Read Online Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond by Mark Ames - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Ames
Tags: United States, General, Social Science, True Crime, Political Science, Murder, Criminology, Violent crimes, Violence in Society, Civics & Citizenship
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developed the kinds of expectations from their African slaves that again read oddly similar to what many corporations expect from their employees: “The institutionally defined role of the slave required him to identify with his master’s interest, to be healthy, clean, humble, honest, sober, cheerful, industrious, even-tempered, patient, respectful, trustworthy, and hard-working. This was the kind of slave the master wanted: a laborer who identified so closely with his master’s interest that he would repair a broken fence rail without being ordered to do so.”
The master should make it his business to show his slaves, that the advancement of his individual interest, is at the same time an advancement of theirs. Once they feel this, it will require little compulsion to make them act as becomes them.
— Southern Agriculturalist IX (1836)
Compare this slave management theory to the 1941 AT&T employee handbook, a handbook that represented the very best of employer-employee relations in America: “By means of this [pension plan] and other welfare practices, the Company endeavors to ‘take care’ of its employees throughout their working careers, and beyond. In return, it naturally expects employees to be genuinely concerned with the welfare of the business and to feel personally responsible for its reputation and continuing success.”
Obviously there is a massive difference between an AT&T employee during the postwar golden age of labor-executive relations and that of an antebellum slave. But expectations were also vastly different; what was considered “normal” was different. Moreover, one cannot deny the fact that the semantics used in both cases are almost identical. This alone is evidence of some systemic parallels. The slaveholders could have used far crueler language and advocated far crueler techniques. But they didn’t because it wouldn’t have been effective. The slave owner wanted profits, just like today’s shareholders. To use a different example, Hitler’s plan to enslave the untermenschen Slavs used language, and techniques, that were openly cruel. It was a conscious effort at superiority, racism, and exploitation. Southern slaveholders, on the other hand, operated by many of the same platitudes and principles as most employers do today. They could be pious and normal because they didn’t see themselves as evil, any more than today’s executives, investment bankers, or mutual fund managers see themselves or their work as evil. Your average slave masters, like most employers today, wanted their slaves to increase their profit, but they also wanted them to reinforce their basic moral structure. They wanted their slaves to be both hardworking and well-behaved, because both reflected the master’s overall worth. And most tellingly, they wanted their slaves to be cheerful, in keeping with the great American tradition of oppression-with-a-happy-face.
On a certain level these semantic and philosophical parallels shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, America’s wealth was essentially created by slavery and the slave trade. Scholars have traced how the Industrial Revolution was funded directly by capital accumulated slave industry. Malachi Postlethway, an eighteenth-century economist, described the slave trade as “the first principle and foundation of all the rest, mainspring of the machine which sets every wheel in motion.” There are numerous examples of this. James Watt’s first steam engine was subsidized by wealthy slave-trade merchants, as were the slate industry in Wales and Britain’s Great Western Railway. The American corporate magnates of today aren’t derived from a different species than their slave-trading ancestors— they have merely evolved by adapting to different conditions and altering their metaphors with the times. Slavery declined as it segued into the Industrial Revolution it had financed, primarily because slavery’s workforce was less profitable than
The master should make it his business to show his slaves, that the advancement of his individual interest, is at the same time an advancement of theirs. Once they feel this, it will require little compulsion to make them act as becomes them.
— Southern Agriculturalist IX (1836)
Compare this slave management theory to the 1941 AT&T employee handbook, a handbook that represented the very best of employer-employee relations in America: “By means of this [pension plan] and other welfare practices, the Company endeavors to ‘take care’ of its employees throughout their working careers, and beyond. In return, it naturally expects employees to be genuinely concerned with the welfare of the business and to feel personally responsible for its reputation and continuing success.”
Obviously there is a massive difference between an AT&T employee during the postwar golden age of labor-executive relations and that of an antebellum slave. But expectations were also vastly different; what was considered “normal” was different. Moreover, one cannot deny the fact that the semantics used in both cases are almost identical. This alone is evidence of some systemic parallels. The slaveholders could have used far crueler language and advocated far crueler techniques. But they didn’t because it wouldn’t have been effective. The slave owner wanted profits, just like today’s shareholders. To use a different example, Hitler’s plan to enslave the untermenschen Slavs used language, and techniques, that were openly cruel. It was a conscious effort at superiority, racism, and exploitation. Southern slaveholders, on the other hand, operated by many of the same platitudes and principles as most employers do today. They could be pious and normal because they didn’t see themselves as evil, any more than today’s executives, investment bankers, or mutual fund managers see themselves or their work as evil. Your average slave masters, like most employers today, wanted their slaves to increase their profit, but they also wanted them to reinforce their basic moral structure. They wanted their slaves to be both hardworking and well-behaved, because both reflected the master’s overall worth. And most tellingly, they wanted their slaves to be cheerful, in keeping with the great American tradition of oppression-with-a-happy-face.
On a certain level these semantic and philosophical parallels shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, America’s wealth was essentially created by slavery and the slave trade. Scholars have traced how the Industrial Revolution was funded directly by capital accumulated slave industry. Malachi Postlethway, an eighteenth-century economist, described the slave trade as “the first principle and foundation of all the rest, mainspring of the machine which sets every wheel in motion.” There are numerous examples of this. James Watt’s first steam engine was subsidized by wealthy slave-trade merchants, as were the slate industry in Wales and Britain’s Great Western Railway. The American corporate magnates of today aren’t derived from a different species than their slave-trading ancestors— they have merely evolved by adapting to different conditions and altering their metaphors with the times. Slavery declined as it segued into the Industrial Revolution it had financed, primarily because slavery’s workforce was less profitable than
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