Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”) • Hacker News Board

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#11

Post by peisistratos » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #5

False equivocation all over the place. If you need to shift the language to extremes to persuade people you are doing so by "borrowing" from those extremes. Ie., fascism is widely regarded as "bad" so the tactic here is to borrow its badness and spread it around without actually arguing about the situation at-hand. When you work for someone, as in many areas, you trade sovereignty for wealth. Freedom for security. An…

> if you need to shift the language to extremes to persuade people you are doing so by "borrowing" from those extremes

As in what, calling an economic system the "free market"? Which has nothing to do with markets as one could buy potatos with rubles in Soviet markets just as one could buy them with dollars in US markets. So it is a misdirection - the commanding heights of the economy - production, not the market - controlled by the government (or in Yugoslavia or China, other mechanisms), not by heirs and the Vanderbilt type aristocracy. I don't have to go into the propaganda term of "free" for the system (versus a presumably "unfree" system where government or workers control the means of production).

Or let us look at the word economics. The field was called political economy - until it became political and supporting the status quo. Then the word political is dropped and the word changed more to like physics. The bank of Sweden even drudged up that old dynamite maker Nobel's prize and started granting it to economic commissars in the 1960s, which I'm sure has Nobel rolling in his grave.

There are innumerable other examples. A "right to work" law does not mean a right to work, it means the government can interfere in a union/business agreement, that a union not be able to get an agreement for a workplace monopoly (of course, companies like Verizon have no such monopoly restrictions). Or "earnings" are what the money, the expropriated dividends of worker's surplus labor time, is called as it is sent to the heirs controlling the corporation.

The flip side of this is what was once called wage slavery is now called career opportunities. The heirs expropriating surplus labor time from the workers who create wealth at as joint stock company are called "job creators". Even the AFL used to call for industrial democracy.

Chomsky isn't shifting the language, he just remembers the language of the Depression before the language shifted.

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#12

Post by peisistratos » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

subjectsigma wrote: post #9

I'm in the middle of reading "The Jungle", by Upton Sinclair. The working conditions described within were pretty cruel and totalitarian. However it's also easy to compare and contrast the corporate greed and suffering within to modern day concepts like minimum wage and see that we've obviously made tons of progress and things continue to get better. Like all extremist positions, though, this will never be enough for…

> How dare humans have to work for their food?

The point is that there is a class of humans who do not work for their food - the heirs. The Saint Grottlesex aristocracy who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who work and create wealth. Who are calling right now in the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek to increase unemployment and enlarge the industrial reserve army, no doubt then to bemoan the grain then handed to those workers left idle, like the optimates of two thousand years ago.

Chomsky's whole argument is against the parasitic elite who do not work expropriating from those of us who do.

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#13

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

peisistratos wrote: post #11

mjburgess wrote: post #5

False equivocation all over the place. If you need to shift the language to extremes to persuade people you are doing so by "borrowing" from those extremes. Ie., fascism is widely regarded as "bad" so the tactic here is to borrow its badness and spread it around without actually arguing about the situation at-hand. When you work for someone, as in many areas, you trade sovereignty for wealth. Freedom for security. An…

> if you need to shift the language to extremes to persuade people you are doing so by "borrowing" from those extremes As in what, calling an economic system the "free market"? Which has nothing to do with markets as one could buy potatos with rubles in Soviet markets just as one could buy them with dollars in US markets. So it is a misdirection - the commanding heights of the economy - production, not the market - c…

Work was never called "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture via aggressive authoritarian means.

Yes language does have this unfortunate (and best avoided) "advertising" function which which we associate terms and relabel for the sake of association. Making firing a person easier becomes a "right to work".

"Work" becomes "fascism".

How deeply propagandistic, "advertising", political, wrong, stupid and duplicitous.

Perhaps the free in "free market" is like this, in which case I'd be happy to remove it for "markets regulated qua markets".

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#14

Post by peisistratos » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #6

2038AD wrote: post #2

Chomsky: Just think about it for a minute: almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system. It's called having a job. When you have a job, you're under total control of the masters of the enterprise. They determine what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, what you do – the very idea of a wage contract is selling yourself into servitude. These are private governments. They're more totalit…

Seems to ignore the idea of competition between companies to provide good working conditions and pay in a free labor market. The choice isn't between staying and being abused or starving. The choice is between a variety of employers offering a range of working conditions and a range of pay and benefits. Chomsky's take is interesting because it makes you think about it in a different way than you might normally but as…

> competition between companies to provide good working conditions and pay in a free labor market

Sure - but we could live in an alternative universe where Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and all the other billionaires conspired to drive down their workers salaries. Where Eric Schmidt sent e-mails instructing they be deleted as they pointed to an illegal cabal crushing wage competition between companies.

Of course - this alternative universe to yours is the one we actually do live in.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/jobs-and-schmidts-gentleme...

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#15

Post by srmatto » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #6

2038AD wrote: post #2

Chomsky: Just think about it for a minute: almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system. It's called having a job. When you have a job, you're under total control of the masters of the enterprise. They determine what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, what you do – the very idea of a wage contract is selling yourself into servitude. These are private governments. They're more totalit…

Seems to ignore the idea of competition between companies to provide good working conditions and pay in a free labor market. The choice isn't between staying and being abused or starving. The choice is between a variety of employers offering a range of working conditions and a range of pay and benefits. Chomsky's take is interesting because it makes you think about it in a different way than you might normally but as…

That isn't so true of the bottom of the job market or places outside of high-tech. Most call centers aren't competing for anything and they treat their employees like cattle. Things like random drug testing to enforce your compliance after-hours and outside the workplace. Dress-code to enforce uniformity. Zero tolerance for dissension or disagreement with managers (e.g. Insubordination) regardless of merit. I think this is largely because they are bureaucracies and require absolute rigid compliance from its constituents in order to function.

"The purpose of a bureaucracy is to save the time of a competent person. Put another way: to save time, some competent people will create a system that is meant to do exactly what they want — nothing more and nothing less. In particular, it’s necessary to create a bureaucracy when you are both (a) trying to do something that you do not have the capacity to do on your own, and (b) unable to find a competent, aligned person to handle the project for you. Bureaucracies ameliorate the problem of talent and alignment scarcity." [0](https://blog.usejournal.com/how-to-use-bureaucracies-97e9805...)

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#16

Post by peisistratos » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #13

peisistratos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you need to shift the language to extremes to persuade people you are doing so by "borrowing" from those extremes As in what, calling an economic system the "free market"? Which has nothing to do with markets as one could buy potatos with rubles in Soviet markets just as one could buy them with dollars in US markets. So it is a misdirection - the commanding heights of the economy - production, not the market - c…

Work was never called "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture via aggressive authoritarian means. Yes language does have this unfortunate (and best avoided) "advertising" function which which we associate terms and relabel for the sake of association. Making firing a person easier becomes a "right to work". "Work" becomes "fascism". How deeply propagandistic, "advertising", political, wron…

> "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture

Fascism comes from the Italian (and Latin) word fascism. Mussolini talked little about an ethnic monoculture - in fact there were even some prominent Jewish fascists before German influence over Italy began to increase.

Also Chomsky never used the word fascism, fascist etc. here

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#17

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

peisistratos wrote: post #16

mjburgess wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work was never called "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture via aggressive authoritarian means. Yes language does have this unfortunate (and best avoided) "advertising" function which which we associate terms and relabel for the sake of association. Making firing a person easier becomes a "right to work". "Work" becomes "fascism". How deeply propagandistic, "advertising", political, wron…

> "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture Fascism comes from the Italian (and Latin) word fascism. Mussolini talked little about an ethnic monoculture - in fact there were even some prominent Jewish fascists before German influence over Italy began to increase. Also Chomsky never used the word fascism, fascist etc. here

Ah. For some reason I remembered 'fascism' rather than 'totalitarianism' however the former is an example of the latter.

Totalitarianism is just as bad.

A totalitarian system is, by definition, total -- reaching, by centralized force and authority, into the political, economic, cultural, etc.

There is no centralized power dictating "work" as our culture, our politics, etc.

To call "work" totalitarian is somewhat helpfully revealing of the common mistake ideologues make: narrativizing the world. Turning systems into stories, forces into people.

There is no person dictating work, so there is no totalitarianism. To think as if there were is to turn society into a conspiracy. One may as well call gravity totalitarian.

We make economic promises to each other, and from this arises work.

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#18

Post by CharlesColeman » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

AzzieElbab wrote: post #10

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#19

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

peisistratos wrote: post #16

mjburgess wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work was never called "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture via aggressive authoritarian means. Yes language does have this unfortunate (and best avoided) "advertising" function which which we associate terms and relabel for the sake of association. Making firing a person easier becomes a "right to work". "Work" becomes "fascism". How deeply propagandistic, "advertising", political, wron…

> "fascism" which is about the establishment of an ethnic monoculture Fascism comes from the Italian (and Latin) word fascism. Mussolini talked little about an ethnic monoculture - in fact there were even some prominent Jewish fascists before German influence over Italy began to increase. Also Chomsky never used the word fascism, fascist etc. here

> Fascism comes from the Italian (and Latin) word fascism.

No, it comes from the Italian “fascismo” which ultimately derives from the Latin “fasces" for a particular symbol of the authority of Roman Republican and Imperial magistrates.

> Mussolini talked little about an ethnic monoculture - in fact there were even some prominent Jewish fascists before German influence over Italy began to increase.

Mussolini was talking about Fascism being about the needs of the “Aryan and Mediterranean race” in 1921, before the Nazis had power in Germany much less influence on he Italian fascists (the influence ran more the other way that early on.)

Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)

#20

Post by subjectsigma » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

peisistratos wrote: post #12

subjectsigma wrote: post #9

I'm in the middle of reading "The Jungle", by Upton Sinclair. The working conditions described within were pretty cruel and totalitarian. However it's also easy to compare and contrast the corporate greed and suffering within to modern day concepts like minimum wage and see that we've obviously made tons of progress and things continue to get better. Like all extremist positions, though, this will never be enough for…

> How dare humans have to work for their food? The point is that there is a class of humans who do not work for their food - the heirs. The Saint Grottlesex aristocracy who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who work and create wealth. Who are calling right now in the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek to increase unemployment and enlarge the industrial reserve army, no doubt then to bemoan the grain t…

If that was his argument, it didn't gracefully survive being taped and uploaded to Twitter. He seemed to be against the idea of contracts, working for pay, and hierarchy itself.