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Modern workplace management stems from slavery

The goal was not to abolish the old system used in slavery but to adapt it to modern needs. The disciplines, ideologies and practices used in slavery are specifically used today in the workplace. Note: This is not to say today’s management system is by any means as brutal or even comparable to American chattel slavery, but the ideology behind slavery is very much present and built into the daily job operations we see in today’s management style. Scientific management was originated and inspired from slavery. Aside from the differences between modern business management and slavery management being the base payment, the ability to quit and limited physical abuse, it is in every way identical to the system used by slaveowners. The creators of the management system were born to slave owning families, where they most likely had access to accounting books used to calculate the productivity of slaves and…


The goal was not to abolish the old system used in slavery but to adapt it to modern needs. The disciplines, ideologies and practices used in slavery are specifically used today in the workplace.

Note: This is not to say today’s management system is by any means as brutal or even comparable to American chattel slavery, but the ideology behind slavery is very much present and built into the daily job operations we see in today’s management style. Scientific management was originated and inspired from slavery.

Aside from the differences between modern business management and slavery management being the base payment, the ability to quit and limited physical abuse, it is in every way identical to the system used by slaveowners. The creators of the management system were born to slave owning families, where they most likely had access to accounting books used to calculate the productivity of slaves and understood the systems of management in play on the plantation. Henry Lawerence Gnat, the creator of the Gnat chart which is a task scheduling tool, was born into a family owning dozens of men, women and children. Gantt wrote, “The term ‘task master’ symbolizes the time, when men were compelled to work, not for their own interests, but for those of some one else.”

A management technique used during slavery in the US is “dangling the carrot”, by providing some wages to keep slaves motivated in to doing more work. In some cases, slavers who used the task system even gave monetary bonuses for achievement above set targets. Overtime works the same way. By offering the incentive to pay, they could extract more work and productivity out of slaves. This is also present in today’s gig economy.

Modern business practices like task-managing are slavery tactics. Slaves were assigned a quota of work that they had to produce daily and they were timed for it. They suffered consequences if they did not meet the requirements. The metrics used on plantations are well documented in accounting books to keep track of productivity.

Even in manager and employee relationships, there’s the master slave complex occurring. Business management consists of the manager taking the lead in giving ‘orders’ in the cases where he is of superior ability, and the others’ submitting: it is the relationship of master and slave, regardless of how otherwise it may be named. Insubordination and not meeting metrics can lead you to getting fired for poor performance and threatening your livelihood.

The practices of dehumanization in modern workplaces such as supervised drug testing (I understand that in some fields it’s a safety issue, but it’s nevertheless dehumanizing), being treated like a machine or number as a means to achieve business goals and taking your intellectual property under contract are not too dissimilar from slavery practices. The intellectual property and product made by workers are taken and owned by corporations, just like slaves couldn’t keep what they produced on plantations.

https://bostonreview.net/articles/caitlin-c-rosenthal-accounting-slavery-excerpt/

https://hbr.org/2013/09/plantations-practiced-modern-management

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