I’ll keep to some general observations that I think it’s useful to keep in mind about the background, history, development, current prospects for such ideas. So let’s start with Antonio Gramsci writing from most of the days, prison cell, labor activists whose work was mostly involved in worker on cell phone managed workers enterprises, left social theorist, he discussed how societies tend to develop ideas and beliefs that reflect and support the prevailing structure of power, creating a framework of beliefs and attitudes that becomes what he called hegemonic common sense. Something we don’t question we just take for granted, like the air we breathe. Now that tendencies, of course, been recognized before, was a major thesis of Marxist thought, had much deeper origins in modern thought.
One of the most interesting is David Hume, great philosopher David Hume, 18th century, he wrote, one of the first major works and what we now call political science, is on the principles of on the first principles of government. And he opens it in the first paragraph, by writing that I’ll quote, Emma says, we find nothing more surprising, than to see the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. And to observe the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions, to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder has brought about, we shall find that as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them. But opinion, does therefore on opinion only that government is founded. And this maximum extends to the most despotic, most military governments, as well as the most free and most popular, it’s far more significant than the countries that are most free, and most popular, where the art of what Walter Lippmann called Manufacturing Consent has reached its Apogee. Its most sophisticated application, since force direct forces less available. Well, I think all of these thoughts merit careful attention. It’s very useful to consider what we take for granted as unquestionable. Common sense, what we consent to, without reflection, not just what we consent to, but what we often go on to regard as the highest goal of life. So in today’s world, one of the highest goals in life is having a job. The best advice that one can give to a young person is to prepare to find employment, that is, to repair to spend your waking life in servitude to a master.
For many, that means subordination to discipline that is far more extreme than a totalitarian state. Stalin, for example, had enormous control over her subjects, and he didn’t have enough control to tell them that at 3pm, you can take a bathroom break for a couple of minutes. Here’s the clothes you have to wear all day. Here’s the way you have to behave when a unpleasant customer comes in. And in general, this is how you have to live your life for most of your waking hours, down to the last detail. That’s what’s called having a job. All of this is quite apart from the ingenious means that have been developed and devised over the years to control the lives of the subjects from Taylorism origins back in the 19th century, control every motion that a working person makes up to the devices that are being made available by modern technology. Managers might keep an eye on the workforce. And now it is the all seeing eye of some remote computer.
The major delivery services, UPS and others now describe how they are increasing efficiency, thanks to the new techniques of surveillance means fewer drivers achieving more and faster delivery.
The method of the new devices allow remote managers to find out if the driver stopped for a cup, a cup of coffee, or backed up when it was shouldn’t have done it. So he can get an instant notice of a demerit, another one and you’re fired. Or can find out in seconds whether an Amazon warehouse worker takes the wrong path and wastes two seconds, let alone stops to talk to somebody. The next one, you’re gone, and innumerable other examples that are all too familiar, not only in the precarious gig economy, but in one way or another through the whole system of reading oneself for survival, holding a job, one of the highest goals in life. Well, that may be hegemonic common sense today. But it certainly has not been in the past, from classical antiquity. Right through the 19th century. The idea of being dependent on the will and the domination of others, was considered an intolerable attack on elementary rights and human dignity. The hegemonic common sense of today is very recent development, matter worth pondering take all of this seemed so obviously correct.
That dependent on our dependence on the Masters intolerable, so obviously correct that it was a slogan of Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party, which regarded wage labor as differing from slavery, only insofar as it was a temporary state, until the person could gain freedom, but actually the most lively and eloquent and incisive condemnations and critiques were in the very vibrant labor press of the early Industrial Revolution, written by working people including what were called the factory girls, young women from the farms who were driven to the mills in the rising industrial system.
Their writings are very much worth reading. They are available, often in archival forms. The Journal of the Knights of Labor the great multi, multinational multiracial, multi racial union of the 19th century America held this main slogan that when a man is placed in a position, where he is compelled to provide the benefits of his labor to another, he is in a condition of slavery. That was the standard assumption of working people, men and women, through the early years, the Industrial Revolution, right through the 19th century, one of the most articulate contributors to the working class protests against the re-institution of a form of slavery and the rising industrial system. One of the most eloquent voices was the an itinerant mechanic. Thomas Skidmore didn’t have any formal education, but he was highly educated.
At like many others at the time, he developed a serious critique of wage slavery, founding it on the labor theory of value, as it had been developed by the classical economists Adam Smith, David Ricardo was working and others were familiar. And on that foundation, he defined slavery as in his words being compelled to labor, while the proceeds of that labor is taken by others, and went on to argue at length, no matter how property rights are attained, they are illegitimate if they’re used to make some dependent on others, allowing some to appropriate to themselves, the labor of others. The general labor press standard in deepen these ideas was vocal and articulate it condemned, quoting the elastic and lasting influence of monarchical principles on democratic soil. Referring to the wage contract, workers recognized that this assault on basic human rights will not be overcome until those who in their words those who work in the mills will own them, and sovereignty will return to producers, then, quoting working people will no longer be menials are the humble subjects of a foreign despot, an absentee owner, so that they will be slaves in the strictest sense of the word who toil for their masters, rather, they will regain their citizens as free. their rights as status as free American citizens
It was recognized that the Industrial Revolution had introduced a crucial shift from price to wage. So when an artisan sells a product for a price, he retains this person, when he rents himself to a master, he sells himself, he loses his dignity as a person becomes a wage slave. And that terminology of the time all of these ideas were very much alive, of course, after the formal abolition of chattel slavery, I stress formal because it was quickly reinstituted in 1877 as a new form of slavery, which lasted pretty much into the night to the 1930s and was the basis for the second industrial revolution and the self. Legacy still remains. But in that context, the notion of wage slavery we came very prominent, how is it different from chattel slavery? Well, the idea that productive enterprise should be owned by the workforce was pretty common coin, all the way through the 19th century. And not just by Karl Marx and other left intellectuals, but also by the major exponents of classical liberalism. The idea was part of the classical liberal tradition of the time.
One person who’s brought this out eloquently and his recent work is David Ellerman. And his studies of what he calls Neo-abolition, as mentioned, john Stuart Mill, the most prominent classical liberal figure of the 19th century. One of the great modern intellectuals, mill argued that I’m quoting him the form of Association, which, if mankind continues to improve, must be expected to predominate is the Association of the laborers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital, with which they carry on their operations, working under managers, electable and removable by themselves, in other words, democracy in the workplace. That’s the sixth form of association to which the human species will ascend if it continues to improve according to the doctrines of 19th century classical liberalism, to concept that has very solid roots in the ideas that animated, classical liberal thought, from its earliest days from john, john Locke, Adam Smith, and others.
Some of the most eloquent and forceful development of these ideas was in the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt was one of the founding figures of classical liberalism, also the founder of the modern research university, his words are worth thinking about reading and thinking about carefully.
They’re far reaching in their input, humbled held that freedom is the necessary condition, without which, even the most soul satisfying occupation cannot produce any wholesome effects. Whatever task is not chosen by a man’s freewill, whatever constraints, whatever constraints, or even guides him does not become part of his nature, that remains forever alien to him. If he performs it, he does it not with true humane energy, but with mere mechanical skill, ideas, incidentally, which humbled, also applied to the educational system, and our manner which follows quite directly from the same thoughts.
He went on to say that under the condition of freedom, from external control, control, all peasants and craftsmen, can be transformed into artists, that is people who love their craft for its own sake, and refine it with their self guided energy and inventiveness and who In so doing, cultivate their own intellectual energies, and overall their character and increase their enjoyments. This way, humanity would be an overload, by the very things which now, however beautiful they might be degraded. This urge for self realization, is man’s human basic human need, needs, from childhood, as distinct from mere honorable needs. One who fails to recognize this, or justly to be suspected, of failing to regard human nature as what it is, and of wishing to turn men into machines. To determine whether the fundamental human rights are being honored, we must consider not just what a person does, but the conditions under which he does it. Whether is done under external control, or spontaneously to fulfill a human need. If an artisan produces a beautiful work on command, we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is an instrument in the hands of others, not a free human being.
Adam Smith developed a very sharp critique, of division of labor, not what he’s famous for.
In fact, it’s interesting that in the Bicentennial, edition Chicago edition of Adam Smith, the scholarly edition, there isn’t even an index entries for Smith’s sharp critique of division of labor, but it’s there, and it’s founded on the same principles. Smith argued that a person who performs the same task, over and over on command will become as stupid and ignorant as a human being can be an outcome that must be prevented by government action in any civilized society. Only work that is freely undertaken. Using an enhancing one’s on creative powers is an acceptable social condition. That’s the foundation of classical liberal thought to a short step from these principles to the idea of control of all institutions, all communities within a framework of free association, federal, free social organization through
agreed voluntary associations. That’s the general style of very wide range of thought, including the main socialist traditions, the left anti Bolshevik Marxists, and much current activist work today of people seeking to gain control over their own lives and fate.
the proliferation of worker owned enterprises in the old rust belt in the United States de industrialized, by neoliberal globalization in the interests of short term profits of bankers and investors,
spread of cooperatives, localization of agriculture, many other initiatives of mutual aid with the long term goal of creating the kind of cooperative Commonwealth that was the explicit ideal of working people and farmers through the early Industrial Revolution. Labor activists of the 19th century late 19th century warned of what they called the new spirit of the age, gain wealth, forgetting all by itself. There have been massive efforts to instill this pernicious doctrine in people’s heads. The huge advertising and marketing industries spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to achieve this goal, much of intellectual culture and education is directed to it. And quite consciously, if you read the press of the highly class conscious business world, it warns of what they call quoting it now the need to engage in the everlasting battle for the minds of men. to indoctrinate people with the capitalist story so deeply that they repeat it reflexively. Without thought, it should become common sense, mere common sense to extol the merits of subordinating oneself to a master for one’s waking life, to live a life of servitude to some foreign force.
All of this was well understood by working people in the 19th century. In fact, workers in late 19th century New York, warned that a day might come when wage slaves will so far forget what is due to manhood as the glory in a system forced on them by their necessity, and an opposition to their feelings of independence and self respect. They express their hope that that day would be far distant. In Gramscian terminology, they hoped to be able to block the efforts to institute instill a new, hegemonic common sense in which workers would not only accept, but in fact, glory in a system that turns them into menial and humble servants, as they put it, wage slaves under tight control, abandoning their independence for the larger part of their lives, in Hume’s earlier terms, they hope to present prevent the imposition of the consent of the government that permits the Masters to rule whether in state or private government.
Same ideas I should mention, relate to the general intellectual culture, not just the submission to a master for most of what’s life, the topic that’s George Orwell wrote about it, and suppressed work, work that you probably didn’t read. Everyone has written animal form, of course, but not very many people have read the introduction to animal form, which was not published, was discovered there were wills papers. 30 years later, the the introduction Animal Farm is directed to the people of England that says, This work is, of course, a satire on the totalitarian enemy. But the people of England shouldn’t feel too self righteous about it. Because in free England, and his words, ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. His title of his work is called literary censorship in England in free England. And he gives a number of examples and a few sentences of explanation. That one reason he says is that the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason to want certain ideas to be suppressed. But the second and more interesting idea is essentially, grumpy.
If you had a good education, you’ve gone to Oxford and Cambridge, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things it just wouldn’t do to say. We’re going to add, wouldn’t do to think that manufacturers consent in the modern sophisticated term, the foundations of the liberal theories of democracy by Walter Lippmann, Harold Lasswell, founder of modern political science, old good Roosevelt-Wilson-Kennedy liberals whose view was very much like that of the man who called themselves the men of best quality and the 18th century, the rebel 17th century, the rebel have to be suppressed to none of their business to become involved in public affairs. They’re too stupid and ignorant as Reinhold Niebuhr put it. Therefore, they must, in his words, be controlled by necessary illusions and emotionally putting oversimplifications. As Lippmann put it in his progressive essays on democracy. People have a function, namely to be spectators, but not participants. Their function is to show up every couple of years, for sure lever to pick one or another of us, the responsible men who have to be protected from the traveling and the roar of the bewildered herd.
That’s liberal, progressive democratic theory in the modern period, traces far back to the suppression of the common people in the English revolution. And in fact, to the US Constitution, which was, of course, was written by a small number of wealthy men, mostly slave owners (nobody else couldn’t spend a summer in Philadelphia in those days). And the constitution was, at its essence is captured in the title of the leading scholarly work on the Constitutional Convention. And Michael, Carmen’s book, Harvard professor called the framers coup, a coup against democracy, the leading forever, James Madison understood that the public had to be kept out of governing the country and to stop the threat of democracy that the public wanted. Therefore, there was a coup carried out by the framers to ensure that democracy wouldn’t function.
Madison’s design, power was primarily in the Senate, unelected, not elected till 20th century, picked by elites, the Senate was to represent, as Madison put it, the wealth of the nation. Those who recognize the rights of property owners, and who understand that a prime goal of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. That’s the essence of the Constitution. In Madison’s defense, we should say that he was basically pre capitalist and mentality. He assumed that the wealthy men would be the Roman gentlemen in the mythology of the day dedicated to labor for the common good with no self interest. should say that Adam Smith at the same time, had a much sharper eye. Smith described the Existing situation and words that we can easily translate into today.
He wrote in Wealth of Nations 1776 that ”the merchants and manufacturers of England are the masters of mankind. And they use their power to ensure to be they become the principal architects of government policy, which they design to ensure that their own interests are very well attended to”, no matter how grievous the impact on others, including the people of England, that have primarily those who are subject to what he called the savage injustice of the Europeans, referring particularly to the British destruction and deindustrialization of India at the time. That was Adam Smith. Again, the terms are easily translatable and de, I should say that it didn’t take long for Madison to realize, to recognize the same truisms in 1792.
He wrote a eloquent letter to his friend Thomas Jefferson bemoaning the collapse of the
experiment, quadi-democratic experiment that he had designed. He said “government has been over… has been taken over by the stock jobbers”, Wall Street in our terms, “the stock jobbers have become the tools and tyrants of overwhelming government, by their combinations.” And benefiting from governments large is very easy to translate that into 21st century terms. Many things in one form or another, remain constant, including bitter class war, waged by the highly class conscious, property owning capitalist classes well and sharp going back to the 19th century, in very sharp reaction to these efforts to impose submission to the masters. There were very important rising movements of working people, radical farmers in what was then of course, largely an agrarian society. The farmers movements began in Texas, moved up to Kansas, Oklahoma Midwest, generally cluded. Most of the farmers that’s most of the working population, they were. This is what was called the populist movement, not pop populism in the modern sense. This is traditional populism, radical democratic populism. They were dedicated to solidarity mutual aid, they created the most significant democratic movement in American history. Farmers developed cooperative institutions, cooperative banks, support programs, distribution programs, they wanted to escape the control of northeastern bankers, and the capitalist control of distributors. They had a good deal of success.
Also, at the same time, that was true of workers in the industrializing northeast. So in industrial areas of Western Pennsylvania, cities were run by democratically elected working class groups, instituted policies leading towards the cooperative Commonwealth. That was their joint ideal. There were efforts to link the major labor movement, the Knights of Labor, and the radical farmers, the populist movements. They were defeated, mostly by force and violence. The United States has an unusually violent labor history, much worse than comparable countries, to a very large extent, business run society with a very highly class conscious business class.
But the battle is never over. There are setbacks, there’s violent repression, intense efforts to beat these ideas of independence and dignity and self respect out of people’s minds. But the struggle goes on.
Constantly, and the United States has been very striking in recent years. During the recent neoliberal years, escalating under Reagan, independent farming has been decimated. US agricultural production has tripled since World War Two, the number of independent farms has shrunk by two thirds. The size of remaining farms has tripled as highly subsidized agribusiness has displaced independent farms, greatly harming the ecosystem, maybe leading to species suicide, as well as harming Of course, individual lives. Right now in India.
The same is happening on a very dramatic scale. Since the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s
over 350,000, peasant suicides have been officially recorded. Nobody knows how many there actually are. Right now, the agricultural workers of India, mass of the population are fighting for survival on the streets of New Delhi, against the extension of these destructive measures.
In general, a wide variety of attacks on the general population have been launched under the cover of neoliberal reforms. It’s quite a remarkable scale, and with very severe effects, take the United States, our prime concern of the RAND Corporation quasi-governmental, highly respected, recently conducted a study of what they call the transfer of wealth from the middle class and the working class, to the very top of the population, their technique, it’s the lower 90% of the population to the very top, the estimated the transfer during the 40 years of the escalation of neoliberalism, under Reagan.
Transfer, incidentally, is a euphemism for robbery of workers in the middle class. They estimate the rubber in 40 years is $47 trillion. That’s not small change. It’s also a very serious underestimate, following good nail the role doctrine, Reagan opened the spiggot for other forms of robbery.
One of the main ones is tax havens. Previously, they were illegal. The laws were enforced by activist Treasury Department. Estimates of the robbery since Reagan run through an additional 10s of trillions of dollars. Fear, yes, is that maybe something like 70, or $80 trillion, has been robbed from the working class and the middle class put into the hands of the ultra rich during the 40 years of neoliberal reform. The Treasury Department used to have investigative departments which could enforce the law. Under the neoliberal programs which incidentally are bipartisan. The Clinton made a huge contribution to them. The the investigative branch of the department’s of the Treasury have been severely under underfunded for good reasons. That means they can barely examine the rich, they don’t even take the trouble to do it. You can work your way through the tax lawyers, corporate law firms that have developed complex techniques of evasion, so they don’t examine the rich, which opens the door for additional forms of robbery with huge numbers, but we can only guess them.
Meanwhile, while this has been happening, real wages for non supervisory workers non managers have actually declined, purchasing power has declined, that sharply reverses the pattern of the period of so called regimented capitalism. New Deal and subsequent years, which, during that time, wages tracked productivity during the 40, nearly neoliberal regression, years of neoliberal regression, and equality is of course soared. Now, the the top 0.1% of the population not one person 0.1% have doubled their wealth from 10% to a colossal 20% of total wealth. studies by Economic Policy Institute and others show that inequality is very closely correlated with unionization. the union’s rise and fall inequality falls and rises in tandem. Remarkably close correlation. The mechanisms are quite clear. Reagan and Thatcher knew what they were doing when they launched the global neoliberal assault with a major attack on unions. It’s necessary, of course, to destroy any means for working people to defend themselves against the state corporate attack.
By now, mainstream economics like economists like Lawrence Summers reached the same conclusion that the decline of unionization is the major if not the major factor in the growing inequality. During these years strike action has sharply declined, surprisingly, declined declined practically to zero in recent years. It’s a very good measure of the loss of defense against the assault, for clarity has sharply increased. By now, majority of working people report that they live from paycheck to paycheck, no reserves in case of some emergency. Of course declines with concentration of private power.
Similar developments have taken place in much of the world. Some respects is even worse in Europe than here. structure of the European Union has transferred decision making from national governments which are, to some extent responses to their own populations transferred from there to an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels, famous Troika unelected European Commission, IMF, major banks, mostly German French banks, of course, you can guess what kind of policies follow cluding the highly destructive austerity policies, we’re now seeing other examples in the incapacity to deal with the epidemic. This is deeply embittered. The population fled anger, resentment breakdown collapses the traditional parties, they barely exist anymore. The rise of fertile terrain for the rise of demagogues of the Trump style comparable ones in Europe, Modi in India, others who can use the opportunity, the breakdown to impose deeply authoritarian and destructive policies. Well, that’s the great achievement of the neoliberal reforms. There have been periods of regression before they’ve been overcome. The tasks are far more Arjun urgent now than they were in the past.
Were an unusual period right now. For the first time in history. We’re facing threats, even to survival of organized human life and not in the distant future. The increasing threats of global warming and nuclear war should be too familiar to require any review. The threats can be met. feasible solutions are known to everyone of the dire problems that humans face. What is not known is whether human intelligence and human will are capable of grasping the opportunities that exist. Now, they’re not going to exist for long. If the opportunities are grasped and pursued, that path is open to a much better world. A world in which ideals of freedom and independence that prevailed for millennia, can be revived, carried forward, now, not restricted to some, as in the past, but encompassing or they may be suppressed. Now, these ideals, but not very deeply, I expect, we may recall, Karl Marx’s image of the old mole, who keeps burrowing below the surface, not very far from the surface, then comes to the surface when the proper circumstances arise. And an engaged public can break the fetters of submission and passive conformity can happen again. That’s the hope for the future. It’s in your hands. Thanks.
Jerome Nikolai Warren 