PROMETHEAN ANTAGONIST

I've noticed that a lot of searches that end up on my site arrive at this post from several years back.

In rereading it I felt I should repost the quote by Eric Hoffer regarding workers' relationship to management. Since, like so many circumstances in life, the left can only see hardship or difficulty as a product of "capitalism" (free people making free choices as to what to produce, sell, and buy), I think Hoffer really notes something most people seldom if ever consider:

”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 the results. However noble his motives, he cannot help [but view] the 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….

…Any doctrine that preaches the oneness of management and labor – whether it stresses their unity in 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 the extraction of maximum performance from an underpaid labor force…

…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.

One needs not call to mind the example of Communist Russia to realize that the idealist has the making of a most formidable taskmaster.” (The Ordeal of Change, Pgs. 64-65)

Hoffer's most noted book is "The True Believer," which is an excellent insightful appraisal of mass-movements. The lessor known, "Ordeal of Change" is a brilliant appraisal of intellectuals...and how they "got there" (their motives and products).

If you're a libertarian or classical liberal (conservative by genuine definition -- not the left's definition), Hoffer is a must-read author.

If you're a leftist...just keep worshiping the state and your own contrived compassions for people you've never met.

# posted by Promethean Antagonist @ 11:50 AM