The Troubling Link Between Slavery And Modern Management “Best Practices”

It’s not quite “work is slavery,” buuuuut….

Short answer: no. We might get emotionally whipped in our jobs, but in general there is not physical abuse in white-collar workplaces. (I fully realize there are thousands — if not more — of enslaved people in the world doing the work of others, but that isn’t really the topic of this particular post.)

Also: we get compensated, and often very well. Another big difference.

The longer answer to this question is more nuanced.

This article from Boston Review about the ties between managerial development and slavery has been making some rounds. There are a lot of good parts to it, so read the whole thing if you can. This part stood out to me:

In a sense, scientific management replicated slavery’s extractive techniques while jettisoning the institution itself. Gantt’s rhetoric was not necessarily of distance but of progress; he purportedly liked to say that “scientific management marked a great step forward from slave labor.” James Mapes Dodge, a…