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The private sector can be authoritarian, but only governments can be totalitarian. . . .

Over at Delaware Watch, Dana has an interesting post on The Spreading Totalitarianism of the Private Sector, which I recommend to you. I agree with many of his observations, if not necessarily his conclusions.

After detailing the kind of enforced groupthink ceremonies at MBNA that George Orwell appeared to describe in 1984, he concludes [edited for brevity not to distort; go read the original]:

I am not making a case for smoking or obesity. I'm arguing that in the US we locate the fear of authoritarian control over our lives in the wrong sphere of influence. We fear it's the public sector that primarily threatens our liberty when, in fact , it's the workplace in the private sector that is undermining our liberties....

Some mistakes are so elementary that one must resort to uttering truisms to make the point: Totalitarian control is totalitarian control whether it occurs in the public or private sector....

But we mustn't control the private sector democratically through our elected government. That would be totalitarian. But it's perfectly OK to let the private sector to totally control working people while the government does nothing about it.

That makes no sense at all.


First, let's start by acknowledging the underlying truth of his central point: "Totalitarian control is totalitarian control whether it occurs in the public or private sector."

There is one difference that he omits, which is that a totalitarian State (as opposed to a Totalitarian corporation) is empowered and sanctioned to use direct (even deadly) force to prevent you from leaving or actually imprison you and seize your property, because it possesses the full accoutrements of national sovereignty. All the corporation can do is eliminate your salary and potentially blackball you in other areas of the industry. Yet I don't want to argue that part, because Dana's point is essential correct: many private organizations seek to control our lives in similar fashion, with similar tactics, as the government.

Now here's where I part company with him: "But we mustn't control the private sector democratically through our elected government. That would be totalitarian. But it's perfectly OK to let the private sector to totally control working people while the government does nothing about it. That makes no sense at all."

In order to make my case, however, I'm going to have to lay a little groundwork. Bear with me.

As a Libertarian I oppose coercion--for which I use a much broader definition than many Radicals who only consider threatening direct physical harm to be coercive--in all forms.

That means I necessarily oppose Corporatism as well as Statism (in fact, I probably prefer the term "corporate statism").

Just as I believe that the government only has the right to intervene in my life to keep me from harming someone else (and ALWAYS bears the burden of proof for such interventions), I believe that my employer only has the right to intervene in my life in aspects that have a direct application to my ability to perform my job.

Let's unpack that a little: If I am meeting and greeting the public in a service-oriented business, then my employer has the right to expect good personal hygiene, professional manners, professional dress, attention to detail, punctuality, etc. etc. What happens if I develop a weight problem? Depends on the job and my ability to look and act professional. If (after the operation) I am a waitress serving drinks in a strip club that advertises itself as being staffed by skinny, seductive women, and I gain forty pounds (for whatever reason) I am placing my job in jeopardy.

If I am a substance-abuse counselor, my employer's reputation, certification, and liability all suggest that I should be willing to accept the invasion of privacy involved in routine drug testing. On the other hand, if I'm a checker at Acme and I do not show up for work blitzed out of my mind, then it is absolutely no business of Albertson's Inc. what I do to my brain on my own time (as long as I'm not wearing their uniform in public when I do it).

So there are significant gradations in different fields at different levels. If I am an accountant in the back room of a company who has no public face for the company, and does my work in a timely fashion, should the company be able to fire me if the police charge me with downloading child porn? I'd argue "no." On the other hand, if I am a salesman and part of the public face of the company, it is a different story, because my activities have directly impacted my ability to do my job as well as the company's image.

There are two dynamics working here: general rules about what kinds of identity/behavior a company is allowed by law to discriminate against or not discriminate against (i.e., civil rights protection based on sexual identity) and the specific application of what makes sense within the mission of the company. Dana would, I think, argue for a stronger societal role in controlling what businesses can do; I would argue that once some basic provisions are laid down, there has to be room for businesses to adapt to their circumstances. The differences of opinion are what we have courts to settle.

But here's my main point: I have come to believe that it is a fundamental feature of human social organizations that the larger ANY such organization gets, whether it be public or private sector, the more authoritarian (a term I prefer to totalitarian) it becomes. I cannot tell you with precision where the change kicks in, but there seems to be some sort of critical mass at which the organization assumes its ability to hold sway over greater and greater segments of the employee/citizen's life. (I always think of Ross Perot and his "white shirt" rules in the late 1960s-early 1970s).

Now here's my chief point of disagreement with Dana: Authoritarian behavior by governments is inherently more threatening to human freedom because:

1) Government possesses coercive means of enforcing its sanctions far beyond those available to corporations: imprisonment, fines, restriction of movement, seizure of private property, even death. Thus excesses in this arena by government are inherently more dangerous than those of corporations.

2) Government possesses the ability to enforce authoritarian sanctions everywhere within its borders; I can always avoid a corporation's sanctions by the expedient of quitting. Yes, there is a price to pay for that, but it does not compare with the extent of the government's reach.

3) Corporate authoritarianism tends to be (note I did not say "always") focused on particular ends: usually the maximization of profits and the minimization of costs. Thus a corporation will try to control obesity or smoking to drive down health care costs or reduce employee absenteeism. Governments tend to try to legislate morality and specific types of behavior as ends in themselves. Dana speaks of efforts to "control the private sector democratically through our elected government," which I read and hear (knowing he did not intend it this way), "to control the private sector through the whims of our elected officials and the tyranny of the majority."

A case in point: literally every public opinion poll ever taken on the subject of gay marriage indicates that 75-80% of the American public does not believe in gay marriage. Therefore the government is right in forbidding it? Just like the government was right throughout the South during the Jim Crow era in enforcing segregation because the majority of the voters and the majority of the elected officials thought it was a good idea?

4) People who argue for extensive government intervention in the workplace usually want to eliminate that second dynamic: the right of the employer to organize a company in the fashion that best seems to that employer to maximize profits. I'm not arguing that such a dynamic should always trump general civil rights protections for the individual, but I am equally uncomfortable with the idea that it should never be able to override that consideration.

I work as a consultant with a number of homeland security entities, some private and some public. In the case of the public entities, the price of working there and having access to their sensitive, even classified material is that I had to agree that I would allow them to vet anything I submitted for open publication on certain topics before ever offering it to a publisher. I signed away a portion of my free speech rights in exchange for the opportunity to do work I like and have access to information I need. If I ever felt a compelling moral need to break that compact I could do so--but I'd have to be prepared to deal with the consequences.

On the other hand, with the private companies I do work for there are prohibitions on belonging to certain organizations. I couldn't accept a position on the board of directors of a company known to be a financing conduit to international terrorist groups and expect to keep my position. On at least one occasion I have terminated my association with a private-sector entity rather than accept their restrictions. But there is an important point to be made: in both cases--public and private--I have been advised up front of the expectations and potential sanctions, and I could therefore make an informed decision about whether or not to participate.

The real problem is one of balancing security against freedom. If I want all the career-track security of a job at MBNA, then I guess I'm going to have to bend over a lot farther in accepting the corporation's restrictions. If I'm willing to become an entrepreneur and take the associated risks, I can decide for myself what is acceptable.

It is my observation that progressives value security (including the security of having your physical needs met) as more important than individual liberty (including the ability to tell your boss or the government to get screwed), and tend to see the government as a public entity designed to maximize security while defining the parameters of individual liberty pretty damn closely.

Libertarians value that individual liberty far more than they value that security, and worry that the more the government inserts itself into private relations--workplace or social--the fewer freedoms will exist and the more conformity will be demanded.

Comments

Brian said…
There is a huge contrast between a libertarian social order and organized corporate culture. It would make George Orwell proud to work at MBNA or Discover, or he might react to it the way I do and say soemthing like this: no thank you gentlemen and ladies. I am glad to see someone tried to bridge the divide that Freud thought would destroy America.
Delaware Watch said…
I’m afraid I will have to give the short skinny reply for the sake of time. As to your statements centering on the unique position of power governments enjoy as found in the following examples:

“There is one difference that he omits, which is that a totalitarian State (as opposed to a Totalitarian corporation) is empowered and sanctioned to use direct (even deadly) force to prevent you from leaving or actually imprison you and seize your property, because it possesses the full accoutrements of national sovereignty. All the corporation can do is eliminate your salary and potentially blackball you in other areas of the industry.”

“1) Government possesses coercive means of enforcing its sanctions far beyond those available to corporations: imprisonment, fines, restriction of movement, seizure of private property, even death. Thus excesses in this arena by government are inherently more dangerous than those of corporations.

2) Government possesses the ability to enforce authoritarian sanctions everywhere within its borders; I can always avoid a corporation's sanctions by the expedient of quitting. Yes, there is a price to pay for that, but it does not compare with the extent of the government's reach.”

It seems to me that you want to argue the point that governments **a priori** represent a greater threat to our liberty than corporations. To that I want to make 2 points:

ONE: I located my argument initially in the US:

“I'm arguing that in the US we mostly locate the fear of authoritarian control over our lives in the wrong sphere of influence.”

Then I further located my argument in Delaware:

“Delaware, the state that is supposed to under near total sway of workers unions, is particularly egregious in allowing its citizens to fall under the control of dictatorial workplaces”

Now I think there is something particularly (but unintentionally) misleading about removing discussions from extant cases of authoritarian control, and the potential to expand that control, into a priori, theoretical, realms which can be irrelevant to extant situations and which proceed on the basis of purely heuristic assumptions. Accordingly, I don’t know how the theoretical points you made above are relevant to the experiences of being under authoritarian sway for most Americans or Delawareans. I’d say that for most Americans the crucible of being subject to the authoritarian experience is most keenly realized in the workplace and not in their relationships w/ the arms of their federal and state governments. In some other nations, the experience is different. But not in the US and not in Delaware, which was the focus of my post.

Now since you proceed on a theoretical basis, you make certain heuristic assumptions which, as purely theoretical posits, are incontrovertible:

“a totalitarian State (as opposed to a Totalitarian corporation) is empowered and sanctioned to use direct (even deadly) force to prevent you from leaving or actually imprison you and seize your property, because it possesses the full accoutrements of national sovereignty.”

That’s incontrovertible for the purposes of having a discussion that proceeds on a priori terms or an a theoretical basis, but I’m not sure that makes it relevant to, once more, illuminating the experience of authoritarian control to lives of real people in the US. To me it’s equivalent to someone arguing that the only way I can give a usefully accurate and meaningful account of the temperature of my frozen diner is to contextualize the account in terms of what the molecular activity of my frozen dinner would be at absolute zero. A fascinating topic to be sure but hardly necessary and helpful under the circumstances.

TWO: If we were to expand the discussion to American history and the role of government and corporate coercion in the world today, we find that your heuristic point below is problematized (I swore I would never use that dreadful word but it’s late and I’m winging it) by the historical record and extant facts:

“Government possesses coercive means of enforcing its sanctions far beyond those available to corporations: imprisonment, fines, restriction of movement, seizure of private property, even death. Thus excesses in this arena by government are inherently more dangerous than those of corporations”

Leaving the theoretical consideration of “inherency” aside, one can say as a matter of historical fact that your statement is wrong in many of its claims and oversimplifies the relationship corporate power can have with governmental power. To be sure, there are ample examples of totalitarian regimes that have acted in the way you have described. But if there is any suggestion in your statement that corporations have not and cannot act in many of those ways, then history is replete w/ examples to the contrary.

In the early days of US labor movement, many businesses did the following to either stifle and/or suppress pro-union and striking workers: kidnapping (imprisonment), withholding pay (fines), requiring employees to reside on land owned by the employer (restriction of movement), requiring employees to only buy their food from the employers store at high prices and which was deducted from the employees’ pay (seizure of private property), and hiring goons to assault and/or kill striking workers (death).

Old history? Yes, for us perhaps (although there are accounts of illegal immigrants experiencing these conditions today), but try telling that to workers who try to form unions or, if they have them, make them effective in Columbia. If Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are to be believed, multinational corporations have hired paramilitary groups to intimidate and murder zealous unionists. Chiquita has already been found guilty of the practice and other lawsuits are pending. Coca Cola is also a suspected offender.

Moreover, your statement oversimplifies the relationship big corporations can have with governments. It hasn’t been uncommon for a corporation to essentially co-opt governmental power to enforce its authoritarian and coercive agendas against individuals. Corporations can outsource its authoritarian control through government. There are plenty of examples.

When it’s the corporation calling the shots and the government acts as the means to enforce the corporation’s control, while I do blame the government for its actions, I think it’s transparently clear who is the primary authoritarian power in the situation.
Frances said…
Earning a substance abuse counselor certification would definitely provide an extra edge over the others who are also in the practicing in the field of medicine.

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