The Cult-like Behavior of Corporate Jobs

Following a conversation I recently had with my spouse, we started wondering if corporations actually require cult-like behavior. That is, do workers trapped in a capitalist corporate job act like members of a cult?

We stumbled on this idea after discussing the many ways the corporations expect you to fall in-line for a job. You must dress in a suit or dress - expensive! - for interviews, and come with a resume in a certain format. You're expected to work the same hours as everyone else (for white-collar office work, typically 8am-5pm). You're expected to never take a day off except if you're lucky enough to have paid leave, and even then there is immense pressure to return to work as soon as possible, even if feeling sick.

There's many rules on the employees, but unless you have a union backing you, it's very hard to put such stipulations on the employer. And despite the huge amount of rules that make me feel sub-human, many other employees I've met at least avoid criticizing it, if not outright claim to enjoy it!

Are they lying? Are they in denial? Does the work environment indoctrinate you into some weird workaholic cult?

I found an interesting article on cults and how to avoid "unhealthy groups". The author essentially outlines a top ten list of signs that you are involved with a cult. Let's review those signs, and see if the work environment fits. I don't claim to represent every job below -- every workplace and boss is different -- but I am speaking from personal experience and experiences of my spouse, and friends and family.

1. The leader and group are always correct and anything the leader does can be justified.

This is pretty clearly true, as one's manager (or particularly the CEO) can do no wrong. Businessmen are just smart like that and know what's best. (I'm not even making that comment up, I've heard many people claim someone was smart solely because they were a manager or owned a business. In fact, my old university had promoted a businessman to run the university despite the fact that this particular guy had previously run six different failed businesses. Despite evidence to the contrary, he was still considered a very smart person until he messed up the university budget so badly that he was finally ousted, but not until after damage was done. There was a cult that insisted "running it like a business" was the best way to tackle the university's problems.)

2. Questions, suggestions, or critical inquiry are forbidden.

Again, questioning your boss is a great way to get yourself fired in most environments. But even if you make simple suggestions, often the answer I heard in the corporate environment was "Well it costs money to change so just do it the way we've always done it". There's a huge collective inertia to never question, never change direction, and simply keep working as we've always done it, regardless whether it makes sense or not anymore.

3. Members incessantly scramble with cramped schedules and activities full of largely meaningless work based on the leader’s agenda.

This one is amazingly true. From my experience, many jobs in the corporate world are "paper-pusher" type jobs -- people filing paperwork that is general meaningless other than to have a paper trail that makes the CEO or lawyers or whatever happy. While I understand some paperwork is necessary to comply with laws and be transparent to the public, firstly, much paperwork I saw was internally required and not due to any law, and, second, being required by law doesn't make it automatically meaningful either.

Life in a corporate job starts to quickly feel like such a long slog, every day you wake up and follow the same cramped, boring schedule. It psychologically drains you, making you more prone to just accepting it to get through it (questions will slow you down and cause trouble!).

It makes complete sense why cults tend to encourage non-stop work to prevent you from thinking too deeply. If you are always too busy or too exhausted, you're less likely to have the energy to challenge the system. We see this in politics pretty often, which is partly why I advocate for building a new system with the Greens rather than trying to keep up with every minutae of the major parties. They are purposely trying to exhaust grassroots movements, don't let them. Similarly, we need to be aware of our jobs doing this to us, and refuse as much pointless work as possible to focus on work that actually improves our lives.

4. Followers are meant to believe that they are never good enough.

Typically speaking, corporate jobs have a good way of putting into you that you are "trash". Between the big set of rules that control your work life (and sometimes your home life, depending on your job!), lack of raises, bonuses, or any other encouragement, it's easy to start thinking of yourself as just a lame cog in the wheel. Toss in that society immediately labels you a "bum" if you ask for anything outside of the typical checklist (such as requesting different work hours, or time off, or even a raise), and you find yourself feeling very down about yourself just for wanting a normal human life.

Again, that "business owners are superheroes" mentality seeps in here. You're not good enough because you don't own your own business, and you never will, is basically the attitude management tends to exude. It is a very much a feudal class-based hierarchy where some low-level workers are practically "untouchables".

5. Required dependency upon the leader and group for even the most basic problem-solving.

Fairly often have I run into simple "problems" where everyone in the office starts throwing their hands up, saying "Oh I don't know, I have to ask my manager". Not everything requires a manager, sometimes you just make a quick decision and it's over because it was not a serious problem and doesn't really matter, but many jobs drill into you that you should never think or ask questions and instead wait for a directive from management. When thinking and deciding might get you fired, most decide to wait, which of course holds up the work and meaningful progress while everyone waits for a decision.

6. Reporting on members for disobedient actions or thoughts is mandated and rewarded.

I don't know how often workers are rewarded, but certainly disobedience is to be reported. I once worked a teaching job where I was technically required to wear a tie. I HATE ties (it feels like it is choking me, it is a pointless expensive piece of clothing, sets up a class hierarchy in the classroom, etc.), and so I stopped wearing it. A few days later, my boss called me into a meeting to say that someone had seen me without a tie and told Human Resources that I wasn't wearing a tie. HR then contacted my boss and was told to talk to me about it.

I'm not sure why whoever that person was reported me. Perhaps a twinge of jealousy that he was suffering with a tie, when I wasn't? The corporate workplace focuses on punishing those that do no obey, and unfortunately many would rather punish than ask "Well, maybe NO ONE needs to wear a tie?". My students told me privately that they enjoyed the fact that I was more "down to earth", treated them as peers with respect and didn't dress fancy, and they wished other instructors did the same. Naturally my boss was not interested in that viewpoint when I tried to bring it up, only that HR required ties and I was in trouble.

Needless to say, I quit that job shortly afterward once I was able to secure other work. I knew I wasn't going to last long in that work environment. I know that many do not have luxury and are stuck in the job, however.

7. Monetary, sexual, or servile labor is expected to gain promotion.

All of these are possibilities. The typical person "worthy" of a promotion is painted as someone that works very hard, works overtime on weekends, and brings in more money to the company. Plus, higher positions typically require more expensive clothing -- rarely have I seen management not in a suit! -- and so spending money is also often a requirement of gaining promotion just as much as working hard and making money for the company.

While illegal, no doubt some management also settle for sexual favors. Not even for the sex itself, but for the feeling of power and control that goes with it.

8. The ‘outside’ world — often including family and friends — is presented as rife with impending catastrophe, evil, and temptations.

While stretching a little bit, I think this one can and does exist.

Firstly is the fear that the outside world is tough. I've heard managers that basically threaten that people will never find another job out in the world, the job market is too scary (especially right after the 2008 crash!), so might as well put up with this job despite being terrible. Some industries are smaller and more tight-knit (i.e., management of the companies all know each other and go golfing together), so I know of people that were threatened to be "black-balled" so they would never find a job in that industry again.

Secondly, family and friends can sometimes be labeled temptations. Think how often you are guilted or ordered to stay in the office on nights or weekends; saying you want to go home at a regular time (heaven forbid requesting time off to go home early!) to see your family is seen as "weak".

I once interviewed for a job that would have required me to travel regularly -- a few weeks a month! -- and for not even a very great salary. When I said I wanted to stay home and see my family, the men on the interview panel made faces and laughed, with one of them saying something to the effect of "Well I never see my daughter, but that's just how work is", sort of implying that it wasn't a good excuse, and that I was lazy for not accepting it too. Needless to say I was not offered the position, but I wasn't going to take it even if they did offer.

9. Recruitment of new members is designed to be purposefully upbeat and vague about the actual operations of the leader and group.

Getting Human Resources to tell you anything about the job before the interview or even on your first day of the job is often like pulling teeth. Lots of talk about it being a great company and great people and great benefits, but very little talk about what you'll actually be doing once you start working. Job ads these days are so vague as to be nearly worthless.

Plus, the interview might send you to lunch with the team, or some other nice event, as if the company will everyday pay for you and the team to get pizza for two hours. Nope, upbeat to lure you in, then it's the daily grind. I think this one does often apply to corporate positions.

10. Former members are shunned and perceived as hostile.

It depends a bit on your industry and manager, but people that leave jobs (especially if they leave to go to a competitor) are often treated as traitors and "black-balled" in the industry, making it difficult to find jobs ever again, as I mentioned earlier. This has happened to family members of mine in smaller specialized industries.

Conclusion

Having answered all of the questions, I think at least 8 or 9 strongly apply, and honestly, all 10 sound like they apply in at least some manner. So I'm going to call it that your typical white-collar office job very strongly resembles a cult trying to indoctrinate you. Which makes sense: the typical corporate job, to be able to turn maximum profit on you, has to ensure you will never leave the system and continue generating money for them even though it is a losing proposition for you. Almost by definition, the capitalist cannot make money without exploiting someone, without paying someone less than they are worth to generate a profit, and guess who that is? You. A cult mentality is required to get workers to accept the exploitation.

Keep that in mind next time you apply for a job. I don't want to join a cult, I want to do meaningful work for the community while retaining a personal identity and life. The Green philosophy is exactly that: people and planet over profits. We can create a better world. It is important that we reach out to our brothers and sisters stuck in this capitalist cult, educate and support them as much as possible. I believe part of the Green Party's role is to do that education and provide that vision for a better world.

Neoliberalism and why Republicans and Democrats are so similar

A world where profit is more important than people, where the rights of corporations trump the rights of individuals, where corporations use their influence on government to turn police forces into private security that focuses on protecting corporate assets. While I've long suspected these things were true, I didn't understand these are the results of neoliberalism until I read Noam Chomsky's "Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order".

When commentators refer to "neoliberalism" they are referring to the idea that corporations are the most important aspect of society. The word comes from "liberalism" (or more specifically "classical liberalism") which is the set of economic ideas perhaps best articulated by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", a book widely viewed as a classic on how free markets and capitalism work. Smith's work is where terms like "the invisible hand" come from; Smith argued that truly free markets were able to regulate themselves and would always bend toward correct actions. Smith however did acknowledge that monopolies and other economic conditions would prevent truly free markets and some limited government to protect against that was necessary, which most proponents conveniently leave off.

"Neoliberalism", with neo being a prefix that means "new", is literally the "new liberalism", a modern offshoot of those ideas. Government is seen as a necessary evil that must be kept minimal, taxes must all be kept minimal and never applied to capital, and the private sector and "invisible hand" of the market are the most powerful forces that must be trusted to work out in the long run. In other words, the role of government is to protect the rights of business in order to maintain a free market that is safe for capital to invest. The theory is that a free market full of competition will eventually stabilize and bring valuable goods at reasonable prices and pay reasonable wages, and this free market process is "automatic", meaning that government need not and should not ever intervene. Smith's work was in the late 1700s, a very different world before industrial automation when most of the world's population were farmers. Neoliberalism is effectively the attempt at carrying his ideas into the new industrialized (and now global) economy, and Chomsky's book does a great job at showing how this policy has been disastrous and counter to democratic ideals.

Neoliberalism has been on the upswing in the United States for decades, but probably most noticeably became public policy during the Reagan era. The Adam Smith Institute proudly provides both a good description of neoliberal policy and a boast that they have influenced such policy decisions since the 1970s, to give an example. Since then, Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses have pushed for free market "invisible hand" solutions to problems. The parties disagree slightly on implementation -- with Republicans tending to lean completely toward "market-based solutions" while Democrats acknowledge some small "safety nets" might be necessary -- but both overwhelmingly agree that private business and not government needs to fix problems. We see this as members of both political parties have de-regulated banks and businesses (they call it "red tape"), cut funding for social programs and benefits, and pushed to privatize many services including utilities like water and even social security. This idea that capital -- investing in privately-owned businesses that control resources and sell to others for profit -- is superior to any other economic model and will always automatically lead to solutions of public problems is exactly the definition of capitalism.

If you don't believe how similar the two major parties are on neoliberalism, try to ask most politicians on either side about the free market or capitalism. Both Republicans and Democrats loudly trumpet private for-profit insurances as the model for healthcare, and reject any sort of publicly-funded model like single payer medicare for all, or even simply a public option to compete with private insurance. (Their differences on healthcare really only come down to whether government can require by law people to buy insurance, otherwise their plans are effectively the same). Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House leader, loudly proclaimed "we're capitalists, and that's just the way it is" when asked at a recent town hall. Bill Clinton worked with Republicans on many reforms during the 1990s, including de-regulation of banks and capital as well as "reform" of social programs like welfare (that lead to those programs being ineffective, allowing politicians to later use that as "evidence" the programs don't work and scrap them all-together). Even today, Democrats' arguments the GOP tax reform plan are mostly about not following proper Senate procedure.. We have to make taxes lower for business and capital to let the free market, is what the GOP argues, and Democrats largely agree with them. Notice how much even Democrats scream "It will raise your taxes!" -- further promoting "tax phobia", teaching citizens to be afraid of taxes and treat them as "theft" -- rather than fighting for a program that raises taxes on the wealthy to ensure a fair and just economic system for all. They're not arguing for a fair system, they're arguing that Republican voters and donors are reaping the benefits instead of their own Democratic voters and donors. Either way, it is unjust since someone most "lose" in order for another to "win" and make profits in such a "free market" capitalist system.

The "invisible hand" of the market will fix everything and government should keep interference to a minimum, according to both major parties. They only disagree on the best way to encourage a free market, not the concept of a market-based solution itself. Contrast the Green Party's platform that explicitly says:

The Green Party seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power, an alternative that rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making. We believe the old models of capitalism (private ownership of production) and state socialism (state ownership of production) are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices.

When was the last time you saw a politician saying natural resources and industry should be democratically-controlled by communities rather than owned and operated by capitalists? Unless you've seen a Green Party candidate speaking recently (or maybe a DSA-backed candidate), you probably have never seen this from major party candidates. We don't have a real debate on economic policy in this country because leaders and most establishment candidates of both parties are largely in agreement on such issues. Neoliberalism has infiltrated most of our discussion to the point that many accept its tenants as "common sense" or "obvious" because they've never heard an alternative. They almost treat the "invisible hand" and "free market" as a religion, that "free market competition" doctrine cannot be wrong and any questioning of it is blasphemy.

So neoliberalism has as its base a very capitalist-focused, free market economy with minimal government and taxes. But that isn't all. This focus on capitalism and privately-held resources has led to the problems we see in our government and foreign policy.

In order to expand profits and capital, businesses must continue to expand claim more resources (buy more private property). Naturally, this leads to businesses buying other businesses to get their resources, and leads to monopolies. Of course, in today's world, it is easy to hop on a plane or set up an electronic bank account around the world, so monopolies are not restricted to their home country. It is now easy for big business to "invade" other countries and attempt to gain private control of the resources of that country as well as the home country. They can do so economically, but it's really easy if they can use another source of power: military.

Viewed through this lens, United States intervention in other countries since World War 2 makes much more sense. George W. Bush is famous for describing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as "bringing democracy" to the people, but that never entirely made sense as presidents for decades have been close allies with very authoritarian regimes. We fund and provide weapons to Saudi Arabia, for example, despite the country being a royal dictatorship with some of the worst civil rights violations in the world. Why?

"Democracy" is a euphemism for neoliberals. They don't mean to bring literal democracy -- as in people directly governing themselves through popular vote -- or freedom, but rather to import American-style neoliberal free markets. As Chomsky put it, we're not making the world safe for democracy but making the world safe for capital, much as Adam Smith argued in his book that capital needed to be safe for a free market to continue to function. In some sense, the fight was for freedom, but freedom of business capital, not individual freedoms. When you see that, it becomes clear why many "allies" of the United States are among the worst human rights offenders in the world while we demonize other countries. Our "allies" are ones willing to do business with us (like Saudi Arabia selling us our oil addiction), while our "enemies" are ones that are economic rivals (or simply more socialist states uninterested in cooperating with privately-controlled American corporations). Notice tensions are cooling with rival countries like Russia as they become more capitalist and open to American businesses and capital, incidentally. Of course, we utilize any economic rivals as a source of anxiety to push for more military and defense spending, which itself is typically handled by privately-owned military industrial "contractors that profit from further spending. The spending that generates military profits must come from somewhere, and so taxes are raised, wages are lowered, to ensure the nation keeps spending while the capitalists continue to profit.

"Free trade agreements" are all about securing favorable conditions for corporations and capital. Since agreements like NAFTA have been signed, we've seen a shrinking middle class with lower salaries and benefits, and a growing poverty class with no safety net, as corporate taxes are cut to help fund offshoring of those corporations to generate even larger capital and profits. Not only that, but in the process, we've granted corporation more and more "human rights", allowing corporations to sue governments for profit loss (arguing for example that social programs prevent them from making as much profit as they could have) and further weaken our social safety nets. We've also empowered the president to make such binding agreements without consulting Congress, further centralizing economic power in the hands of a few individuals rather than the people. De-regulation and trade agreements have effectively left corporations with more rights than individuals. Again, leaders of both parties have generally championed free trade agreements and their effects, with only a few such as Bernie Sanders speaking out against them.

To enforce trade agreements and business property rights, we see our police forces drift toward "police states" that become more concerned with protecting private property than actually defending citizens against injustice. A well-known recent event was the DAPL protests, in which peaceful protesters were violently attacked by police forces who considered themselves "defending" the property on behalf of the pipeline that supposedly owned the land (nevermind that the protesters were largely Native Americans that had rightful ownership of that land under treaties with the United States - again, our police and military make the world safe for business and capital, not individual human rights).

While Republicans are often detestable for socially-backwards views, we must remember that Democrats usually support the same neoliberal policies Republicans do. Such policies lead to massive wealth inequalities that elevate a select few into "rich" status at the expense of pushing large amounts of Americans down into poverty, all while reducing our individual freedoms, weakening our democracy, and transforming our country into a police state more interested in protecting capital than human civil rights. Unfortunately Republicans winning elections is often a backlash to such policies hurting the average American, much like how Democrats win after average Americans continue to suffer under the same neoliberal Republican policies. Both sides get to bash each other over the head with the negative effects every 4-8 years and win in landslides because people are angry and yet feel trapped in the two party system. In effect, both parties get to "have their cake and eat it too" as they implement neoliberal policies that profit themselves and simply wait for the next cycle to sweep them into power for even more profits.

The way to combat this is not to support either major party, but to fight the entire neoliberal establishment as a whole. I believe the best way to do so is build a new political party and movement that focuses on people and planet over profits, that values human and individual rights, that believes corporations are not entitled to make money no matter what. A party that acknowledges that natural resources are precious, and their extraction and use deeply impacts the entire community if not region or whole world, and so we need more bottom-up democratic structures managing those resources rather than top-down corporate dictatorships. The Green Party is exactly that party, and I invite you to join in building the party rather than propping up either of our current major neoliberal parties. And if you want to learn more about neoliberalism and how today's world was built by both major parties, Chomsky's book is an excellent introduction to the subject.