Voluntary Slavery by Michael Perelman
Although the widely celebrated consumer sovereignty allows people to choose whether to consume Coke or Pepsi, nobody could even dream of suggesting that workers can act as sovereign individuals within their place of employment. Ideologists mouth comforting platitudes that depict people as sovereign individuals in their role as consumers, but obviously ultimate control of the workplace firmly resides with the employer. As Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management, proclaimed in 1911, when the giant corporations were beginning to dominate the U.S. economy, "In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first" (The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911).
Strangely enough, although the law in Britain and the United States evolved rapidly to allow for increasing freedom in the commercial sector, until relatively recently very ancient law regulated the obligations of workers to their employers. Karen Orren described the persistence of this archaic legal structure in her book Belated Feudalism (1991). This legal framework dates all the way back to the Statute of Artificers (1563), the Statutes of Labourers (1349), and even earlier.
FULL TEXT: <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/perelman300705.html>
Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, the authors of China and Socialism, give an update on China: "China has lost more manufacturing jobs than the U.S., 15 million or 15 percent of its total, between 1995-2002. Moreover, these losses were widespread, coming in 26 of the country's 38 major industrial sectors, including textiles" (at <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mhlpb300705.html>).
As the United States is always "between elections," Stan Goff's thoughts on what to do with the Democratic Party -- "Of Shibboleth and Power" at <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/goff290705.html> -- should be of interest to LBO-talk subscribers. It's not too soon to think about this topic!
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>