A Gem from the Late C. Wright Mills
“You’ve asked me, ‘What might you be?’ Now I answer you: ‘I am a Wobbly.’ I mean this spiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation than to political ethos, and I take Wobbly to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. […] I am a Wobbly, personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social isolation and self-help. But do you know what a Wobbly is? It’s a kind of spiritual condition. […] A Wobbly is not only a man who takes orders from himself. He’s also a man who’s often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall back upon that he hasn’t made up himself. He doesn’t like bosses—capitalistic or communistic—they are all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at all times under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of spiritual condition, and only this, is Wobbly freedom.”
—C. Wright Mills, Letters and Autobiographical Writings, ed. Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills, intro. Dan Wakefield (Berkeley: University of California P 2000.) 25.
We could get distracted by Mills’s use of “capitalism.” But for now, can I stipulate (whether or not this is historically accurate—though of course I’m interested in Mills’s own thinking) that by “capitalism” he doesn’t mean “free markets” but, rather, something closer to “social dominance by capitalists”? With that stipulation in place: what’s your instinctive reaction to the sentiment he expresses?
Suppose he had written this:
“You’ve asked me, ‘What might you be?’ Now I answer you: ‘I am a lover of freedom.’ I mean this spiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation than to political ethos, and I take ‘freedom-lover’ to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. I am a freedom-lover, personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social isolation and self-help. But do you know what a freedom-lover is? It’s a kind of spiritual condition. A freedom-lover is not only a man who takes orders from himself. He’s also a man who’s often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall back upon that he hasn’t made up himself. He doesn’t like bosses—corporate or political—they are all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at all times under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of spiritual condition, and only this, is the kind of freedom I love.”
Would the slight changes in wording make any difference?
Suppose he had written this:
“You’ve asked me, ‘What might you be?’ Now I answer you: ‘I am a lover of freedom.’ I mean this spiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation than to political ethos, and I take ‘freedom-lover’ to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. I am a freedom-lover, personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social isolation and self-help. But do you know what a freedom-lover is? It’s a kind of spiritual condition. A freedom-lover is not only a man who takes orders from himself. He’s also a man who’s often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall back upon that he hasn’t made up himself. He doesn’t like bosses—corporate or political—they are all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at all times under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of spiritual condition, and only this, is the kind of freedom I love.”
Would the slight changes in wording make any difference?
Comments
This doesn't imply necessarily that bosses have more money than non-bosses. "The customer is king" is a way of expressing this, too, I think, even though the customer is often weaker individually than the person or company that s/he is purchasing from.
So I'm wondering how the anti-bossism idea relates to my definition. Is it a completely different concept or concern? If so, what's a better test?
a. the average amount of time I can spend without monitoring or direction;
b. the degree to which I'm responsible for achieving a specified outcome versus the degree to which I'm responsible for following specified procedures; and
c. the degree to which my work supervisor is directly or indirectly accountable to me.
My instinct is to say that, if I can freely elect my work supervisor, or if I can freely elect someone to whom she is immediately or ultimately responsible, then I probably don't have a boss. Similarly, if my responsibilities are defined in terms of outcomes, not processes, I probably don't have a boss. And if my span of control is extensive, I probably don't have a boss.
Stephan is surely right that "boss" isn't a rigorously defined category with sharp edges. I still think I can usually know one when I see one.