As a person with family living under an actual dictatorship, I’d like to point out some differences.
You can leave a job. You’re generally not killed for poor performance at a job.
I’ll stop there. I think that’s enough to shatter this very poor comparison.
You can leave a job
This is true for most people, but not all. Of course not being able to do so would constitute a form of slavery, but that is just the reality for a lot of people and I think if we are honest about the world we should admit that. Do agree softly on not downplaying political dictatorships though.
Oh people can absolutely leave jobs. It’s eating they can’t stop doing. I mean they can stop that too, I guess.
If we’re going to invoke literal slavery then I don’t think self immolation is off the table to mention either.
With regards to the literal definition of slavery I would argue it is not only restricted to chattel slavery, since that would deny most cases of forced and unfree labour. That someone can control a person, effectively owning them, without a mandate from any government or law is precisely the point. It shows the need for a more democratic approach to work and makes evident a discrepancy within self proclaimed free and democratic societies. That is what I think is the point being made by OP, not to belittle those who live under oppressive dictatorships (which is horrible and often an order of magnitude worse), but to remind those that don’t that for big parts of their lives they are not truly free themselves either.
I understand what’s being said, I just don’t find it valid or useful. People’s choices being limited is not to be equated with slavery. Someone having influence over someone is not to be equated with slavery. Living in a dictatorship is not to be equated with slavery. Slavery is slavery and working at a job is neither slavery nor living in a dictatorship.
Further, democracy is not some absolute freedom void of all controlling influence from others. Choices are limited under democracy too. I think the word you’re looking for is anarchy.
It is more than fair to disagree, after all there is somewhat an hyperbole hidden behind wordings like “a form of slavery”. However, I do think the sentiment is an important one: that freedom and democracy are usually exempt from our work lives, even if we are living in democratic countries, and that it does not need to be as such.
I have more chance of rising to a position of influence at my job than in our democracy.
I can leave or join these “dictatorships” easily.
My dictator takes my questions in public weekly and make a good faith effort to answer them. My democratic leader spams me texts asking for money.
My dictatorship works very hard to make sure that everyone is treated with respect regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. and they fire people for sexual harassment. My “democracy” is full of gerrymandering and many other forms of institutional racism. Sexual predators walk the halls of power.
My dictatorship reviews everyone’s pay annually to ensure that we do t have pay inequities along those lines. They also lift any wages that are below living wage. My dictatorship pays my healthcare where my “democracy” steadfastly refuses to take care of fundamental basics.
Anyway…. The idea that a corporation is nothing but nonstop rain down of executive decisions is also wrong. Small teams and groups are absolutely leaders as well. They know their area best and propose things to do in that area. They are accountable to the executives, who need to balance all needs and keep people from building little empires off in the corner. But the executives never tell us what to do in our area. We tell them what we’re going to do and what more they should fund. We don’t have dictator power, but the point is neither so they.
So really, just no. I know this “work is a dictatorship” meme is appealing to a teenager working in retail but it’s a childish metaphor. I do happen to have an extraordinarily good job and I have risen to a mid level of authority there so I don’t feel like a powerless drone. That’s not true for everyone. But neither is the teenage angst.
You could also say families are dictatorships since parents make the important decisions and can’t be overridden by kids. But you’d be stupid to look at it that way and ignore the nonstop care and consideration and support that the parents shower on their kids, while they blunder about selfishly and oblivious.
Dictatorship! To arms! Just… laughable!
I am sorry, but your take seems to be highly influenced by your own privileges and willful ignorance. You talk about your job opportunities and benefits within your organization, ignoring that I wrote
This is true for most people, but not all.
meaning you are obviously in the fortunate group, and your anecdotal stories are consequently irrelevant to the points being made about the less fortunate one.
The idea that only edgy teenagers who hate hard and honest work can get behind this sentiment is plain reductionist and false. Furthermore, if I understand you correctly from
My “democracy” is full of gerrymandering and many other forms of institutional racism. Sexual predators walk the halls of power.
I would guess you are an American, and if so I hope you are aware that your institutions are deeply flawed and in a lot of cases really undemocratic, which makes the particular comparisons you make to your job even less apt.
You also get a little into the issue of the often strong hierarchical structures of family and other form of tribes, which is actually of some relevance in the question of freedom, but totally besides the point with respect to democracy in the workplace. I am not telling you that your job sucks, I am just stating that there are jobs that suck and that they are mostly filled with underprivileged people, many of whom are there precisely due to lack of options. That is really one of the main issues that socialism tries to answer: equal opportunity for all. Because, although you may not like it, your success and others lack of it is not purely meritocratic and just.
There are socioeconomic factors that far exceed the impact of skills and socialism, workplace democracy and the likes is more just, more moral and gives greater opportunity for all than a capitalist society such as the US. Thinking otherwise is laughable and you being a reactionary content with status quo is unsurprising given your self-proclaimed privilege.
You think working for a corporation is the same as living under a dictatorship?
Yeah, this thought is someone trying to compare apples to oranges.
Then there’s the throw away comment of how you barely know anyone there, that’s a personal thing. I work for a small company now but I used to work for a hospital with over 2,000 employees, I didn’t know most of them but I knew the 100 or so people I interacted with pretty well and did things outside of work with many of them on more than one occasion.
As I walk through the front door of my air-conditioned office building and say hello to the receptionist I can’t help but feel this is just what it was like living under Marcos or Pinochet.
/s
Plenty of people live comfortable lives under dictatorship, you can compare that office worker to a citizen in Qatar and they’d probably live similar lives materially.
You could also compare the sweat shop worker for the company that office workers company contracts their manufacturing out to, to the migrant pseudo-slave workers in Qatar.
the migrant
pseudo-slaveslave workers in Qatar.Think you had a typo there^
To the level that the corporation has control over your life, yeah. What do you think banana republics are? The more the company can control your life, the more its undemocratic nature becomes apparent. Working for a small company in a competitive market might not look like a company town, but it has the same fundamental structure as one. The main difference is that the small company has to offer a good deal to their employees compared to competitors. If the company is the only hirer in town, then they’ll suddenly not have as much motivation to treat you well. If they control the housing, means of travel, and cops as well, you’re basically enslaved.
Exactly. It’s soul-crushing, but generally not body-crushing.
The CEO can take away your livelihood at a whim, destroying your future career, and everyone has to tug the forelock.
Dictatorships are not bad in and of themselves. A benign dictatorship could be the most effective form of governing, there’s just no mechanism to stop them when they stop being benign.
And on the flip side a CEO can improve and expand many people’s careers and therefore wealth.
A dictatorship like Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Hitler, etc can flow all the wealth and power to themselves, oppressing the people under them.
The point it: You can’t talk about best case scenario of one and not the other. Usually, as it’s human nature, both are going to sequester wealth and power for themselves over the people under them, but a bad dictatorship is leagues worse than a bad company/CEO.
Yeah, there’s good CEOs and bad ones. But the hierarchical power structure is the same.
CEOs are like kings of their empire.
HR is like the court jester
I have a problem with the willingly in this thought.
The issue is that people are pretty unwilling to be homeless or starve if there’s an alternative (no matter how terrible).
Working is the worst way to prevent yourself from starvation and homelessness except for all of the others.
But we don’t need to accept a dictatorship to work. We should be working towards democratizing the workplace, forming unions, and creating worker owned businesses.
Yes, agreed 100%. Should. Til then though, still gotta eat and also not be homeless.
Yep. We have to deal with it for now, but we shouldn’t accept it as the way I has to be. People should be going to their work and speaking with their coworkers about unions and other options. We’re all in this together against the owners. They try to turn us against each other.
The overlap of people willing to let themselves be beat down and exploited at work, and the people that would actually fight and die for democracy is slim to none.
Resource extraction companies are notoriously bad employers. I’d bet there’s more of an overlap in those sort of jobs.
Lots of people are not willing to die for democracy, some even fight against it out of ignorance or powerlust.
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That’s not what dictatorship means
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Someone tells you what to do, and you have to obey or else you lose your housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities.
This is so wrong. You are not entitled to basic necessities. You have to provide them for yourself, that is the natural order. This is what most of humanity did for milenia via subsistence farming and it sucked.
Sooner or later people decided that working in a factory sucked a little less than working in the field. Then more recently, people decided working in an office sucked a little less than working in the factory.
Employment is not slavery. You can quit anytime.
I think they just want to roleplay some ideology that doesn’t actually exist or possibly function. This is another reminder that comment scores have nothing to do with how sane or correct the comment is lol.
Just because A and B have overlap doesn’t mean A = B. My boss can’t throw me in a jail cell or have me shot.
Yes, because that’s not what happens lol. You don’t immediately lose those things unless you sit around and do nothing. That’s true of literally everything, even communism.
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You went off into a completely separate topic. Also union fights for workers, but it does not imply a democracy. It just means being able to fight back against exploitation. There will still be a CEO in charge and you’ll have no say.
Sorry.
Directorship*
Functionally, they are the same.
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I would starve without a job. (without welfare, in some countries, this is not enough)
There is an order of magnitude here. In a way, I’m being hyperbolic. But I do want to highlight the similarity between the two.
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Search for a new job since your current one is treating you terribly
What job (aka enslavement apparently)do you have irl
Factory worker.
Definitely not a rollform operator if that is the case. Machine builder?
So how would a factory line work without leadership lol
Voting for a leader democratically does not mean that there is no leader.
That makes zero sense in a workplace context
I have my ideas.
What’s your job?
You are incorrect. I absolutely run my businesses as a dictatorship because I’m the owner. We don’t “vote” on what to do, if you don’t like my ideas you are FIRED. Same goes for my tenants, if you don’t like my rules then get out of my property!!
I dictatorship would mean they’d die if they didn’t do what you liked lol. It’s in a government context, not a contractual obligation. A tennet can find another place to live, and a worker can find another company.
In what world does a dictatorship require everyone else to die if they don’t agree? They have control over the institution, but they don’t have total control over every individual.
You do not know what you are talking about. If you want to run your business as a democracy fine but you won’t be successful. I will continue running mine with an iron fist as a dictatorship.
It’s literally the definition, you are just objectively wrong
You are wrong, and stop telling me how to run my business
It’s… not weird at all. Democracy is a form of governance that permeates all our lives and controls the state that has a monopoly of violence that can be used against us and take away our rights. It’s not something we can opt-out of so it’s important that everyone has a say in it.
Small groups forming to do things like commerce or non-profits or whatever are completely voluntary and can’t take our rights away. The fact is, these authoritarian-like structures are efficient and effective. Even employee-owned corporations tend to organize this way by electing the officers.
Would love to see more companies experiment with democratic organizations though.
Arguably technology has changed this paradigm a lot. More people now just means more thinkers, who work best not under stress
No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.
-George Patton
Careful you might start thinking about democratizing the workplace. If you start doing that you might wind up one of us filthy syndicalists
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
Frankly, I’m a coward. There’s very little I’d be willing to die for and democracy certainly isn’t one of those things.
I’m sure plenty of Ukrainians thought the same pre invasion. Seen a fair few IT technicians flying fpv drones on the frontline
Plus, just working in a munitions factory makes you a target, and Russia has been indiscriminate in their targeting the civilian population
I doubt I would suddenly get brave if the U.S. was invaded. I’ve never even picked up a gun.
I served in the military and qualified as an expert marksman having never handled a firearm prior, and I wouldn’t honestly pick up a gun to kill anyone either. I’m also a coward. I found a role that would ensure I was as safe as possible at all times, cuz I’m a pacifist, but wanted college paid for. I’d have had to explicitly request to be put in danger, which I did not do.
The good news is you don’t have to be willing to shoot/kill anyone to offer tangible support if shit hits the fan :)
(I actively discourage people from joining the military now, though… I grew up and learned what was really going on, and I absolutely don’t support it)
I feel like most ukrainians aren’t fighting for democracy. They’re kleptocracy is marginally better than the one in Russia, but not worth dying over. Their fighting either for nationalism and hatred of Russian imperialism that’s oppressed them for centuries, or personal honor and fear of being called a coward by their wider social group.
In general nationalism and personal honor are the main reasons people will voluntarily sign up, outside of personal gain and mercenaries. In the west that nationalism gets tied up with ideas of democracy, but if a dictatorship took over the u.s. I doubt there’d be much of a difference in volunteers for the next war.
survey research from the MOBILISE Project reveals a staggering 35 percentage-point rise in Ukrainians’ support for democracy over just three years. Ukrainians moved toward greater support for democracy between 2019 and 2022 precisely because ordinary citizens were able to observe democracy in action and working even in the face of major compounding crises
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/why-ukrainians-are-rallying-around-democracy/
I worked for a cooperative once. It had its upsides. But it eventually lost steam because of the diffusion of responsibility. At its peak it had a strong core council of 5-7 official members looking after it and it flourished. But it was somewhat of a labor of love and over time they had kids, moved away, etc and eventually there just weren’t enough committed core people to keep it going.
A small business generally has one person who is ready to do absolutely whatever it takes to make it a success. This can be game changing. All their skin is in the game. If they have to skip a paycheck they do. If they have to work all night they do.
You know, a dictator, as you call them -_-
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The dominant cultural ideology blinds us to the obvious contradictions.
You can go to work for yourself, you can’t fork your own country.
I don’t have a choice. If I wanna do the kind of work I enjoy and pays enough to feed my family, I have to submit to corporate dictatorship.
