How Does an Employer Break Down the Mind?

At first glance, the free market appears to be a natural state of being. We agree, we exchange. If I can't sell a product, I sell my time.

I became intrigued by the shift from craftsman to laborer—the Industrial Revolution. Reading history, I found myself wondering: how does a serf break free from the matrix? A popular film metaphor applies to several eras and situations at once:

- Russian peasants were instilled with the idea that serving their lord was their fate.
- Black slaves in the U.S. were forbidden from learning to read.
- Workers after the 18th-century Industrial Revolution believed work without an employer was impossible.

Libraries and bookstores are filled with books on management that reek of bureaucracy—endlessly dull texts whose corporate language is off-putting in its coldness.

Still, understanding the enemy’s camp is interesting, so I want to discuss the first book, *Motivating Reward Systems*—a theory on how to pay employees less. Here are some of the methods:

   - **Instead of a raise, elevate relative social status by giving fictitiously higher titles.**
   - **Provide pseudo-privileges like “greater involvement” in organizational decisions.**
   - **Give non-monetary perks, such as mobile phones, gym memberships, and gifts, instead of raises—benefits that save the employer on taxes by not being actual wages.**
   - **Increase flexibility in work hours, where, instead of a raise, employees are “allowed” to start earlier or later, or choose when they can go for lunch.**

In my opinion, the whole theory of organizational management and the other human resources nonsense only becomes interesting when you realize it’s a manual for breaking an employee’s mind and instilling a slave mentality—making them see their worth only through the employer’s constructed lens.

Taylor was the first management expert who, with a stopwatch, doubled factory workers' productivity. One interesting story recounts how he increased productivity by 400% while only raising wages by 60% (essentially convincing the worker to work for less than before). An excerpt:

Taylor: "Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?"  
Schmidt: "Veil, I don't know vat you mean."  
Taylor: "Oh yes, you do. What I want to know is whether you are a high-priced man or not."  
Schmidt: "Vell, I don't know vat you mean."  
Taylor: "Oh, come now, you answer my questions. What I want to find out is whether you are a high-priced man or one of these cheap fellows here. What I want to find out is whether you want to earn $1.85 a day or whether you are satisfied with $1.15, just the same as all those cheap fellows are getting."  
Schmidt: "Did I vant $1.85 a day? Vas dot a high-priced man? Veil, yes, I vas a high-priced man."  
...

The excerpt is from the book *Labor and Monopoly Capital, The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century*, which inspired this text. Notice how the dialogue with the worker is framed as if speaking with a fool unaware of his own interests. The book is fascinating for other quotes from F. Taylor and other management experts who followed his path, promoting the idea that a worker must be completely separated from physical labor, leaving mental work to management. The book goes so far as to suggest that the next step is to make the worker believe he’s incapable of understanding his own interests and must surrender his autonomy entirely to his employer.

This reminds me of my experience with Lithuanian employment agencies, which gathered us at the last minute to tell us we were going to another country where the hourly rate would be lower but “we’ll give you more work hours, and you’ll bring home more money.” When I, one of 40 people, raised my hand to ask if overtime would be paid at a higher rate, I was made to feel foolish for not simply being glad about getting more hours—a chance to bring home more money.

I believe there’s a hook here, hard to verbalize but crucially important. Self-worth becomes measured by a foreign standard imposed upon a person. Identity morphs into that of a “team player,” a game where, through trauma bonding, the team is pushed to toil under the guise that they’re all sacrificing for one another. Corporate collectivism. In the end, the worker fears fully expressing his own interests because, in an environment shaped by the employer’s narrative, being a “black sheep” or risking the label of “unprofessional” leads to fear clouding judgment. This fear suppresses one's identity, leading to the acceptance of a slave mentality.

A numb consciousness—popular literature has a fitting term: “learned helplessness.” A person with high confidence in their intellect is gradually pushed to submit and lose themselves. “Taught helplessness” might be even more accurate.

I wonder—how can learned helplessness be unlearned? How can one relearn self-empowerment? I think one of the main things is the belief that you can learn and understand what’s important to you. We’re surrounded by institutions, experts, gurus—all insisting we need a mediator for contact with reality. Subconsciously, we’re told we’re too weak to understand, analyze, create, or learn independently—forget that. I think the first step is belief (in Lithuanian, the word also suggests “walking” or moving forward without fully knowing the end). There’s no need to fear things we haven’t yet encountered.