
Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”) - k1m
https://twitter.com/fivefilters/status/1109886647699759104
======
mjburgess
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. And so on.

This is always a tradeoff in your interactions with others. A promise is an
obligation; commitment, "slavery" etc. if one wishes to put these things so
inflammatorily.

The relevant question is: in this particular situation, how serious is this
tradeoff?

In the case where there are many jobs you are never "starving", likewise when
welfare exists. The governmental and economic context of a system isnt
something extrinsic to the system that you can just dismiss: it is part of its
functioning.

Yes, welfare may well be a precondition of a free market system to ensure that
in extreme cases it isnt "starve or else". Or equally, a big dynamic economy
might be a predoncition. Maybe our sorts of markets don't work with
monopolistic employeers for the reasons he says.

However this does not generalize to work for a company as such which is always
particular and always situated in an economic and political context which
turns it from "slavery" to "having to get in by 9am".

~~~
peisistratos
> 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.

~~~
mjburgess
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".

~~~
peisistratos
> "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

~~~
mjburgess
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.

------
DigiMortal
What does Chomsky propose, (economically/socially) in the coming age of
automation, is he into UBI?

I believe most people will be subjected as a "non-capital, "non-equity" class,
consumers at the base. How will they consume? purchasing power of consumption?

Man the future looks interesting...definitely gearing up for major societal
changes, this is uncharted territory with technology

~~~
CharlesColeman
> What does Chomsky propose, (economically/socially) in the coming age of
> automation, is he into UBI?

IIRC, he's an anarcho-syndicalist, so the tl;dr version is that he thinks
existing capitalist-model businesses should be replaced with worker-owned,
worker-controlled co-ops.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-
syndicalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism)

~~~
Krokku
Ah, the joys of categorizing people into boxes. The man is an Anarcho-
Syndicalist, so ergo, we now can derive all he thinks from this assumption.

------
2038AD
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 totalitarian than governments are.

Interviewer: but they can't legally murder you or... [imprison you]

Chomsky: They can't legally murder you but they can control everything that
you do.

Interviewer: Well, again, the right-wing libertarian argument will be "well,
you're free to leave at any time".

Chomsky: Yes, you're free to starve, that's exactly right. You have a choice
between starving or selling yourself into tyranny. Very libertarian. The
right-wing libertarians, whatever they believe, are actually deep
authoritarians. They're calling for the subordination to private tyrannies,
the worst kind of tyrannies.

~~~
pmorici
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 a practical matter I don't think
his take reflects reality at least not in the US.

~~~
srmatto
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...](https://blog.usejournal.com/how-to-use-
bureaucracies-97e980550070))

------
AzzieElbab
You do have an alternative to work for yourself in one form or another. You
lose this alternative under socialism.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> You do have an alternative to work for yourself in one form or another. You
> lose this alternative under socialism.

I don't think you even understand what socialism is, and seem to think that
it's just "central planning." If you're going to talk about socialism like you
did, I think it's important to specify _which_ socialism you're referring to.

In Chomsky's case, given his ideological sympathies, I don't think the kind of
"socialism" he desires would have _any issue_ if someone chose "to work for
[themselves] in one form or another." Here are some references that might help
with understanding where he's coming from:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky):

> Ideologically, [Chomsky] aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian
> socialism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism)

> Libertarian socialism (also known as socialist libertarianism)[1] is a group
> of anti-authoritarian[2] political philosophies inside the socialist
> movement that rejects the conception of socialism as centralized state
> ownership and control of the economy.[3] Libertarian socialism is close to
> and overlaps with left-libertarianism[4][5] and criticizes wage labour
> relationships within the workplace,[6] instead emphasizing workers' self-
> management of the workplace[7] and decentralized structures of political
> organization.[8][9][10]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-
syndicalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism)

> Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating
> worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with
> democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs.

> The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action
> (action undertaken without the intervention of third parties such as
> politicians, bureaucrats and arbitrators) and direct democracy, or workers'
> self-management. The end goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system,
> regarding it as wage slavery.

~~~
AzzieElbab
\- I don't think you even understand what socialism is

I grew up in the USSR. How could I possibly understand what socialism is?
Especially the fictional varieties. Mordor has a wiki page too, right?

~~~
CharlesColeman
> I grew up in the USSR. How could I possibly understand what socialism is?

I don't doubt you have a very good understanding of the Soviet type, due to
your experience there. However, your original comment seemed to present a
false binary choice between Western capitalism and that Soviet-style
centrally-planned socialism. It's clear that Chomsky opposes both the former
_and_ the latter, so brining up the latter seems like a bit of a straw man in
the context of this video and its subject.

------
subjectsigma
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 Noam Chomsky - from where he sits,
reality itself is totalitarian. How dare humans have to work for their food?
What a tragedy it is that wolves must run to hunt their prey, and that this
prey must die an agonizing death so someone else can live! At some point you
have to suffer in life; if you agree with this then "wage-based servitude"
doesn't sound so bad, and modern white-collar work is really only "wage-based
servitude" by technical definition.

~~~
peisistratos
> 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.

~~~
subjectsigma
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.

