Having My Way

23

EMPLOYMENT REDEFINED

Just definitions either prevent or put an end to disputes.

—NATHANIEL EMMONS

The preceding chapter includes this observation: “Above-market wages and below-market hours cause unemployment.” One of the best economic thinkers of my acquaintance suggested: “‘Below-market hours’ should be deleted. Hardly anyone will know what you mean, for nearly everybody believes that shorter work weeks make for the employment of more people.” Conceded, this is the common belief and, further, it is a correct view if “employment” be defined as “job occupancy.”1

Here are my contentions: (1) If employment be properly defined, then any deviation from the free market—whether above-market wages or below-market hours—causes unemployment; and, (2) employment thought of as no more than mere job occupancy leads inevitably to Marxian socialism. These would seem to be reasons enough to reflect on the use of the word “employment.”

How should employment be defined, that is, if the term is to make any sense? Here is my answer: Employment is job occupancy free of all coercive elements. The opposite is job occupancy free of all voluntary elements. If this distinction is not made no one can tell the difference between full employment and full enslavement.

Were the market 100 per cent free there would be no involuntary unemployment, which is to say that full employment would obtain. Why? Because there is always more work to be done than there are persons to do it. The situation of full employment obtains when any employer may exchange his proffered wage with any employee for his proffered service. The terms are mutually agreeable or there would be no deal. In the event of no deal, the unemployment would be voluntary.

If the society were 100 per cent coercive there would be no voluntary employment. Instead of full employment there would be full enslavement.

Neither of these 100 per cent situations has ever existed; both have been approximated. The free market has been approximated in the U.S.A., England, Hong Kong. The nearest approximations to the coercive society are to be found in Russia, China, Cuba, Chile.

Now to my point. When we think of employment solely as job occupancy then there is no distinction between jobs freely chosen and jobs coercively imposed. If full employment be anyone’s goal, and if employment means no more than job occupancy, then Russia’s coercive system is superior. Why? There is no “unemployment” there! Even women are compelled to work in the fields or at other dictocratic assignments. The man who, if he had his choice, would play the piccolo, is assigned to the sputnik factory, and so on. In Russia, it is “do as we say” or Siberia—or worse!

Merely reflect on how inane it is to label a freely chosen job the same as a coercively imposed one, referring to both forms of labor as “employment”! The only terms that make sense are employment and enslavement respectively.

I have asserted that neither situation has ever completely obtained, that is, neither freedom nor coercion has or ever will be 100 per cent practiced. Even in Russia there is a great deal of free choice. Collective farm hands have their private plots where they can raise what they please and sell for whatever they can get. Talented athletes, dancers, singers are permitted to pursue their uniqueness. In a word, using my definition, there is some employment in Russia; it is not all enslavement.

And even in the U.S.A. there is some coercion; indeed, it is growing rapidly. In this land of ours there is much employment and, let us confess, there is a growing enslavement.

Growing enslavement! The essence of enslavement is coercion and it matters not where or how it interferes with the voluntary market processes. In Russia, for example, most of the people have no more choice than slaves. The coercion is head-on! In the U.S.A., on the other hand, it takes devious rather than direct forms. For instance, I use the socialized mail “service.” Others are forced to make up the difference between the high cost and my subsidized price, thus enslaving them to that extent. Coercion, often indirect, disrupts market choices at millions of points rather than directly and all at once.

These indirect enslavements tend to fool me; they make me feel freer than I really am. Nonetheless, I am enslaved in some measure; I am forced to contribute toward the numerous subsidies granted by government to people and programs not of my choice. To the extent of the coercion, regardless of how devious, to that extent do Americans move away from full employment and toward full enslavement. The coercive control of people’s lives, be it in the form of wage and price controls, political manipulation of money and credit, or whatever, is really nothing less than slavery. It just seems less; which explains, in no small measure, why most of us are so easily “taken in.”

Now to my contention that below-market hours cause unemployment. The vital issue, as I see it, is whether or not a man is in control of himself. Is he in charge of his own life, or does someone own him? What this boils down to is the market method of determining wages and other conditions of employment, versus the compulsory method (socialism, dictatorship, slavery, closed shop, or whatever else it may be called).

It seems to me that “below-market hours” is merely an equivalent term for “above-market wages.” Suppose that the market rate of wages is $2.00 an hour: demanding $2.00 for only 12 minutes work is the same as demanding $10.00 an hour. Unless a man is free to price his services competitively in the market, he is not in control of himself; someone else owns him. If he willingly accepts the terms of the contract, it is employment; if not, it is enslavement.

My second contention: If a significant number of people confuse employment with mere job occupancy, there will be a diminished resistance to the drift toward enslavement.

I have already suggested that coercion is socialism’s hallmark. And it matters not how or when it insinuates itself into the economy—whether open and obvious as in Russia, or screened and obscure as in this country. Note well, therefore, that every year, since the late twenties, the U.S.A. has been moving closer and closer to Marxian socialism—dictocratic control over people’s lives. This is a fact. And there is the accompanying fact that nearly everyone thinks of employment as nothing more than a guaranteed wage—which is to say that popular understanding of the free market is nearly nil. Taken together, these two facts add up to our present predicament.

True, no one, here or elsewhere, occupies a job free of all coercive influence. However, we can bear in mind that one is truly employed only to the extent that he is free—his own man. Otherwise, nothing can save him from the plunge into socialism.

• 1See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Dr. Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.