Eric Hoffer’s third book, The Ordeal of Change, is a book that I am typing out chapter by chapter and commenting on when needed. His Chapter 9, Workingman and Management, runs from Page 78 through Page 82 in his book.
I have worked in at least 5 different labor unions, as a public and private employee. This does not make me an expert on labor-management relations, but it should give me a seat at the table.
Hoffer (H after this): “There are many of us who have been workingmen all our lives and, whether we know it or not, will remain workingmen until we die. Whether there be a God in heaven or not; whether we be free or regimented; whether our standard of living is high or low—I and my like shall go on doing more or less what we are doing now.
This sober realization need not be unduly depressing to people who have acquired the habit of work and who, like the American workingman, have the ingredients of a fairly enjoyable life within their reach. Still, the awareness of being an eternal workingman colors one’s attitudes; and it might be of some interest to indicate briefly what the relation between management and labor looks like when seen from his point of view.
To the eternal workingman management is substantially the same whether it is made up of profit seekers, idealists, technicians, or bureaucrats. The allegiance of the manager is to the task and to the result. However noble his motives, he cannot help viewing workers as a means to an end. He will always try to get the utmost out of them; and it matters not whether he does it for the sake of profit, for a holy cause, or for the sheer principle of efficiency.”
My response: I cannot disagree with anything Hoffer wrote above. I would add that, in the future, when near every worker is an individuating supercitizen, be he unionized or not, he automatically forces management to be more democratic, and his intelligence, fearless insistence well communicated to them, will ensure that he is heard and heeded, to a large degree. When he is heard and heeded—when he should be—he will know that he is respected and appreciated, and then the company will find no more loyal, industrious, innovative, caring employee. He will demand to well-compensated because he is worth it, and, sooner or later, his employer will acknowledge his contribution, and pay him better, accordingly-we hope.
H: “One need not view management as an enemy or feel self-righteous about doing an honest day’s work to realize that things are likely to get tough when management can take the worker for granted; where it can plan and operate without having to worry about what the worker will say or do.”
My response: If the work force, laborer, supervisor, or manager, is populated by individuating supercitizens, it would be impossible for anyone to take anyone for granted, due to being principled and respectful, and because workers would not tolerate being abused or disrespected. A more conscientious, skilled, innovative, fearless, critically thinking group of subordinates is not imaginable, and they will be loyal, but will tolerate no abuse, exploitation, or dismissal.
H: “The important thing is that this taking of the worker for granted occurs not only when management has unlimited power to coerce but also when the division between management and labor ceases to be self-evident. Any doctrine that preaches oneness of management and labor—whether it stresses their unity as a party, class, race, nation, or even religion—can be used to turn the worker into a compliant instrument in the hands of management. Both Communism and Fascism postulate the oneness of management and labor, and both are devices for extraction of maximum performance from an underpaid workforce. The preachment of racial unity facilitated exploitation of labor in our South, in French Canada, and in South Africa. Pressure for nationalist and religious unity served, and still serves, a similar purpose elsewhere.”
My response: Hoffer is right: those preaching oneness of management and labor, if they succeed, will drive labor to be underpaid, overworked, and exploited. A union or non-union work force of individuating supercitizens, individually and collectively, will not suffer being coopted, but nor will they get greedy beyond receiving what pay, say, and share of power that they deserve. They will compete with and fight with management, when necessary, but they will cooperate, and keep the enterprise growing, profitable, and producing excellent widgets or service to the customers—in this sense a rational, principled, practical work force (If labor is too greedy, too powerful, and too lazy, then they kill the business—killing the goose that lays the golden egg—and maverized workers would not be tempted to commit economic suicide.) will self-regulate, and not murder the business or management, metaphorically speaking. If it is bad for business, it is bad for labor, in the long run.
H: “Seen from this point of view, the nationalization of the means of production is more a threat than a promise. For we shall be bossed and managed by someone, no matter who owns the means of production—and we can have no defenses against those who can tell us in all truth that we, the workers, own everything in sight and they, our taskmasters, are driving us for our own good. The battle between Socialism and Capitalism is to a large extent a battle between bosses, and it is legitimate to size up the dedicated Socialist as a potential boss.”
My response: Hoffer is a loyal to the working man, but he is not a socialist; he knows that the free market system generally is better for workers, more freedom, more prosperity, more happiness and fulfillment. He might suggest that capitalism is the worst of all economic systems, except for all others.
H: “One need not call to mind the example of Communist Russia to realize that the idealist has the making of a most formidable taskmaster. The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause.”
My response: In these two truthful, extraordinarily insightful sentences, Hoffer reveals how and why he is an intellectual and ethical genius. The most ruthless supervisor or manager unleashed upon the suffering workers under capitalism is but an ineffectual child in comparison to the ruthlessness and boundless demands placed upon workers in a socialist, a totalitarian state, a state whose culture and regime is an active holy cause (North Korea, anyone?). Why is this so? Under a totalitarian, socialist regime or holy cause, the ruling class, are completely fanatical and completely selfless, these idealistic executioners of their Party’s work goals is what they gleefully inflict upon the workers, and this is altruism-collectivism at its worst or purest.
In a dispensation where supervisors and managers are true believers and enforcers of a holy cause, and they sacrifice without mercy or restraint all workers—and themselves—for the sake of the cause and the regime, their cruelty is unequaled.
Their fanaticism reveals their pure hatred, their viciousness, their wickedness.
Under a capitalist system, the managers, and supervisors, though often brutish, are still moderated and humanized a lot by their moderate and hybrid egoist-altruist morality.
Here, Hoffer indirectly shows that he believes that egoism and moderation lead to goodness on earth, and altruism and immoderation grow malevolence and needless suffering on earth.
H; “ ‘God wishes,’ said Calvin, ‘that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for his glory.’ So it is better to be bossed by men of little faith, who set their hearts of toys, than by men animated by lofty ideals who are ready to sacrifice themselves and others for a cause. The most formidable employee is he who, like Stalin, cast himself in the role as representative and champion of the workers.”
My response: The good deities decidedly do not want elites or managers anywhere to put aside all humanity when strive for the glory of God. Men of little faith, of little idealism, of low enthusiasm, of low ardor and less passion to bring about the ends sought by purveyors of a holy cause, are more individualistic, moderate, and moral employers than are those that are zealots and in charge, collectivized, groupist, on fire and without an ounce of mercy.
As an aside, Hoffer the atheist has a bit of a bias against the religious believer, that their faith in a deity, leads them inclined to be enthusiastic and potentially fanatical in faith, and, that is so, though the 20th century was the scene of lots of secular/substitute/fake/demonic religions or ideologies, so faith is a problem more than gentle, rational, temperate skepticism, but they can be well-mingled under the umbrella of rational religion which gives people sentimental relief without the tendency to turn chauvinistic,, too evangelical and fanatical about their faith.
H: “Our sole protection lies in keeping the division between management and labor obvious and matter-of-fact. We want management to manage as best it can, and the workers to protect their interests as best they can. No social order will seem to us free if it makes it difficult for the worker to maintain a considerable degree of independence from management.”
My response: Hoffer is perhaps knowingly or subconsciously modeling the balance-of-powers and separation of powers that is the fine American constitutional republican model that has worked so well so long, by limiting governmental tyranny, by keeping the masses as free as possible (of course we have moved left, and away from this original ideal). The separation of powers envisioned and encoded into foundation law by the Founders was their worldly social order that protected individual rights, that some level of competing, diversified centers of power were necessary, to keep power from being centralized and made totalitarian under any of the three branches of government.
Hoffer is applying this political separation of powers model to economic relations between labor and management. Labor must not be enticed by nice-sounding beckoning from Management: “Let’s all get along, and all cooperate, and be one.” Workers as individuating supercitizens would be independent and compete with management when they should, and would be cooperative and honorably compromise when they should nor need too, but management requires some competition to keep them from being made drunk by too much power accumulation.
Hoffer: “The things which bolster this independence are not utopian. Effective labor unions, free movement over a relatively large area, a savings account, a tradition of individual self-respect—these are some of them. They are within the worker’s reach in this country and most of the free world, but are either absent or greatly weakened in totalitarian states.
In the present Communist regimes unions are tools of management, worker mobility is discouraged by every means, savings are periodically wiped out by changes in the currency, and individual self-respect is extirpated by the fearful technique of Terror. Thus it seems that the worker’s independence is a good an index as any for measuring the freedom of a society.”
My response: When the masses of America or any country are comprised mostly of individuating supercitizens, then worker’s independence with be strengthened and long-lasting, and this superb index measure how free the society is can also serve as a communal-conversational platform among workers to come up with an agenda to run society from the bottom up, to order elites around, and to replace them should they get power-hungry or disobey the masses.
H: “The question is whether an independent labor force is compatible with efficient production. For if the attitude of the workers tends to interfere with the full unfolding of the productive process, then the workingman’s independence becomes meaningless.
It has been my observation for years on the docks of San Francisco that, while a wholly independent labor force does not contribute to management’s peace of mind, it can goad management to perfect its organization and to keep ever on the lookout for more efficient ways of doing things. Management on the San Francisco waterfront is busy twenty-four hours a day figuring out ways of loading and discharging ships with as few men as possible.
Mechanization became marked on the waterfront after the organization of the present militant union if 1934. The forklift and the pallet board are in universal use. There are special machines for handling sugar, grain, cement, ore, and newsprint. New arrangements and refinements appear almost every day. Here nobody has to be told that management is continually on the job. Certainly, there are other factors behind this incessant alertness, and some of them play perhaps a more crucial role in the process of mechanization. But it is quite obvious that a fiercely independent labor force is not incompatible with efficient production.”
My response: In the not-too-distant future as robots, AI and smart computers could make all human workers, blue collar, white collar, or pink collar, obsolete and unemployed, we need to anticipate that this could occur. But humans were born to work and to self-realize, and if they were a pampered elite of non-working aristocrats, supported by an army of robots, society would fall apart within a decade.
People always need to work for their bread, and do most things for themselves, and in the future of high civilization, the expanding economy should create a near infinite potential of new jobs and new businesses for people to apply themselves at, though robots by the thousand and millions will work alongside them in the workforce.
H: “Contrary to doctrine propounded by some in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, mechanization has not taught docility to ‘refractory hand of labor.’ At least here on the docks we know we shall manage to get our share no matter what happens. And it is a dull workingman who does not see in the machine the only key to true millennium. For only mechanization can mitigate—if not cure—‘the disease of work,’ as de Tocqueville calls it, which has tortured humanity since the first days of its existence. To me the advent of automation is the culmination of vying with God which began at the rise of the Occident. The skirmish with God has moved back all the way to the gates of Eden. Jehovah and his angels, with their flaming and revolving swords, are now holed up inside their Eden fortress, while the blasphemous multitude with their host of machines are clamoring at the gate. And right there, in the sight of Jehovah and his angels, we are annulling the ukase with the sweat of his brow man shall eat bread.”
My response: The Good Couple and the Good Spirits are not worried that humans may overthrow them—a likely impossibility, though they would be angry should humans get swelled up with Luciferian pride and join the Dark Couple and the Evil Spirits to seek to overthrow the good deities in heaven and on earth, for that would do much to increase the power of Satan and Lera on earth.
Such an unwise rebellion would be harshly crushed.
As I noted above, machinery, robots, and intelligent computers must not be allowed to do all the work because humans turn sick physically, morally, spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally if they do not have work and purpose, a reason to get out of bed each day as long as they live.
We were ordered by Jehovah, through our first parents, Adam, and Eve, to work for our bread because that is what God, the good deities and Good Spirits do every day. There is no meaning, no fulfillment, no self-esteem, no happiness unless one works and assumes maximum responsibility to quote Jordan Peterson.
H: “It is true, of course, that the cleavage between management and labor is a source of strain and strife. But it is questionable whether tranquility is the boon it is made out to be. The late Randolph Hearst shrewdly observed that ‘whatever begins to be tranquil is gobbled up by something that is not tranquil.”
My response: If something starts out tranquil and is gobbled up by something that is not tranquil, the power of powerlessness is at work here: both parties to the agreement talk peace, equality, cooperation and mutuality, but, over time, it is revealed that the equal arrangement is really one of unequal power sharing, and the dominant, aggressive partner begins to lust after more power, more concessions, and bears down on the more pleasing partner, thus the concord is smashed and warring recurs, and the aggressor may now be so powerful as to be unstoppable in totally devouring the more pleasing, peaceful party. Labor unions beware.
H: “The constant effort to improve and advance is neither automatic nor the result of a leisurely choice between alternatives. In human affairs, the best stimulus to running ahead is to have something we must run from. The chances are that the millennial society, where the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, will be a stagnant society.”
My response: My guess is that heaven is a place of working, individuating, becoming, creating, maintaining heaven’s infrastructure and system, with all going to work every day.
Hell is likely the stagnant society, where passivity and laziness rule supreme, with occasional gang violence, reigns of terror, wars, revolutions, and social upheavals will be planned or unintentionally erupting to “break up the stagnant monotony.”
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