Would you ever sell yourself into slavery? If you think this is a paradox, remember that slavery is not simply unpaid labour, but giving up our control to the whims of another. Slaves were property, not unpaid labourers. The conditions of the slavery aren’t even that important; I don’t think anyone would go back in time and choose to be a slave, even if they got to be a house slave. Slavery isn’t abominable because of the conditions, though they certainly didn’t help, nor was it anything to do with the type of labour involved since all of that labour still exists today with little controversy. Slavery was abolished because it took away our liberty as human beings.
Maybe you’re a bit more cynical. I was a quite vague in my offer, but perhaps a huge cash sum might change your mind? The thing is, though, if any amount of money tempts us to give up a fundamental condition of our human nature, then that desire can only be driven by desperation. If the thought arises that this amount of money might make life more livable, it is only blinding us to the fact that a life of slavery is less than a life. We cannot abandon liberty and still be fully human.
Now, if we wouldn’t accept a single cash buyout to enter into slavery, then why do we accept smaller, biweekly payments in the form of a wage? The conditions of our labour today remove from us our autonomy just as much as any plantation, even if the conditions might be better. If you disagree, ask yourself how able you are to say no to your boss, and how able your boss is to say no to you. There is a disparity in freedom there, and it very likely isn’t favouring you. Any ability to say “no” to your boss that you possess today was fought and bled for by unionists before you. The pittance of liberty we possess at work was not given but taken, and, under many employers, is slowly being clawed back.
You might be skeptical. If you aren’t happy with your job, you can just pick up and leave for another, right? But consider this: how many employers are there out there right now that allow you to say no to your boss? How many employers are there that don’t follow this fundamental relationship of capital ownership? Trading one plantation for another is not liberty.
“Let’s work next door. I hear they only give out ten lashes for insubordination instead of twenty!” Businesses might offer perks to compete for your labour, but never liberty; all you receive are allowances from your master.
Maybe you dream of one day becoming the boss, then you’ll have freedom! Climb that corporate ladder! Regardless of how unfeasible this might be in reality due to the disparity of opportunities, the number of aspirants, the nepotism and politics of advancement, this is still the dream of the hooker wishing to become the pimp. Regardless of where you might fall along the spectrum of middle management, it is still an immoral system. Self-interest and greedy delusion are not sufficient justification.
The movie Office Space exists and is so relatable because we all inherently recognize that the disparate hierarchy we possess in our workplace is ultimately degrading. We agree to it because if we don’t work, we starve. We agree out of desperation.
And yet if Peter’s new boss asks him to come in on Saturday, he is still in the same predicament as in the beginning of the film. His relationship to work has not changed.
In our work today, we live less than a life. What we need is autonomy in our labour. What we need is a voice in the conditions of our labour. We demand democracy in our politics, but remain blind to it for the eight hours or more we slog through in our employment. We’ve been convinced we’re free because we have a few tired hours after work to spend the money we’ve been allowed on streaming television, forgetting that those hours required workers to die because the bosses of the past couldn’t be bothered to allow us even that.
Is that what we want? A life where our few pleasures are those “allowed” to us by our employer? Or do we want a say in our lives? Do we want real choice? If we do, what then are we willing to do for our liberty?
Blog for Chumps 
Ask yourselves how the bosses get to be bosses. The details vary greatly from one case to another, so look at enough data points to see what they all have in common. And don’t delude yourselves that you will surely be a kinder, gentler boss if given the opportunity. You might, or you might not. but you won’t know until you get there.
Inequality is built into the structure of the universe. So is a kind of freedom that is not always obvious.
I’m not arguing to become the boss, I’m arguing to abolish the concept of boss? I felt that was pretty clear in my article. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re arguing for a merit-based hierarchy. You can certainly ask yourself how people become the boss, or, I mean, you can look at actual research that shows how people succeed in life, and more often than not it’s how I describe it: nepotism, privilege, inheritance, etc. Merit barely ever enters into it. Even if that were the case, why does someone knowing how to do something give them power over my autonomy? I can get a plumber to to fix my pipes because presumably they will have more authority on the matter, but that does not give the plumber a station above me in any sense. I can continue to flush tampons down the toilet to my heart’s content if I really wanted to; my freedom is not in jeopardy, just my pipes.
Look at your argument: you’re basically saying that there is a group of people who are inherently better than others, and those “other people” should give up their freedom to serve this higher status of men. You know what that sounds like, right? The problem with pointing to hierarchies in nature is that it can’t translate into human society in any meaningful way. Sure, you can point to lobsters, as I’m sure you would, but does that justify monarchy? Marital ownership? Slavery? We’ve socialized ourselves out of all kinds of power hierarchies in the past, why assume that this moment in time is the end of history? Especially considering the existence today of worker co-ops that function just fine, which are essentially workplaces without a boss. I’m not pointing to a far-off utopia here, there are plenty of modern day examples.
That which exists needs no justification, unless you have it in your power to destroy it. It need not care what you or I think of it.
Bosses generally suck. It would be fun to abolish bosses, but what’s the plan?
Also, I’ve done my own home plumbing. It gave me a certain respect for plumbers, and for tradesmen in general. Does the plumber have a station above you? Maybe, maybe not. What does it even mean to have a station above you? It means nothing more than this: his negotiating position is better than yours. Specifically, he’s got a better BATNA. It’s all negotiation. The inequality we see in society stems – all of it – from inequalities in BATNA.
The iron law of freedom is this: thou shalt have an alternative. Having an alternative is freedom. Having a better alternative than the other guy is power.
Imagine if your plumber just decided to continue to let your house flood until you agreed to terms you normally wouldn’t. Or hell, to make things simpler, held a gun to your head. You can either give him what he wants, or you can get shot. Freedom is in having an alternative, right? And better alternatives could be the difference between a house slave and a field slave. A diversity of ability does not necessarily equate to a hierarchy of power.
I’m not saying that these things are impossible; muggings and labour violations happen every day. I’m also not the one arguing that they are justified simply because of their existence. Justification is a moral evaluation, not an ontological one.
The plan is the same one that most societies have agreed on to replace the tyrannies that have existed in the political realm: democracy. Arrange workplaces so that those who work within them have a say in the conditions within which they work. Again, not complicated, and again, not utopian because such workplaces already exist and function well. Unless you mean what’s the plan to implement this type of industrial democratization? In which case, join a union, participate in labour rallies, petition government to subsidize co-ops instead of larger corporations to incentivize their development… I’m sure if you put your mind to it you could think of more. The other thing is, even if there was no current plan, saying an immoral system is justified simply because you can’t think of an alternative isn’t a solution. You can just keep talking about how broken it is with more and more people, and eventually and collectively, that discussion will generate solutions that might not have been apparent at the beginning.
Democracy is not some magical silver bullet. When it works. it works in conjunction with a culture of self-determination, where people actively develop their own personal alternatives. In a culture of helplessness and blame, it doesn’t work. Canonical example: Weimar Germany.
Unions have their own corruption and thuggery problems.
No matter how you look at it, no matter how many policy-level solutions you dream up, the problem remains: who will bell the cat? Until you have an answer to that, public policy is just meaningless speculation. Until you have an answer to that, all political theory is just theory.
No plumber will ever flood my house because I know I can fix my own plumbing if I really have to. That’s the power of BATNA.