felt keenly, which is why many workers dream of starting their own businesses, being their own bosses, being self-employed. Most will never realize their dreams, however, and instead are condemned to sell their souls for money. The dream doesnt disappear, however, and the uneasiness, unhappiness, and meaninglessness of their jobs gnaws away at them even as they defend the system under which they exploitedly toil. Thoughts?
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 13:58:48 +0000
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