Anti-Job Pro-Freedom Quote Of The Week 129

A relatively small percentage of people, whom I call the coordinator class, primarily do work that increases their self-confidence and gives them a fair amount of control over their own work lives. The majority of people, the working class, do work that is deadening, disempowering, and sometimes even dangerous - not to mention commonly smashing their self-confidence, and essentially never increasing it.
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Yes, being working class is sometimes physically damaging and even dangerous. But working-class work is very nearly always unhealthy for one's soul. Even if being a member of the working class doesn't actually harm you emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and/or intellectually (which is unlikely, as it usually does harm you), it never builds you up in any of these ways.

Why is that? It's not the physical nature of the work, not really. Maybe 20% of it is that. The majority of it is simply the nature of the working-class role itself. You're treated like a tool, in fact worse than a tool, because it's impossible to in any way abuse, say, a hammer. But people can be very much abused, and the working class is - not just routinely, but systematically.

To the capitalists who own the workplaces and the coordinators who run them, it's important never to let the workers be more than they are. They must be chopped down and set against one another at every opportunity, lest control of the workplace be eventually lost to them. This has a horrible effect on workers' psyches. And what does the emotionally abused worker do when she or he goes home? Alcoholism, substance abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse, even abuse of pets - all these issues intersect with issues of workers' rights.
from
Fundamental Workers' Rights
By Eric Patton
Z-Net Commentary
April 17, 2007