Uncensored2008
Libertarian Radical
Bringing democracy to the workplace would solve many of our problems:The market informs the capitalists how to use their resources. In essence we are all part of the decision in a capitalist system. That really wouldn't change under a socialist system of production.
Democracy at work is a wonderful step forward and should help to alleviate some of the social issues caused by capitalism.
Most adults spend at least half their waking lives in the workplace, yet capitalism requires them to suspend their democratic ideals in return for a regular paycheck.
There Is An Alternative.
Democratizing the Workplace through âWorker Self-Directed Enterprisesâ
DERP
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âWell, there was something that happened at that plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter, and they brought a new plan to run the factory. They let us vote on it, too, and everybodyâalmost everybodyâvoted for it. We didnât know. We thought it was good. No, thatâs not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good. The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need.
âWe voted for that plan at a big meeting, with all of us present, six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory. The Starnes heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasnât too clear, but nobody asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shutâbecause they made it sound like anyone whoâd oppose the plan was a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadnât we heard it all our livesâfrom our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadnât we always been told that this was righteous and just? Well, maybe thereâs some excuse for what we did at that meeting. Still, we voted for the planâand what we got, we had it coming to us. You know, maâam, we are marked men, in a way, those of us who lived through the four years of that plan in the Twentieth Century factory. What is it that hell is supposed to be? Evilâplain, naked, smirking evil, isnât it? Well, thatâs what we saw and helped to makeâand I think weâre damned, every one of us, and maybe weâll never be forgiven âŚ
âDo you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where thereâs a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-sixâfor your neighborâs supperâfor his wifeâs operationâfor his childâs measlesâfor his motherâs wheel chairâfor his uncleâs shirtâfor his nephewâs schoolingâfor the baby next doorâfor the baby to be bornâfor anyone anywhere around youâitâs theirs to receive, from diapers to denturesâand yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end ⌠From each according to his ability, to each according to his need âŚ
âWeâre all one big family, they told us, weâre all in this together. But you donât all stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a dayâtogether, and you donât all get a bellyacheâtogether. Whatâs whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When itâs all one pot, you canât let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yachtâand if his feelings are all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If itâs not right for me to own a car until Iâve worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth â why canât he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed? No? He canât? Then why can he demand that I go without cream for my coffee until heâs replastered his living room? ⌠Oh well ⌠Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We voted on it. Yes, maâam, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggarsârotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didnât belong to him, it belonged to âthe familyâ, and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his âneedââso he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wifeâs head colds, hoping that âthe familyâ would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because itâs miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realmâso it turned into a contest between six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brotherâs. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?
âBut that wasnât all. There was something else that we discovered at the same meeting. The factoryâs production had fallen by forty percent, in that first half year, so it was decided that somebody hadnât delivered âaccording to his ability.â Who? How would you tell it? âThe familyâ voted on that, too. We voted which men were the best, and these men were sentenced to work overtime each night for the next six months. Overtime without payâbecause you werenât paid by time and you werenât paid by work, only by need.
âDo I have to tell you what happened after thatâand into what sort of creatures we all started turning, we who had once been humans? We began to hide whatever ability we had, to slow down and watch like hawks that we never worked any faster or better than the next fellow. What else could we do, when we knew that if we did our best for âthe family,â itâs not thanks or rewards that weâd get, but punishment? We knew that for every stinker whoâd ruin a batch of motors and cost the company moneyâeither through his sloppiness, because he didnât have to care, or through plain incompetenceâitâs we whoâd have to pay with our nights and our Sundays. So we did our best to be no good.
âThere was one young boy who started out, full of fire for the noble ideal, a bright kid without any schooling, but with a wonderful head on his shoulders. The first year, he figured out a work process that saved us thousands of man-hours. He gave it to âthe family,â didnât ask anything for it, either, couldnât ask, but that was all right with him. It was for the ideal, he said. But when he found himself voted as one of our ablest and sentenced to night work, because we hadnât gotten enough from him, he shut his mouth and his brain. You can bet he didnât come up with any ideas, the second year.
âWhat was it theyâd always told us about the vicious competition of the profit system, where men had to compete for whoâd do a better job than his fellows? Vicious, wasnât it? Well, they should have seen what it was like when we all had to compete with one another for whoâd do the worst job possible. Thereâs no surer way to destroy a man than to force him into a spot where he has to aim at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job, day after day. That will finish him quicker than drink or idleness or pulling stick-ups for a living. But there was nothing else for us to do except to fake unfitness. The one accusation we feared was to be suspected of ability. Ability was like a mortgage on you that you could never pay off. And what was there to work for? You knew that your basic pittance would be given to you anyway, whether you worked or notâyour âhousing and feeding allowance,â it was calledâand above that pittance, you had no chance to get anything, no matter how hard you tried. You couldnât count on buying a new suit of clothes next yearâthey might give you a âclothing allowanceâ or they might not, according to whether nobody broke a leg, needed an operation or gave birth to more babies. And if there wasnât enough money for new suits for everybody, then you couldnât get yours, either.
âThere was one man whoâd worked hard all his life, because heâd always wanted to send his son through college. Well, the boy graduated from high school in the second year of the planâbut âthe familyâ wouldnât give the father any âallowanceâ for the college. They said his son couldnât go to college, until we had enough to send everybodyâs sons to collegeâand that we first had to send everybodyâs children through high school, and we didnât even have enough for that. The father died the following year, in a knife fight with somebody in a saloon, a fight over nothing in particularâsuch fights were beginning to happen among us all the time.
âThen there was an old guy, a widower with no family, who had one hobby: phonograph records. I guess that was all he ever got out of life. In the old days, he used to skip lunch just to buy himself some new recording of classical music. Well, they didnât give him any âallowanceâ for recordsââpersonal luxuryâ they called it. But at the same meeting, Millie Bush, somebodyâs daughter, a mean, ugly little eight year old, was voted a pair of gold braces for her buck teethâthis was âmedical needâ because the staff psychologist had said that the poor girl would get an inferiority complex if her teeth werenât straightened out. The old guy who loved music, turned to drink, instead. He got so you never saw him fully conscious any more. But it seems like there was one thing he couldnât forget. One night, he came staggering down the street, saw Millie Bush, swung his fist and knocked all her teeth out. Every one of them.
âDrink, of course, was what we all turned to, some more, some less. Donât ask how we got the money for it. When all the decent pleasures are forbidden, thereâs always ways to get the rotten ones. You donât break into grocery stores after dark and you donât pick your fellowâs pockets to buy classical symphonies or fishing tackle, but if itâs to get stinking drunk and forgetâyou do. Fishing tackle? Hunting guns? Snapshot cameras? Hobbies? There wasnât any âamusement allowanceâ for anybody. âAmusementâ was the first thing they dropped. Arenât you supposed to be ashamed to object when anybody asks you to give up anything, if itâs something that gave you pleasure? Even our âtobacco allowanceâ was cut to where we got two packs of cigarettes a monthâand this, they told us, was because the money had to go into the babiesâ milk fund. Babies was the only item of production that didnât fall, but rose and kept on risingâbecause people had nothing else to do, I guess, and because they didnât have to care, the baby wasnât their burden, it was âthe familyâs.â In fact, the best chance you had of getting a raise and breathing easier for a while was a âbaby allowance.â Either that or a major disease.
âIt didnât take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man who tried to play straight, had to refuse himself everything. He lost his taste for any pleasure, he hated to smoke a nickelâs worth of tobacco or chew a stick of gum, worrying whether somebody had more need for that nickel. He felt ashamed of every mouthful of food he swallowed, wondering whose weary nights of overtime had paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat, to be a sucker, but not a blood-sucker. He wouldnât marry, he wouldnât help his folks back home, he wouldnât put an extra burden on âthe family.â Besides, if he still had some sort of sense of responsibility, he couldnât marry or bring children into the world, when he could plan nothing, promise nothing, count on nothing. But the shiftless and irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies, they got girls into trouble, they dragged in every worthless relative they had from all over the country, every unmarried pregnant sister, for an extra âdisability allowance,â they got more sicknesses than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homesâwhat the hell, âthe familyâ was paying for it! They found more ways of getting in âneedâ than the rest of us could ever imagineâthey developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed.} - Atlas Shrugged
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