                    B.4 How does capitalism affect liberty?

   Private property is in many ways like a private form of state. The
   owner determines what goes on within the area he or she "owns," and
   therefore exercises a monopoly of power over it. When power is
   exercised over one's self, it is a source of freedom, but under
   capitalism it is a source of coercive authority. As Bob Black points
   out in The Abolition of Work:

     "The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament
     totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same
     sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do
     in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The
     boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the
     meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free
     to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he
     feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the
     bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or
     no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he
     amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called
     'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it
     not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment
     compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described
     rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast
     majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For
     certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system
     democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its
     real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who
     says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid." [The Abolition of
     Work and other essays, p. 21]

   In response to this, defenders of capitalism usually say something
   along the lines of "It's a free market and if you don't like it, find
   another job." Of course, there are a number of problems with this
   response. Most obviously is the fact that capitalism is not and has
   never been a "free market." As we noted in [1]section B.2, a key role
   of the state has been to protect the interests of the capitalist class
   and, as a consequence of this, it has intervened time and time again to
   skew the market in favour of the bosses. As such, to inform us that
   capitalism is something it has never been in order to defend it from
   criticism is hardly convincing.

   However, there is another more fundamental issue with the response,
   namely the assumption that tyranny is an acceptable form of human
   interaction. To say that your option is either tolerate this boss or
   seek out another (hopefully more liberal) one suggests an utter lack of
   understanding what freedom is. Freedom is not the opportunity to pick a
   master, it is to be have autonomy over yourself. What capitalist
   ideology has achieved is to confuse having the ability to pick a master
   with freedom, that consent equates to liberty -- regardless of the
   objective circumstances shaping the choices being made or the nature of
   the social relationships such choices produce.

   While we return to this argument in [2]section B.4.3, a few words seem
   appropriate now. To see why the capitalist response misses the point,
   we need only transfer the argument from the economic regime to the
   political. Let us assume a system of dictatorial states on an island.
   Each regime is a monarchy (i.e. a dictatorship). The King of each land
   decrees what his subjects do, who they associate with and, moreover,
   appropriates the fruit of their labour in exchange for food, clothing
   and shelter for however many hours a day he wants (the King is generous
   and allows his subjects some time to themselves in the evening and
   weekends). Some of the Kings even decree what their subjects will wear
   and how they will greet their fellow subjects. Few people would say
   that those subject to such arrangements are free.

   Now, if we add the condition that any subject is free to leave a
   Kingdom but only if another King will let them join his regime, does
   that make it any more freer? Slightly, but not by much. The subjects
   how have a limited choice in who can govern them but the nature of the
   regime they are subjected to does not change. What we would expect to
   see happen is that those subjects whose skills are in demand will get
   better, more liberal, conditions than the others (as long as they are
   in demand). For the majority the conditions they are forced to accept
   will be as bad as before as they are easily replaceable. Both sets of
   subjects, however, are still under the autocratic rule of the monarchs.
   Neither are free but the members of one set have a more liberal regime
   than the others, dependent on the whims of the autocrats and their need
   for labour.

   That this thought experiment reflects the way capitalism operates is
   clear. Little wonder anarchists have echoed Proudhon's complaint that
   "our large capitalist associations [are] organised in the spirit of
   commercial and industrial feudalism." [Selected Writings of
   Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 72] Ironically, rather than deny the
   anarchist claim, defenders of capitalism have tried to convince us that
   such a regime is liberty incarnate. Yet the statist nature of private
   property can be seen in (right-wing) "Libertarian" (i.e. "classical"
   liberal) works representing the extremes of laissez-faire capitalism:

     "[I]f one starts a private town, on land whose acquisition did not
     and does not violate the Lockean proviso [of non-aggression],
     persons who chose to move there or later remain there would have no
     right to a say in how the town was run, unless it was granted to
     them by the decision procedures for the town which the owner had
     established." [Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 270]

   This is voluntary feudalism, nothing more. And, indeed, it was. Such
   private towns have existed, most notably the infamous company towns of
   US history. Howard Zinn summarises the conditions of such "private
   towns" in the Colorado mine fields:

     "Each mining camp was a feudal dominion, with the company acting as
     lord and master. Every camp had a marshal, a law enforcement officer
     paid by the company. The 'laws' were the company's rules. Curfews
     were imposed, 'suspicious' strangers were not allowed to visit the
     homes, the company store had a monopoly on goods sold in the camp.
     The doctor was a company doctor, the schoolteachers hired by the
     company . . . Political power in Colorado rested in the hands of
     those who held economic power. This meant that the authority of
     Colorado Fuel & Iron and other mine operators was virtually supreme
     . . . Company officials were appointed as election judges.
     Company-dominated coroners and judges prevented injured employees
     from collecting damages." [The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913-14, pp.
     9-11]

   Unsurprisingly, when the workers rebelled against this tyranny, they
   were evicted from their homes and the private law enforcement agents
   were extremely efficient in repressing the strikers: "By the end of the
   strike, most of the dead and injured were miners and their families."
   The strike soon took on the features of a war, with battles between
   strikers and their supporters and the company thugs. Ironically, when
   the National Guard was sent in to "restore order" the "miners, having
   faced in the first five weeks of the strike what they considered a
   reign of terror at the hands of the private guards, . . . looked
   forward" to their arrival. They "did not know that the governor was
   sending these troops under pressure from the mine operators." Indeed,
   the banks and corporations lent the state funds to pay for the militia.
   It was these company thugs, dressed in the uniform of the state
   militia, who murdered woman and children in the infamous Ludlow
   Massacre of April 20th, 1914. [Op. Cit., p. 22, p. 25, p. 35]

   Without irony the New York Times editorialised that the "militia was as
   impersonal and impartial as the law." The corporation itself hired Ivy
   Lee ("the father of public relations in the United States") to change
   public opinion after the slaughter. Significantly, Lee produced a
   series of tracts labelled "Facts Concerning the Struggle in Colorado
   for Industrial Freedom." The head of the corporation (Rockefeller)
   portrayed his repression of the strikers as blow for workers' freedom,
   to "defend the workers' right to work." [quoted by Zinn, Op. Cit., p.
   44, p. 51 and p. 50] So much for the capitalism being the embodiment of
   liberty.

   Of course, it can be claimed that "market forces" will result in the
   most liberal owners being the most successful, but a nice master is
   still a master (and, of course, capitalism then was more "free market"
   than today, suggesting that this is simply wishful thinking). To
   paraphrase Tolstoy, "the liberal capitalist is like a kind donkey
   owner. He will do everything for the donkey -- care for it, feed it,
   wash it. Everything except get off its back!" And as Bob Black notes,
   "Some people giving orders and others obeying them: this is the essence
   of servitude. . . . But freedom means more than the right to change
   masters." [The Libertarian as Conservative, The Abolition of Work and
   other essays, p. 147] That supporters of capitalism often claim that
   this "right" to change masters is the essence of "freedom" is a telling
   indictment of the capitalist notion of "liberty."

   Needless to say, the authoritarianism of capitalism is not limited to
   the workplace. Capitalists seek to bolster their power within society
   as a whole, via the state. Capitalists call upon and support the state
   when it acts in their interests and when it supports their authority
   and power. Any apparent "conflict" between state and capital is like
   two gangsters fighting over the proceeds of a robbery: they will
   squabble over the loot and who has more power in the gang, but they
   need each other to appropriate the goods and defend their "property"
   against those from whom they stole it.

   Unlike a company, however, the democratic state can be influenced by
   its citizens, who are able to act in ways that limit (to some extent)
   the power of the ruling elite to be "left alone" to enjoy their power.
   As a result, the wealthy hate the democratic aspects of the state, and
   its ordinary citizens, as potential threats to their power. This
   "problem" was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in early 19th-century
   America:

     "It is easy to perceive that the wealthy members of the community
     entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their
     country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and their
     fears."

   These fears have not changed, nor has the contempt for democratic
   ideas. To quote one US Corporate Executive, "one man, one vote will
   result in the eventual failure of democracy as we know it." [L. Silk
   and D. Vogel, Ethics and Profits: The Crisis of Confidence in American
   Business, pp. 189f]

   This contempt for democracy does not mean that capitalists are
   anti-state. Far from it. As previously noted, capitalists depend on the
   state. This is because "[classical] Liberalism, is in theory a kind of
   anarchy without socialism, and therefore is simply a lie, for freedom
   is not possible without equality. . .The criticism liberals direct at
   government consists only of wanting to deprive it some of its functions
   and to call upon the capitalists to fight it out amongst themselves,
   but it cannot attack the repressive functions which are of its essence:
   for without the gendarme the property owner could not exist." [Errico
   Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 47]

   We have discussed the state and how the ruling elite control in
   [3]section B.2 and will not do so here. Nor we will discuss the ways in
   which the elite use that state to enforce private property (see
   [4]section B.3) or use the state to intervene in society (see
   [5]section D.1). Rather, the rest of this section will discuss how
   capitalism impacts on freedom and autonomy and why the standard
   apologetics by defenders of capitalism fail.

B.4.1 Is capitalism based on freedom?

   For anarchists, freedom means both "freedom from" and "freedom to."
   "Freedom from" signifies not being subject to domination, exploitation,
   coercive authority, repression, or other forms of degradation and
   humiliation. "Freedom to" means being able to develop and express one's
   abilities, talents, and potentials to the fullest possible extent
   compatible with the maximum freedom of others. Both kinds of freedom
   imply the need for self-management, responsibility, and independence,
   which basically means that people have a say in the decisions that
   affect their lives. And since individuals do not exist in a social
   vacuum, it also means that freedom must take on a collective aspect,
   with the associations that individuals form with each other (e.g.
   communities, work groups, social groups) being run in a manner which
   allows the individual to participate in the decisions that the group
   makes. Thus freedom for anarchists requires participatory democracy,
   which means face-to-face discussion and voting on issues by the people
   affected by them.

   Are these conditions of freedom met in the capitalist system? Obviously
   not. Despite all their rhetoric about "democracy," most of the
   "advanced" capitalist states remain only superficially democratic --
   and this because the majority of their citizens are employees who spend
   about half their waking hours under the thumb of capitalist dictators
   (bosses) who allow them no voice in the crucial economic decisions that
   affect their lives most profoundly and require them to work under
   conditions inimical to independent thinking. If the most basic freedom,
   namely freedom to think for oneself, is denied, then freedom itself is
   denied.

   The capitalist workplace is profoundly undemocratic. Indeed, as Noam
   Chomsky points out, the oppressive authority relations in the typical
   corporate hierarchy would be called fascist or totalitarian if we were
   referring to a political system. In his words :

     "There's nothing individualistic about corporations. These are big
     conglomerate institutions, essentially totalitarian in character,
     but hardly individualistic. There are few institutions in human
     society that have such strict hierarchy and top-down control as a
     business organisation. Nothing there about 'don't tread on me`.
     You're being tread on all the time." [Keeping the Rabble in Line, p.
     280]

   Far from being "based on freedom," then, capitalism actually destroys
   freedom. In this regard, Robert E. Wood, the chief executive officer of
   Sears, spoke plainly when he said "[w]e stress the advantages of the
   free enterprise system, we complain about the totalitarian state,
   but... we have created more or less of a totalitarian system in
   industry, particularly in large industry." [quoted by Allan Engler,
   Apostles of Greed, p. 68]

   Or, as Chomsky puts it, supporters of capitalism do not understand "the
   fundamental doctrine, that you should be free from domination and
   control, including the control of the manager and the owner" [Feb.
   14th, 1992 appearance on Pozner/Donahue].

   Under corporate authoritarianism, the psychological traits deemed most
   desirable for average citizens to possess are efficiency, conformity,
   emotional detachment, insensitivity, and unquestioning obedience to
   authority -- traits that allow people to survive and even prosper as
   employees in the company hierarchy. And of course, for "non-average"
   citizens, i.e., bosses, managers, administrators, etc., authoritarian
   traits are needed, the most important being the ability and willingness
   to dominate others.

   But all such master/slave traits are inimical to the functioning of
   real (i.e. participatory/libertarian) democracy, which requires that
   citizens have qualities like flexibility, creativity, sensitivity,
   understanding, emotional honesty, directness, warmth, realism, and the
   ability to mediate, communicate, negotiate, integrate and co-operate.
   Therefore, capitalism is not only undemocratic, it is anti-democratic,
   because it promotes the development of traits that make real democracy
   (and so a libertarian society) impossible.

   Many capitalist apologists have attempted to show that capitalist
   authority structures are "voluntary" and are, therefore, somehow not a
   denial of individual and social freedom. Milton Friedman (a leading
   free market capitalist economist) has attempted to do just this. Like
   most apologists for capitalism he ignores the authoritarian relations
   explicit within wage labour (within the workplace, "co-ordination" is
   based upon top-down command, not horizontal co-operation). Instead he
   concentrates on the decision of a worker to sell their labour to a
   specific boss and so ignores the lack of freedom within such contracts.
   He argues that "individuals are effectively free to enter or not enter
   into any particular exchange, so every transaction is strictly
   voluntary. . . The employee is protected from coercion by the employer
   because of other employers for whom he can work." [Capitalism and
   Freedom, pp. 14-15]

   Friedman, to prove the free nature of capitalism, compares capitalism
   with a simple exchange economy based upon independent producers. He
   states that in such a simple economy each household "has the
   alternative of producing directly for itself, [and so] it need not
   enter into any exchange unless it benefits from it. Hence no exchange
   will take place unless both parties do benefit from it. Co-operation is
   thereby achieved without coercion." Under capitalism (or the "complex"
   economy) Friedman states that "individuals are effectively free to
   enter or not to enter into any particular exchange, so that every
   transaction is strictly voluntary." [Op. Cit., p. 13 and p. 14]

   A moments thought, however, shows that capitalism is not based on
   "strictly voluntary" transactions as Friedman claims. This is because
   the proviso that is required to make every transaction "strictly
   voluntary" is not freedom not to enter any particular exchange, but
   freedom not to enter into any exchange at all.

   This, and only this, was the proviso that proved the simple model
   Friedman presents (the one based upon artisan production) to be
   voluntary and non-coercive; and nothing less than this would prove the
   complex model (i.e. capitalism) is voluntary and non-coercive. But
   Friedman is clearly claiming above that freedom not to enter into any
   particular exchange is enough and so, only by changing his own
   requirements, can he claim that capitalism is based upon freedom.

   It is easy to see what Friedman has done, but it is less easy to excuse
   it (particularly as it is so commonplace in capitalist apologetics). He
   moved from the simple economy of exchange between independent producers
   to the capitalist economy without mentioning the most important thing
   that distinguishes them - namely the separation of labour from the
   means of production. In the society of independent producers, the
   worker had the choice of working for themselves - under capitalism this
   is not the case. For capitalist economists like Friedman, workers
   choose whether to work or not. The bosses must pay a wage to cover the
   "disutility" of labour. In reality, of course, most workers face the
   choice of working or starvation/poverty. Capitalism is based upon the
   existence of a labour force without access to capital or land, and
   therefore without a choice as to whether to put its labour in the
   market or not. Friedman would, hopefully, agree that where there is no
   choice there is coercion. His attempted demonstration that capitalism
   co-ordinates without coercion therefore fails.

   Capitalist apologists are able to convince some people that capitalism
   is "based on freedom" only because the system has certain superficial
   appearances of freedom. On closer analysis these appearances turn out
   to be deceptions. For example, it is claimed that the employees of
   capitalist firms have freedom because they can always quit. To requote
   Bob Black:

     "Some people giving orders and others obeying them: this is the
     essence of servitude. Of course, as [right-Libertarians] smugly
     [observe], 'one can at least change jobs,' but you can't avoid
     having a job -- just as under statism one can at least change
     nationalities but you can't avoid subjection to one nation-state or
     another. But freedom means more than the right to change masters."
     ["The Libertarian as Conservative", The Abolition of Work and other
     essays, p. 147]

   Under capitalism, workers have only the Hobson's choice of being
   governed/exploited or living on the street.

   Anarchists point out that for choice to be real, free agreements and
   associations must be based on the social equality of those who enter
   into them, and both sides must receive roughly equivalent benefit. But
   social relations between capitalists and employees can never be equal,
   because private ownership of the means of production gives rise to
   social hierarchy and relations of coercive authority and subordination,
   as was recognised even by Adam Smith (see [6]below).

   The picture painted by Walter Reuther (one time head of the US
   autoworkers' union) of working life in America before the Wagner act is
   a commentary on class inequality : "Injustice was as common as
   streetcars. When men walked into their jobs, they left their dignity,
   their citizenship and their humanity outside. They were required to
   report for duty whether there was work or not. While they waited on the
   convenience of supervisors and foremen they were unpaid. They could be
   fired without a pretext. They were subjected to arbitrary, senseless
   rules . . . Men were tortured by regulations that made difficult even
   going to the toilet. Despite grandiloquent statements from the
   presidents of huge corporations that their door was open to any worker
   with a complaint, there was no one and no agency to which a worker
   could appeal if he were wronged. The very idea that a worker could be
   wronged seemed absurd to the employer." Much of this indignity remains,
   and with the globalisation of capital, the bargaining position of
   workers is further deteriorating, so that the gains of a century of
   class struggle are in danger of being lost.

   A quick look at the enormous disparity of power and wealth between the
   capitalist class and the working class shows that the benefits of the
   "agreements" entered into between the two sides are far from equal.
   Walter Block, a leading ideologue of the Canadian right-libertarian
   "think-tank" the Fraser Institute, makes clear the differences in power
   and benefits when discussing sexual harassment in the workplace:

     "Consider the sexual harassment which continually occurs between a
     secretary and a boss . . . while objectionable to many women, [it]
     is not a coercive action. It is rather part of a package deal in
     which the secretary agrees to all aspects of the job when she agrees
     to accept the job, and especially when she agrees to keep the job.
     The office is, after all, private property. The secretary does not
     have to remain if the 'coercion' is objectionable." [quoted by
     Engler, Op. Cit., p. 101]

   The primary goal of the Fraser Institute is to convince people that all
   other rights must be subordinated to the right to enjoy wealth. In this
   case, Block makes clear that under private property, only bosses have
   "freedom to," and most also desire to ensure they have "freedom from"
   interference with this right.

   So, when capitalists gush about the "liberty" available under
   capitalism, what they are really thinking of is their state-protected
   freedom to exploit and oppress workers through the ownership of
   property, a freedom that allows them to continue amassing huge
   disparities of wealth, which in turn insures their continued power and
   privileges. That the capitalist class in liberal-democratic states
   gives workers the right to change masters (though this is not true
   under state capitalism) is far from showing that capitalism is based on
   freedom, For as Peter Kropotkin rightly points out, "freedoms are not
   given, they are taken." [Peter Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 43] In
   capitalism, you are "free" to do anything you are permitted to do by
   your masters, which amounts to "freedom" with a collar and leash.

B.4.2 Is capitalism based on self-ownership?

   Murray Rothbard, a leading "libertarian" capitalist, claims that
   capitalism is based on the "basic axiom" of "the right to
   self-ownership." This "axiom" is defined as "the absolute right of each
   man [sic] . . . to control [his or her] body free of coercive
   interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and
   choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the
   right to self-ownership gives man [sic] the right to perform these
   vital activities without being hampered by coercive molestation." [For
   a New Liberty, pp. 26-27]

   At first sight, this appears to sound reasonable. That we "own"
   ourselves and, consequently, we decide what we do with ourselves has an
   intuitive appeal. Surely this is liberty? Thus, in this perspective,
   liberty "is a condition in which a person's ownership rights in his own
   body and his legitimate material property are not invaded, are not
   aggressed against." It also lends itself to contrasts with slavery,
   where one individual owns another and "the slave has little or no right
   to self-ownership; his person and his produce are systematically
   expropriated by his master by the use of violence." [Rothbard, Op.
   Cit., p. 41] This means that "self-ownership" can be portrayed as the
   opposite of slavery: we have the dominion over ourselves that a
   slaveholder has over their slave. This means that slavery is wrong
   because the slave owner has stolen the rightful property of the slave,
   namely their body (and its related abilities). This concept is
   sometimes expressed as people having a "natural" or "inalienable" right
   to own their own body and the product of their own labour.

   Anarchists, while understanding the appeal of the idea, are not
   convinced. That "self-ownership," like slavery, places issues of
   freedom and individuality within the context of private property -- as
   such it shares the most important claim of slavery, namely that people
   can be objects of the rules of private property. It suggests an
   alienated perspective and, moreover, a fatal flaw in the dogma. This
   can be seen from how the axiom is used in practice. In as much as the
   term "self-ownership" is used simply as an synonym for "individual
   autonomy" anarchists do not have an issue with it. However, the "basic
   axiom" is not used in this way by the theorists of capitalism. Liberty
   in the sense of individual autonomy is not what "self-ownership" aims
   to justify. Rather, it aims to justify the denial of liberty, not its
   exercise. It aims to portray social relationships, primarily wage
   labour, in which one person commands another as examples of liberty
   rather than what they are, examples of domination and oppression. In
   other words, "self-ownership" becomes the means by which the autonomy
   of individuals is limited, if not destroyed, in the name of freedom and
   liberty.

   This is exposed in the right-libertarian slogan "human rights are
   property rights." Assuming this is true, it means that you can alienate
   your rights, rent them or sell them like any other kind of property.
   Moreover, if you have no property, you have no human rights as you have
   no place to exercise them. As Ayn Rand, another ideologue for "free
   market" capitalism stated, "there can be no such thing as the right to
   unrestricted freedom of speech (or of action) on someone else's
   property." [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 258] If you are in
   someone else's property (say at work) you have no basic rights at all,
   beyond the right not to be harmed (a right bosses habitually violate
   anyway by ignoring health and safety issues).

   Self-ownership justifies this. You have rented out the property in your
   person (labour services) and, consequently, another person can tell you
   what to do, when to do and how to do it. Thus property comes into
   conflict with liberty. If you argue that "human rights are property
   rights" you automatically ensure that human rights are continually
   violated in practice simply because there is a conflict between
   property and liberty. This is not surprising, as the "property rights"
   theory of liberty was created to justify the denial of other people's
   liberty and the appropriation of their labour.

   Clearly, then, we reach a problem with "self-ownership" (or property in
   the person) once we take into account private property and its
   distribution. In a nutshell, capitalists don't pay their employees to
   perform the other "vital activities" listed by Rothbard (learning,
   valuing, choosing ends and means) -- unless, of course, the firm
   requires that workers undertake such activities in the interests of
   company profits. Otherwise, workers can rest assured that any efforts
   to engage in such "vital activities" on company time will be "hampered"
   by "coercive molestation." Therefore wage labour (the basis of
   capitalism) in practice denies the rights associated with
   "self-ownership," thus alienating the individual from his or her basic
   rights. Or as Michael Bakunin expressed it, "the worker sells his
   person and his liberty for a given time" under capitalism. [The
   Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 187]

   In a society of relative equals, "property" would not be a source of
   power as use would co-incidence with occupancy (i.e. private property
   would be replaced by possession). For example, you would still be able
   to fling a drunk out of your home. But in a system based on wage labour
   (i.e. capitalism), property is a different thing altogether, becoming a
   source of institutionalised power and coercive authority through
   hierarchy. As Noam Chomsky writes, capitalism is based on "a particular
   form of authoritarian control. Namely, the kind that comes through
   private ownership and control, which is an extremely rigid system of
   domination." When "property" is purely what you, as an individual, use
   (i.e. possession) it is not a source of power. In capitalism, however,
   "property" rights no longer coincide with use rights, and so they
   become a denial of freedom and a source of authority and power over the
   individual.

   As we've seen in the discussion of hierarchy (sections [7]A.2.8 and
   [8]B.1), all forms of authoritarian control depend on "coercive
   molestation" -- i.e. the use or threat of sanctions. This is definitely
   the case in company hierarchies under capitalism. Bob Black describes
   the authoritarian nature of capitalism as follows:

     "[T]he place where [adults] pass the most time and submit to the
     closest control is at work. Thus . . . it's apparent that the source
     of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is
     not the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman
     or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the
     police do in a decade." ["The Libertarian as Conservative", The
     Abolition of Work and other essays, p. 145]

   In developing nations, this control can easily been seen to be an utter
   affront to human dignity and liberty. There a workplace is often
   "surrounded by barbed wire. Behind its locked doors . . . workers are
   supervised by guards who beat and humiliate them on the slightest
   pretext . . . Each worker repeats the same action -- sewing on a belt
   loop, stitching a sleeve -- maybe two thousand times a day. They work
   under painfully bright lights, for twelve- to fourteen-hour shifts, in
   overheated factories, with too few bathroom breaks, and restricted
   access to water (to reduce the need for more bathroom breaks), which is
   often foul and unfit for human consumption in any event." The purpose
   is "to maximise the amount of profit that could be wrung out" of the
   workers, with the "time allocated to each task" being calculated in
   "units of ten thousands of a second." [Joel Bakan, The Corporation, pp.
   66-7] While in the developed world the forms of control are, in
   general, nowhere as extreme (in thanks due to hard won labour
   organising and struggle) the basic principle is the same. Only a
   sophist would argue that the workers "owned" themselves and abilities
   for the period in question -- yet this is what the advocates of
   "self-ownership" do argue.

   So if by the term "self-ownership" it is meant "individual autonomy"
   then, no, capitalism is not based on it. Ironically, the theory of
   "self-ownership" is used to undercut and destroy genuine self-ownership
   during working hours (and, potentially, elsewhere). The logic is
   simple. As I own myself I am, therefore, able to sell myself as well,
   although few advocates of "self-ownership" are as blunt as this (as we
   discuss in [9]section F.2.2 right-libertarian Robert Nozick accepts
   that voluntary slavery flows from this principle). Instead they stress
   that we "own" our labour and we contract them to others to use. Yet,
   unlike other forms of property, labour cannot be alienated. Therefore
   when you sell your labour you sell yourself, your liberty, for the time
   in question. By alienating your labour power, you alienate the
   substance of your being, your personality, for the time in question.

   As such, "self-ownership" ironically becomes the means of justifying
   authoritarian social relationships which deny the autonomy it claims to
   defend. Indeed, these relationships have similarities with slavery, the
   very thing which its advocates like to contrast "self-ownership" to.
   While modern defenders of capitalism deny this, classical economist
   James Mill let the cat out of the bag by directly comparing the two. It
   is worthwhile to quote him at length:

     "The great capitalist, the owner of a manufactory, if he operated
     with slaves instead of free labourers, like the West India planter,
     would be regarded as owner both of the capital, and of the labour.
     He would be owner, in short, of both instruments of production: and
     the whole of the produce, without participation, would be his own.

     "What is the difference, in the case of the man, who operates by
     means of labourers receiving wages? The labourer, who receives
     wages, sells his labour for a day, a week, a month, or a year, as
     the case may be. The manufacturer, who pays these wages, buys the
     labour, for the day, the year, or whatever period it may be. He is
     equally therefore the owner of the labour, with the manufacturer who
     operates with slaves. The only difference is, in the mode of
     purchasing. The owner of the slave purchases, at once, the whole of
     the labour, which the man can ever perform: he, who pays wages,
     purchases only so much of a man's labour as he can perform in a day,
     or any other stipulated time. Being equally, however, the owner of
     the labour, so purchased, as the owner of the slave is of that of
     the slave, the produce, which is the result of this labour, combined
     with his capital, is all equally his own. In the state of society,
     in which we at present exist, it is in these circumstances that
     almost all production is effected: the capitalist is the owner of
     both instruments of production: and the whole of the produce is
     his."
     ["Elements of Political Economy" quoted by David Ellerman, Property
     and Contract in Economics, pp. 53-4

   Thus the only "difference" between slavery and capitalist labour is the
   "mode of purchasing." The labour itself and its product in both cases
   is owned by the "great capitalist." Clearly this is a case of, to use
   Rothbard's words, during working hours the worker "has little or no
   right to self-ownership; his person and his produce are systematically
   expropriated by his master." Little wonder anarchists have tended to
   call wage labour by the more accurate term "wage slavery." For the
   duration of the working day the boss owns the labour power of the
   worker. As this cannot be alienated from its "owner" this means that
   the boss effectively owns the worker -- and keeps the product of their
   labour for the privilege of so doing!

   There are key differences of course. At the time, slavery was not a
   voluntary decision and the slaves could not change their master
   (although in some cultures, such as Ancient Rome, people over the could
   sell themselves in slavery while "voluntary slavery is sanctioned in
   the Bible." [Ellerman, Op. Cit., p. 115 and p. 114]). Yet the fact that
   under wage slavery people are not forced to take a specific job and can
   change masters does not change the relations of authority created
   between the two parties. As we note in the [10]next section, the
   objection that people can leave their jobs just amounts to saying "love
   it or leave it!" and does not address the issue at hand. The vast
   majority of the population cannot avoid wage labour and remain wage
   workers for most of their adult lives. It is virtually impossible to
   distinguish being able to sell your liberty/labour piecemeal over a
   lifetime from alienating your whole lifetime's labour at one go.
   Changing who you alienate your labour/liberty to does not change the
   act and experience of alienation.

   Thus the paradox of self-ownership. It presupposes autonomy only in
   order to deny it. In order to enter a contract, the worker exercises
   autonomy in deciding whether it is advantageous to rent or sell his or
   her property (their labour power) for use by another (and given that
   the alternative is, at best, poverty unsurprisingly people do consider
   it "advantageous" to "consent" to the contract). Yet what is rented or
   sold is not a piece of property but rather a self-governing individual.
   Once the contract is made and the property rights are transferred, they
   no longer have autonomy and are treated like any other factor of
   production or commodity.

   In the "self-ownership" thesis this is acceptable due to its assumption
   that people and their labour power are property. Yet the worker cannot
   send along their labour by itself to an employer. By its very nature,
   the worker has to be present in the workplace if this "property" is to
   be put to use by the person who has bought it. The consequence of
   contracting out your labour (your property in the person) is that your
   autonomy (liberty) is restricted, if not destroyed, depending on the
   circumstances of the particular contract signed. This is because
   employers hire people, not a piece of property.

   So far from being based on the "right to self-ownership," then,
   capitalism effectively denies it, alienating the individual from such
   basic rights as free speech, independent thought, and self-management
   of one's own activity, which individuals have to give up when they are
   employed. But since these rights, according to Rothbard, are the
   products of humans as humans, wage labour alienates them from
   themselves, exactly as it does the individual's labour power and
   creativity. For you do not sell your skills, as these skills are part
   of you. Instead, what you have to sell is your time, your labour power,
   and so yourself. Thus under wage labour, rights of "self-ownership" are
   always placed below property rights, the only "right" being left to you
   is that of finding another job (although even this right is denied in
   some countries if the employee owes the company money).

   It should be stressed that this is not a strange paradox of the
   "self-ownership" axiom. Far from it. The doctrine was most famously
   expounded by John Locke, who argued that "every Man has a Property in
   his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself." However, a
   person can sell, "for a certain time, the Service he undertakes to do,
   in exchange for Wages he is to receive." The buyer of the labour then
   owns both it and its product. "Thus the Grass my Horse has bit; the
   Turfs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have digg'd in any place where
   I have a right to them in common with others, becomes my Property,
   without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was
   mine . . . hath fixed my Property in them." [Second Treatise on
   Government, Section 27, Section 85 and Section 28]

   Thus a person (the servant) becomes the equivalent of an animal (the
   horse) once they have sold their labour to the boss. Wage labour denies
   the basic humanity and autonomy of the worker. Rather than being
   equals, private property produces relations of domination and
   alienation. Proudhon compared this to an association in which, "while
   the partnership lasts, the profits and losses are divided between them;
   since each produces, not for himself, but for the society; when the
   time of distribution arrives it is not the producer who is considered,
   but the associated. That is why the slave, to whom the planter gives
   straw and rice; and the civilised labour, to whom the capitalist pays a
   salary which is always too small, -- not being associated with their
   employers, although producing with them, -- are disregarded when the
   product is divided. Thus the horse who draws our coaches . . . produce
   with us, but are not associated with us; we take their product but do
   not share it with them. The animals and labourers whom we employ hold
   the same relation to us." [What is Property?, p. 226]

   So while the capitalist Locke sees nothing wrong in comparing a person
   to an animal, the anarchist Proudhon objects to the fundamental
   injustice of a system which turns a person into a resource for another
   to use. And we do mean resource, as the self-ownership thesis is also
   the means by which the poor become little more than spare parts for the
   wealthy. After all, the poor own their bodies and, consequently, can
   sell all or part of it to a willing party. This means that someone in
   dire economic necessity can sell parts of their body to the rich.
   Ultimately, "[t]o tell a poor man that he has property because he has
   arms and legs -- that the hunger from which he suffers, and his power
   to sleep in the open air are his property, -- is to play upon words,
   and to add insult to injury." [Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 80]

   Obviously the ability to labour is not the property of a person -- it
   is their possession. Use and ownership are fused and cannot be
   separated out. As such, anarchists argue that the history of capitalism
   shows that there is a considerable difference whether one said (like
   the defenders of capitalism) that slavery is wrong because every person
   has a natural right to the property of their own body, or because every
   person has a natural right freely to determine their own destiny (like
   the anarchists). The first kind of right is alienable and in the
   context of a capitalist regime ensures that the many labour for those
   who own the means of life. The second kind of right is inalienable as
   long as a person remained a person and, therefore, liberty or
   self-determination is not a claim to ownership which might be both
   acquired and surrendered, but an inextricable aspect of the activity of
   being human.

   The anarchist position on the inalienable nature of human liberty also
   forms the basis for the excluded to demand access to the means
   necessary to labour. "From the distinction between possession and
   property," argued Proudhon, "arise two sorts of rights: the jus in re,
   the right in a thing, the right by which I may reclaim the property
   which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find it; and jus ad rem, the
   right to a thing, which gives me a claim to become a proprietor . . .
   In the first, possession and property are united; the second includes
   only naked property. With me who, as a labourer, have a right to the
   possession of the products of Nature and my own industry -- and who, as
   a proletaire, enjoy none of them -- it is by virtue of the jus de rem
   that I demand admittance to the jus in re." [Op. Cit., p. 65] Thus to
   make the self-ownership of labour and its products a reality for those
   who do the actual work in society rather than a farce, property must be
   abolished -- both in terms of the means of life and also in defining
   liberty and what it means to be free.

   So, contrary to Rothbard's claim, capitalism in practice uses the
   rhetoric of self-ownership to alienate the right to genuine
   self-ownership because of the authoritarian structure of the workplace,
   which derives from private property. If we desire real self-ownership,
   we cannot renounce it for most of our adult lives by becoming wage
   slaves. Only workers' self-management of production, not capitalism,
   can make self-ownership a reality:

     "They speak of 'inherent rights', 'inalienable rights', 'natural
     rights,' etc . . . Unless the material conditions for equality
     exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal. And unless
     there is equality (and by equality I mean equal chances for every
     one to make the most of himself [or herself]) unless, I say, these
     equal changes exist, freedom, either of though, speech, or action,
     is equally a mockery . . . As long as the working-people . . . tramp
     the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose
     sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest
     the policeman bid them 'move on'; as long as they go from factory to
     factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the
     insults of bosses and foreman, getting the old 'no,' the old shake
     of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they
     wrought; so long as they consent to be herd like cattle, in the
     cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged
     land, the land they cleared, fertilised, cultivated, rendered of
     value . . . so long as they continue to do these things vaguely
     relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or
     politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters,
     so long deliverance will be delayed. When they conceive the
     possibility of a complete international federation of labour, whose
     constituent groups shall take possession of land, mines, factories,
     all the instruments of production . . . , in short, conduct their
     own industry without regulative interference from law-makers or
     employers, then we may hope for the only help which counts for aught
     -- Self-Help; the only condition which can guarantee free speech
     [along with their other rights] (and no paper guarantee needed)."
     [Voltairine de Cleyre, The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader, pp. 4-6]

   To conclude, the idea that capitalism is based on self-ownership is
   radically at odds with reality if, by self-ownership, it is meant
   self-determination or individual autonomy. However, this is not
   surprising given that the rationale behind the self-ownership thesis is
   precisely to justify capitalist hierarchy and its resulting
   restrictions on liberty. Rather than being a defence of liberty,
   self-ownership is designed to facilitate its erosion. In order to make
   the promise of autonomy implied by the concept of "self-ownership" a
   reality, private property will need to be abolished.

   For more discussion of the limitations, contradictions and fallacies of
   defining liberty in terms of self-ownership and property rights, see
   [11]section F.2.

B.4.3 But no one forces you to work for them!

   Of course it is claimed that entering wage labour is a "voluntary"
   undertaking, from which both sides allegedly benefit. However, due to
   past initiations of force (e.g. the seizure of land by conquest), the
   control of the state by the capitalist class plus the tendency for
   capital to concentrate, a relative handful of people now control vast
   wealth, depriving all others access to the means of life. Thus denial
   of free access to the means of life is based ultimately on the
   principle of "might makes right." And as Murray Bookchin so rightly
   points out, "the means of life must be taken for what they literally
   are: the means without which life is impossible. To deny them to people
   is more than 'theft' . . . it is outright homicide." [Remaking Society,
   p. 187]

   David Ellerman has also noted that the past use of force has resulted
   in the majority being limited to those options allowed to them by the
   powers that be:

     "It is a veritable mainstay of capitalist thought . . . that the
     moral flaws of chattel slavery have not survived in capitalism since
     the workers, unlike the slaves, are free people making voluntary
     wage contracts. But it is only that, in the case of capitalism, the
     denial of natural rights is less complete so that the worker has a
     residual legal personality as a free 'commodity owner.' He is thus
     allowed to voluntarily put his own working life to traffic. When a
     robber denies another person's right to make an infinite number of
     other choices besides losing his money or his life and the denial is
     backed up by a gun, then this is clearly robbery even though it
     might be said that the victim making a 'voluntary choice' between
     his remaining options. When the legal system itself denies the
     natural rights of working people in the name of the prerogatives of
     capital, and this denial is sanctioned by the legal violence of the
     state, then the theorists of 'libertarian' capitalism do not
     proclaim institutional robbery, but rather they celebrate the
     'natural liberty' of working people to choose between the remaining
     options of selling their labour as a commodity and being
     unemployed." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader, p. 186]

   Therefore the existence of the labour market depends on the worker
   being separated from the means of production. The natural basis of
   capitalism is wage labour, wherein the majority have little option but
   to sell their skills, labour and time to those who do own the means of
   production. In advanced capitalist countries, less than 10% of the
   working population are self-employed (in 1990, 7.6% in the UK, 8% in
   the USA and Canada - however, this figure includes employers as well,
   meaning that the number of self-employed workers is even smaller!).
   Hence for the vast majority, the labour market is their only option.

   Michael Bakunin notes that these facts put the worker in the position
   of a serf with regard to the capitalist, even though the worker is
   formally "free" and "equal" under the law:

     "Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the
     serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person and
     his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a
     serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs
     over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any
     conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist,
     the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the
     right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he
     does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven
     to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the
     first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a
     theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realisation,
     and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter
     falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply
     a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom --
     voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an
     economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of
     freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real
     slavery." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 187-8]

   Obviously, a company cannot force you to work for them but, in general,
   you have to work for someone. How this situation developed is, of
   course, usually ignored. If not glossed over as irrelevant, some fairy
   tale is spun in which a few bright people saved and worked hard to
   accumulate capital and the lazy majority flocked to be employed by
   these (almost superhuman) geniuses. In the words of one right-wing
   economist (talking specifically of the industrial revolution but whose
   argument is utilised today):

     "The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take
     a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work
     for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they
     were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any
     other field open to them." [Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pp.
     619-20]

   Notice the assumptions. The workers just happen have such a terrible
   set of options -- the employing classes have absolutely nothing to do
   with it. And these owners just happen to have all these means of
   production on their hands while the working class just happen to be
   without property and, as a consequence, forced to sell their labour on
   the owners' terms. That the state enforces capitalist property rights
   and acts to defend the power of the owning class is just another
   co-incidence among many. The possibility that the employing classes
   might be directly implicated in state policies that reduced the
   available options of workers is too ludicrous even to mention.

   Yet in the real world, the power of coincidence to explain all is less
   compelling. Here things are more grim as the owning class clearly
   benefited from numerous acts of state violence and a general legal
   framework which restricted the options available for the workers.
   Apparently we are meant to believe that it is purely by strange
   co-incidence the state was run by the wealthy and owning classes, not
   the working class, and that a whole host of anti-labour laws and
   practices were implemented by random chance.

   It should be stressed that this nonsense, with its underlying
   assumptions and inventions, is still being peddled today. It is being
   repeated to combat the protests that "multinational corporations
   exploit people in poor countries." Yes, it will be readily admitted,
   multinationals do pay lower wages in developing countries than in rich
   ones: that is why they go there. However, it is argued, this represents
   economic advancement compares to what the other options available are.
   As the corporations do not force them to work for them and they would
   have stayed with what they were doing previously the charge of
   exploitation is wrong. Would you, it is stressed, leave your job for
   one with less pay and worse conditions? In fact, the bosses are doing
   them a favour in paying such low wages for the products the companies
   charge such high prices in the developed world for.

   And so, by the same strange co-incidence that marked the industrial
   revolution, capitalists today (in the form of multinational
   corporations) gravitate toward states with terrible human rights
   records. States where, at worse, death squads torture and "disappear"
   union and peasant co-operative organisers or where, at best, attempts
   to organise a union can get you arrested or fired and blacklisted.
   States were peasants are being forced of their land as a result of
   government policies which favour the big landlords. By an equally
   strange coincidence, the foreign policy of the American and European
   governments is devoted to making sure such anti-labour regimes stay in
   power. It is a co-incidence, of course, that such regimes are favoured
   by the multinationals and that these states spend so much effort in
   providing a "market friendly" climate to tempt the corporations to set
   up their sweatshops there. It is also, apparently, just a co-incidence
   that these states are controlled by the local wealthy owning classes
   and subject to economic pressure by the transnationals which invest and
   wish to invest there.

   It is clear that when a person who is mugged hands over their money to
   the mugger they do so because they prefer it to the "next best
   alternative." As such, it is correct that people agree to sell their
   liberty to a boss because their "next best alternative" is worse (utter
   poverty or starvation are not found that appealing for some reason).
   But so what? As anarchists have been pointing out over a century, the
   capitalists have systematically used the state to create a limit
   options for the many, to create buyers' market for labour by skewing
   the conditions under which workers can sell their labour in the bosses
   favour. To then merrily answer all criticisms of this set-up with the
   response that the workers "voluntarily agreed" to work on those terms
   is just hypocrisy. Does it really change things if the mugger (the
   state) is only the agent (hired thug) of another criminal (the owning
   class)?

   As such, hymns to the "free market" seem somewhat false when the
   reality of the situation is such that workers do not need to be forced
   at gun point to enter a specific workplace because of past (and more
   often than not, current) "initiation of force" by the capitalist class
   and the state which have created the objective conditions within which
   we make our employment decisions. Before any specific labour market
   contract occurs, the separation of workers from the means of production
   is an established fact (and the resulting "labour" market usually gives
   the advantage to the capitalists as a class). So while we can usually
   pick which capitalist to work for, we, in general, cannot choose to
   work for ourselves (the self-employed sector of the economy is tiny,
   which indicates well how spurious capitalist liberty actually is). Of
   course, the ability to leave employment and seek it elsewhere is an
   important freedom. However, this freedom, like most freedoms under
   capitalism, is of limited use and hides a deeper anti-individual
   reality.

   As Karl Polanyi puts it:

     "In human terms such a postulate [of a labour market] implied for
     the worker extreme instability of earnings, utter absence of
     professional standards, abject readiness to be shoved and pushed
     about indiscriminately, complete dependence on the whims of the
     market. [Ludwig Von] Mises justly argued that if workers 'did not
     act as trade unionists, but reduced their demands and changed their
     locations and occupations according to the labour market, they would
     eventually find work.' This sums up the position under a system
     based on the postulate of the commodity character of labour. It is
     not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale,
     to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be
     allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or
     destroyed." [The Great Transformation, p. 176]

   (Although we should point out that von Mises argument that workers will
   "eventually" find work as well as being nice and vague -- how long is
   "eventually"?, for example -- is contradicted by actual experience. As
   the Keynesian economist Michael Stewart notes, in the nineteenth
   century workers "who lost their jobs had to redeploy fast or starve
   (and even this feature of the ninetheenth century economy. . . did not
   prevent prolonged recessions)" [Keynes in the 1990s, p. 31] Workers
   "reducing their demands" may actually worsen an economic slump, causing
   more unemployment in the short run and lengthening the length of the
   crisis. We address the issue of unemployment and workers "reducing
   their demands" in more detail in [12]section C.9).

   It is sometimes argued that capital needs labour, so both have an equal
   say in the terms offered, and hence the labour market is based on
   "liberty." But for capitalism to be based on real freedom or on true
   free agreement, both sides of the capital/labour divide must be equal
   in bargaining power, otherwise any agreement would favour the most
   powerful at the expense of the other party. However, due to the
   existence of private property and the states needed to protect it, this
   equality is de facto impossible, regardless of the theory. This is
   because. in general, capitalists have three advantages on the "free"
   labour market-- the law and state placing the rights of property above
   those of labour, the existence of unemployment over most of the
   business cycle and capitalists having more resources to fall back on.
   We will discuss each in turn.

   The first advantage, namely property owners having the backing of the
   law and state, ensures that when workers go on strike or use other
   forms of direct action (or even when they try to form a union) the
   capitalist has the full backing of the state to employ scabs, break
   picket lines or fire "the ring-leaders." This obviously gives employers
   greater power in their bargaining position, placing workers in a weak
   position (a position that may make them, the workers, think twice
   before standing up for their rights).

   The existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle ensures
   that "employers have a structural advantage in the labour market,
   because there are typically more candidates. . . than jobs for them to
   fill." This means that "[c]ompetition in labour markets us typically
   skewed in favour of employers: it is a buyers market. And in a buyer's
   market, it is the sellers who compromise. Competition for labour is not
   strong enough to ensure that workers' desires are always satisified."
   [Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American, p. 71, p. 129] If the labour
   market generally favours the employer, then this obviously places
   working people at a disadvantage as the threat of unemployment and the
   hardships associated with it encourages workers to take any job and
   submit to their bosses demands and power while employed. Unemployment,
   in other words, serves to discipline labour. The higher the prevailing
   unemployment rate, the harder it is to find a new job, which raises the
   cost of job loss and makes it less likely for workers to strike, join
   unions, or to resist employer demands, and so on.

   As Bakunin argued, "the property owners... are likewise forced to seek
   out and purchase labour... but not in the same measure . . . [there is
   no] equality between those who offer their labour and those who
   purchase it." [Op. Cit., p. 183] This ensures that any "free
   agreements" made benefit the capitalists more than the workers (see the
   [13]next section on periods of full employment, when conditions tilt in
   favour of working people).

   Lastly, there is the issue of inequalities in wealth and so resources.
   The capitalist generally has more resources to fall back on during
   strikes and while waiting to find employees (for example, large
   companies with many factories can swap production to their other
   factories if one goes on strike). And by having more resources to fall
   back on, the capitalist can hold out longer than the worker, so placing
   the employer in a stronger bargaining position and so ensuring labour
   contracts favour them. This was recognised by Adam Smith:

     "It is not difficult to foresee which of the two parties [workers
     and capitalists] must, upon all ordinary occasions... force the
     other into a compliance with their terms... In all such disputes the
     masters can hold out much longer... though they did not employ a
     single workman [the masters] could generally live a year or two upon
     the stocks which they already acquired. Many workmen could not
     subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scare any a year
     without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary
     to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so
     immediate. . . [I]n disputes with their workmen, masters must
     generally have the advantage." [Wealth of Nations, pp. 59-60]

   How little things have changed.

   So, while it is definitely the case that no one forces you to work for
   them, the capitalist system is such that you have little choice but to
   sell your liberty and labour on the "free market." Not only this, but
   the labour market (which is what makes capitalism capitalism) is
   (usually) skewed in favour of the employer, so ensuring that any "free
   agreements" made on it favour the boss and result in the workers
   submitting to domination and exploitation. This is why anarchists
   support collective organisation (such as unions) and resistance (such
   as strikes), direct action and solidarity to make us as, if not more,
   powerful than our exploiters and win important reforms and improvements
   (and, ultimately, change society), even when faced with the
   disadvantages on the labour market we have indicated. The despotism
   associated with property (to use Proudhon's expression) is resisted by
   those subject to it and, needless to say, the boss does not always win.

B.4.4 But what about periods of high demand for labour?

   Of course there are periods when the demand for labour exceeds supply,
   but these periods hold the seeds of depression for capitalism, as
   workers are in an excellent position to challenge, both individually
   and collectively, their allotted role as commodities. This point is
   discussed in more detail in section C.7 ([14]What causes the capitalist
   business cycle? ) and so we will not do so here. For now it's enough to
   point out that during normal times (i.e. over most of the business
   cycle), capitalists often enjoy extensive authority over workers, an
   authority deriving from the unequal bargaining power between capital
   and labour, as noted by Adam Smith and many others.

   However, this changes during times of high demand for labour. To
   illustrate, let us assume that supply and demand approximate each
   other. It is clear that such a situation is only good for the worker.
   Bosses cannot easily fire a worker as there is no one to replace them
   and the workers, either collectively by solidarity or individually by
   "exit" (i.e. quitting and moving to a new job), can ensure a boss
   respects their interests and, indeed, can push these interests to the
   full. The boss finds it hard to keep their authority intact or from
   stopping wages rising and causing a profits squeeze. In other words, as
   unemployment drops, workers power increases.

   Looking at it another way, giving someone the right to hire and fire an
   input into a production process vests that individual with considerable
   power over that input unless it is costless for that input to move;
   that is unless the input is perfectly mobile. This is only approximated
   in real life for labour during periods of full employment, and so
   perfect mobility of labour costs problems for a capitalist firm because
   under such conditions workers are not dependent on a particular
   capitalist and so the level of worker effort is determined far more by
   the decisions of workers (either collectively or individually) than by
   managerial authority. The threat of firing cannot be used as a threat
   to increase effort, and hence production, and so full employment
   increases workers power.

   With the capitalist firm being a fixed commitment of resources, this
   situation is intolerable. Such times are bad for business and so occur
   rarely with free market capitalism (we must point out that in
   neo-classical economics, it is assumed that all inputs - including
   capital - are perfectly mobile and so the theory ignores reality and
   assumes away capitalist production itself!).

   During the last period of capitalist boom, the post-war period, we can
   see the breakdown of capitalist authority and the fear this held for
   the ruling elite. The Trilateral Commission's 1975 report, which
   attempted to "understand" the growing discontent among the general
   population, makes our point well. In periods of full employment,
   according to the report, there is "an excess of democracy." In other
   words, due to the increased bargaining power workers gained during a
   period of high demand for labour, people started thinking about and
   acting upon their needs as humans, not as commodities embodying labour
   power. This naturally had devastating effects on capitalist and statist
   authority: "People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those
   whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age,
   rank, status, expertise, character, or talent".

   This loosening of the bonds of compulsion and obedience led to
   "previously passive or unorganised groups in the population, blacks,
   Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women...
   embark[ing] on concerted efforts to establish their claims to
   opportunities, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered
   themselves entitled to before."

   Such an "excess" of participation in politics of course posed a serious
   threat to the status quo, since for the elites who authored the report,
   it was considered axiomatic that "the effective operation of a
   democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and
   non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups. . . . In
   itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently
   undemocratic, but it is also one of the factors which has enabled
   democracy to function effectively." Such a statement reveals the
   hollowness of the establishment's concept of 'democracy,' which in
   order to function effectively (i.e. to serve elite interests) must be
   "inherently undemocratic."

   Any period where people feel empowered allows them to communicate with
   their fellows, identify their needs and desires, and resist those
   forces that deny their freedom to manage their own lives. Such
   resistance strikes a deadly blow at the capitalist need to treat people
   as commodities, since (to re-quote Polanyi) people no longer feel that
   it "is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for
   sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be
   allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or
   destroyed." Instead, as thinking and feeling people, they act to
   reclaim their freedom and humanity.

   As noted at the beginning of this section, the economic effects of such
   periods of empowerment and revolt are discussed in [15]section C.7. We
   will end by quoting the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, who noted that
   a continuous capitalist boom would not be in the interests of the
   ruling class. In 1943, in response to the more optimistic Keynesians,
   he noted that "to maintain the high level of employment. . . in the
   subsequent boom, a strong opposition of 'business leaders' is likely to
   be encountered. . . lasting full employment is not at all to their
   liking. The workers would 'get out of hand' and the 'captains of
   industry' would be anxious 'to teach them a lesson'" because "under a
   regime of permanent full employment, 'the sack' would cease to play its
   role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would
   be undermined and the self assurance and class consciousness of the
   working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements
   in conditions of work would create political tension. . . 'discipline
   in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated by
   business leaders than profits. Their class interest tells them that
   lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view and that
   unemployment is an integral part of the normal capitalist system."
   [quoted by Malcolm C. Sawyer, The Economics of Michal Kalecki, p. 139
   and p. 138]

   Therefore, periods when the demand for labour outstrips supply are not
   healthy for capitalism, as they allow people to assert their freedom
   and humanity -- both fatal to the system. This is why news of large
   numbers of new jobs sends the stock market plunging and why capitalists
   are so keen these days to maintain a "natural" rate of unemployment
   (that it has to be maintained indicates that it is not "natural").
   Kalecki, we must point out, also correctly predicted the rise of "a
   powerful bloc" between "big business and the rentier interests" against
   full employment and that "they would probably find more than one
   economist to declare that the situation was manifestly unsound." The
   resulting "pressure of all these forces, and in particular big
   business" would "induce the Government to return to. . . orthodox
   policy." [Kalecki, quoted by Sawyer, Op. Cit., p. 140] This is exactly
   what happened in the 1970s, with the monetarists and other sections of
   the "free market" right providing the ideological support for the
   business lead class war, and whose "theories" (when applied) promptly
   generated massive unemployment, thus teaching the working class the
   required lesson.

   So, although detrimental to profit-making, periods of recession and
   high unemployment are not only unavoidable but are necessary to
   capitalism in order to "discipline" workers and "teach them a lesson."
   And in all, it is little wonder that capitalism rarely produces periods
   approximating full employment -- they are not in its interests (see
   also section [16]C.9). The dynamics of capitalism makes recession and
   unemployment inevitable, just as it makes class struggle (which creates
   these dynamics) inevitable.

B.4.5 But I want to be "left alone"!

   It is ironic that supporters of laissez-faire capitalism, such as
   "Libertarians" and "anarcho"-capitalists, should claim that they want
   to be "left alone," since capitalism never allows this. As Max Stirner
   expressed it:

     "Restless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm
     enjoyment. We do not get the comfort of our possessions. . ." [Max
     Stirner The Ego and Its Own, p. 268]

   Capitalism cannot let us "take breath" simply because it needs to grow
   or die, which puts constant pressure on both workers and capitalists
   (see [17]section D.4.1). Workers can never relax or be free of anxiety
   about losing their jobs, because if they do not work, they do not eat,
   nor can they ensure that their children will get a better life. Within
   the workplace, they are not "left alone" by their bosses in order to
   manage their own activities. Instead, they are told what to do, when to
   do it and how to do it. Indeed, the history of experiments in workers'
   control and self-management within capitalist companies confirms our
   claims that, for the worker, capitalism is incompatible with the desire
   to be "left alone." As an illustration we will use the "Pilot Program"
   conducted by General Electric between 1968 and 1972.

   General Electric proposed the "Pilot Program" as a means of overcoming
   the problems they faced with introducing Numeric Control (N/C)
   machinery into its plant at Lynn River Works, Massachusetts. Faced with
   rising tensions on the shop floor, bottle-necks in production and
   low-quality products, GE management tried a scheme of "job enrichment"
   based on workers' control of production in one area of the plant. By
   June 1970 the workers' involved were "on their own" (as one manager put
   it) and "[i]n terms of group job enlargement this was when the Pilot
   Project really began, with immediate results in increased output and
   machine utilisation, and a reduction on manufacturing losses. As one
   union official remarked two years later, 'The fact that we broke down a
   traditional policy of GE [that the union could never have a hand in
   managing the business] was in itself satisfying, especially when we
   could throw success up to them to boot.'" [David Noble, Forces of
   Production, p. 295]

   The project, after some initial scepticism, proved to be a great
   success with the workers involved. Indeed, other workers in the factory
   desired to be included and the union soon tried to get it spread
   throughout the plant and into other GE locations. The success of the
   scheme was that it was based on workers' managing their own affairs
   rather than being told what to do by their bosses -- "We are human
   beings," said one worker, "and want to be treated as such." [quoted by
   Noble, Op. Cit., p. 292] To be fully human means to be free to govern
   oneself in all aspects of life, including production.

   However, just after a year of the workers being given control over
   their working lives, management stopped the project. Why? "In the eyes
   of some management supporters of the 'experiment,' the Pilot Program
   was terminated because management as a whole refused to give up any of
   its traditional authority . . . [t]he Pilot Program foundered on the
   basic contradiction of capitalist production: Who's running the shop?"
   [Noble, Op. Cit., p. 318]

   Noble goes on to argue that to GE's top management, "the union's desire
   to extend the program appeared as a step toward greater workers control
   over production and, as such, a threat to the traditional authority
   rooted in private ownership of the means of production. Thus the
   decision to terminate represented a defence not only of the
   prerogatives of production supervisors and plant managers but also of
   the power vested in property ownership." He notes that this result was
   not an isolated case and that the "demise of the GE Pilot Program
   followed the typical pattern for such 'job enrichment experiments'"
   [Op. Cit., p. 318 and p. 320] Even though "[s]everal dozen
   well-documented experiments show that productivity increases and social
   problems decrease when workers participate in the work decisions
   affecting their lives" [Department of Health, Education and Welfare
   study quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p. 322] such schemes are ended by
   bosses seeking to preserve their own power, the power that flows from
   private property.

   As one worker in the GE Pilot Program stated, "[w]e just want to be
   left alone." They were not -- capitalist social relations prohibit such
   a possibility (as Noble correctly notes, "the 'way of life' for the
   management meant controlling the lives of others" [Op. Cit., p. 294 and
   p. 300]). In spite of improved productivity, projects in workers'
   control are scrapped because they undermined both the power of the
   capitalists -- and by undermining their power, you potentially
   undermine their profits too ("If we're all one, for manufacturing
   reasons, we must share in the fruits equitably, just like a co-op
   business." [GE Pilot Program worker, quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p.
   295]).

   As we argue in more detail in [18]section J.5.12, profit maximisation
   can work against efficiency, meaning that capitalism can harm the
   overall economy by promoting less efficient production techniques (i.e.
   hierarchical ones against egalitarian ones) because it is in the
   interests of capitalists to do so and the capitalist market rewards
   that behaviour. This is because, ultimately, profits are unpaid labour.
   If you empower labour, give workers' control over their work then they
   will increase efficiency and productivity (they know how to do their
   job the best) but you also erode authority structures within the
   workplace. Workers' will seek more and more control (freedom naturally
   tries to grow) and this, as the Pilot Program worker clearly saw,
   implies a co-operative workplace in which workers', not managers,
   decide what to do with the surplus produced. By threatening power, you
   threaten profits (or, more correctly, who controls the profit and where
   it goes). With the control over production and who gets to control any
   surplus in danger, it is unsurprising that companies soon abandon such
   schemes and return to the old, less efficient, hierarchical schemes
   based on "Do what you are told, for as long as you are told." Such a
   regime is hardly fit for free people and, as Noble notes, the regime
   that replaced the GE Pilot Program was "designed to 'break' the pilots
   of their new found 'habits' of self-reliance, self-discipline, and
   self-respect." [Op. Cit., p. 307]

   Thus the experience of workers' control project within capitalist firms
   indicates well that capitalism cannot "leave you alone" if you are a
   wage slave.

   Moreover, capitalists themselves cannot relax because they must ensure
   their workers' productivity rises faster than their workers' wages,
   otherwise their business will fail (see sections [19]C.2 and [20]C.3).
   This means that every company has to innovate or be left behind, to be
   put out of business or work. Hence the boss is not "left alone" --
   their decisions are made under the duress of market forces, of the
   necessities imposed by competition on individual capitalists. Restless
   acquisition -- in this context, the necessity to accumulate capital in
   order to survive in the market -- always haunts the capitalist. And
   since unpaid labour is the key to capitalist expansion, work must
   continue to exist and grow -- necessitating the boss to control the
   working hours of the worker to ensure that they produce more goods than
   they receive in wages. The boss is not "left alone" nor do they leave
   the worker alone.

   These facts, based upon the authority relations associated with private
   property and relentless competition, ensure that the desire to be "left
   alone" cannot be satisfied under capitalism.

   As Murray Bookchin observes:

     "Despite their assertions of autonomy and distrust of state
     authority . . . classical liberal thinkers did not in the last
     instance hold to the notion that the individual is completely free
     from lawful guidance. Indeed, their interpretation of autonomy
     actually presupposed quite definite arrangements beyond the
     individual -- notably, the laws of the marketplace. Individual
     autonomy to the contrary, these laws constitute a social organising
     system in which all 'collections of individuals' are held under the
     sway of the famous 'invisible hand' of competition. Paradoxically,
     the laws of the marketplace override the exercise of 'free will' by
     the same sovereign individuals who otherwise constitute the
     "collection of individuals." ["Communalism: The Democratic Dimension
     of Anarchism", pp. 1-17, Democracy and Nature no. 8, p. 4]

   Human interaction is an essential part of life. Anarchism proposes to
   eliminate only undesired social interactions and authoritarian
   impositions, which are inherent in capitalism and indeed in any
   hierarchical form of socio-economic organisation (e.g. state
   socialism). Hermits soon become less than human, as social interaction
   enriches and develops individuality. Capitalism may attempt to reduce
   us to hermits, only "connected" by the market, but such a denial of our
   humanity and individuality inevitably feeds the spirit of revolt. In
   practice the "laws" of the market and the hierarchy of capital will
   never "leave one alone," but instead, crush one's individuality and
   freedom. Yet this aspect of capitalism conflicts with the human
   "instinct for freedom," as Noam Chomsky describes it, and hence there
   arises a counter-tendency toward radicalisation and rebellion among any
   oppressed people (see [21]section J).

   One last point. The desire to "be left alone" often expresses two
   drastically different ideas -- the wish to be your own master and
   manage your own affairs and the desire by bosses and landlords to have
   more power over their property. However, the authority exercised by
   such owners over their property is also exercised over those who use
   that property. Therefore, the notion of "being left alone" contains two
   contradictory aspects within a class ridden and hierarchical society.
   Obviously anarchists are sympathetic to the first, inherently
   libertarian, aspect -- the desire to manage your own life, in your own
   way -- but we reject the second aspect and any implication that it is
   in the interests of the governed to leave those in power alone. Rather,
   it is in the interest of the governed to subject those with authority
   over them to as much control as possible -- for obvious reasons.

   Therefore, working people are more or less free to the extent that they
   restrict the ability of their bosses to be "left alone." One of the
   aims of anarchists within a capitalist society is ensure that those in
   power are not "left alone" to exercise their authority over those
   subject to it. We see solidarity, direct action and workplace and
   community organisation as a means of interfering with the authority of
   the state, capitalists and property owners until such time as we can
   destroy such authoritarian social relationships once and for all.

   Hence anarchist dislike of the term "laissez-faire" -- within a class
   society it can only mean protecting the powerful against the working
   class (under the banner of "neutrally" enforcing property rights and so
   the power derived from them). However, we are well aware of the other,
   libertarian, vision expressed in the desire to be "left alone." That is
   the reason we have discussed why capitalist society can never actually
   achieve that desire -- it is handicapped by its hierarchical and
   competitive nature -- and how such a desire can be twisted into a means
   of enhancing the power of the few over the many.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html#secb43
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB3.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD1.html
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html#secb43
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca28
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB1.html
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secF2.html#secf22
  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html#secb43
  11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secF2.html
  12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC9.html
  13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html#secb44
  14. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC7.html
  15. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC7.html
  16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC9.html
  17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD4.html#secd41
  18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj512
  19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC2.html
  20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC3.html
  21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJcon.html
