{"id":790913,"date":"2022-09-07T21:52:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T21:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=133197"},"modified":"2022-09-07T21:52:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T21:52:47","slug":"workplace-brutality-unmasked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/09\/07\/workplace-brutality-unmasked\/","title":{"rendered":"Workplace Brutality Unmasked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In a series of books, psychoanalytic anthropologist Howard F. Stein intensively studied the psychodynamics of the modern workplace, primarily huge corporate organizations.\u00a0 He began this in-depth, on-the-site research back in the Nineties, when big corporations, as a profit-enhancing strategy in itself, began to impose massive \u201cdownsizing\u201d and \u201cRIFs\u201d (reduction in force) on hundreds of thousands of Americans.\u00a0 At first controversial, this frequent practice soon became \u201cnormalized\u201d —\u00a0 an accompaniment to the epidemic of mergers-and-acquisitions (with entire dismantling and selling off of company divisions).\u00a0 Then came \u201coffshoring\u201d of tens-of-thousands of jobs, and\u2013perhaps even worse\u2013the massive de-skilling (obsolescence) still ongoing via rapid automation.<\/p>\n

Stein had earlier written about how dehumanizing disposability in the workplace was pervasively hidden by euphemisms such as \u201credundancy.\u201d\u00a0 Of course, we are by now habituated to such air-brushing of very ugly assaults on human dignity (\u201ccollateral damage,\u201d the \u201ccomplications\u201d that led to a surgical patient\u2019s death, \u201cenhanced interrogation,\u201d and on and on).\u00a0 A long time ago, Orwell warned that truth could be effaced by cosmetic euphemism\u2013or worse, by the brazen \u201cBig Lie\u201d (successfully practiced by such malefactors as Hitler, Bush, and Trump).\u00a0 After all, the Gestapo, in rounding up Jews and others, was merely placing them in \u201cprotective custody\u201d!<\/p>\n

Stein questions the very sanity of such corporate decisions, based in a rationalist-utilitarian ideology which is in itself a kind of obsessional \u201creligion\u201d (\u201cthe Sacred Shrine of the Bottom Line\u201d).\u00a0 The cultish atmosphere of the organization is not an exaggeration: employees are relentlessly indoctrinated, through fear and subtle intimidation (\u201cno one is indispensable\u201d), into total identification with, and loyalty to, the company.\u00a0 Such loyalty is, of course, not reciprocated; in a single day, a longtime, hardworking \u201cteam member\u201d can be disappeared<\/em>,\u00a0 a horrifying experience which Stein metaphorically likens to the Holocaust.\u00a0 \u201cI have come to the conclusion,\u201d he writes, \u201cthat the ultimate promise of this new wage-serfdom is the freedom to disappear<\/em> after being worked to the hilt\u201d (p. 155).\u00a0 Here is one such episode, as recounted by one of Stein\u2019s interviewees:<\/p>\n

At 9:00 A.M., Friday, security guards showed up all over the plant at the offices and workstations of people who were going to be fired.\u00a0 They escorted them to the big auditorium\u2026 They didn\u2019t even tell them why they had to go\u2026 After they walked them in, they left and locked the doors behind them.\u00a0 [The CEO] told them not to take it personally, and thanked them for their service to the company.\u00a0 The security police escorted them down\u2026to receive their last paycheck [and then] walked them to their cars (p. 55).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cdisappeared\u201d were immediately \u201cforgotten\u201d; it was certainly unwise to ask too many questions about what happened to them.\u00a0 The survivors, chastened by this sudden, disturbing event, were fear-driven to work even harder.\u00a0 To \u201cnormalize\u201d such brutality, the discharged were gradually disparaged, scapegoated by subtle insinuations.\u00a0 The massive firing came to be rationalized, via psychological projection of negative qualities onto the now-disappeared victims, as a kind of ritual sacrifice, a \u201ccleansing\u201d and purifying for a newer start.\u00a0 The discarded quickly became forgotten \u201cnon-persons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stein makes reference to Hannah Arendt\u2019s famous phrase, \u201cthe banality of evil\u201d — in this case, how those who, under the CEO\u2019s orders, merely carry out such draconian measures as part of their job description.\u00a0 But what of the evil<\/em>\u2013and Stein, as moral-humanist, substitutes no euphemism\u2013that continues in the hierarchical relations in the organization?<\/p>\n

Many managers become managers, not only for the increased salary and challenge, but also to act-out their unresolved aggressions on the subordinates now firmly under their control.<\/em>\u00a0 Some, humiliated or demeaned as children, now find an inverted role, which psychoanalysts term the \u201cidentification-with-the-aggressor.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>Power vs. humiliating submission:<\/p>\n

It finds expression in humiliation, goading, bullying, condescension, euphemism, double-talk, mystification, set-ups to fail, the piling on of demands and expectations, the insistence that the other person is never quite good enough (p. xxi).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can\u2019t help being reminded of the \u201cpsychoanalyst\u201d [sic] Bruno Bettelheim, who, having arranged removal from a brief detention in a concentration camp, came to the U.S. and, marketing exaggerated Freudian credentials (he was really an art historian), was appointed director of the University of Chicago\u2019s Orthogenic School for disturbed children (autistic? delinquent? merely rebels?).\u00a0 For decades, while writing bestselling books, this famed \u201cchild psychologist\u201d terrorized, mocked, and sometimes beat the children under his domination (see Richard Pollak\u2019s book The Creation of Dr. B).<\/em><\/p>\n

That power-over-others, if unchecked, can often lead to sadism<\/em> is exhaustively documented by the historical record of authoritarian regimes and organizations.\u00a0 (See, as a notable source, The Annals of Imperial Rome<\/em> by Tacitus.)<\/p>\n

Stein, in his series of books on this subject, brilliantly unmasks the brutality and cruelty exhibited in modern corporations, but denied and rationalized by observers on the scene as merely \u201cbusiness as usual.\u201d<\/p>The post Workplace Brutality Unmasked<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a series of books, psychoanalytic anthropologist Howard F. Stein intensively studied the psychodynamics of the modern workplace, primarily huge corporate organizations.\u00a0 He began this in-depth, on-the-site research back in the Nineties, when big corporations, as a profit-enhancing strategy in itself, began to impose massive \u201cdownsizing\u201d and \u201cRIFs\u201d (reduction in force) on hundreds of thousands [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Workplace Brutality Unmasked<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790918,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790913\/revisions\/790918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}