Sewer Syndicalism

"In the labor context, the paradigmatic form of this sort of conceptual repression is the belief that employees lack the capacity collectively to organize and govern complex industrial enterprises. The fundamental tenet of democratic politics, that human communities are capable of fashioning appropriate institutions for guiding their destinies, is not applied in the American workplace. Rather, participants in the community of work must be made to believe that industry and commerce can only function on a largely authoritarian basis, and the public/private distinction is used to explain why the basic principles of democracy do not apply in the workplace. The distinction is also used to induce consent to hierarchy by disguising it and by fostering the appearance of employee participation."