Having a job is living in a totalitarian system

On having a job

Chomsky: Just think about it for a minute. Almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system. Its called having a job. When you have a job, you’re under total control of the masters of the enterprise. They determine what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, what you do. The very idea of a wage contract is selling yourself into servitude. These are private governments. They are more totalitarian than governments are.

Interviewer: But they can’t legally murder you.

Chomsky: They can’t legally murder you but they can control everything that you do.

Interviewer: The right-wing liberatarian argument will be “Well, you are free to leave at any time”.

Chomsky: Yes, you are free to starve. That is exactly right. You have a choice between starving or selling yourself to a tyranny. Very libertarian. The right-wing libertarians, whatever they believe, are actually deep authoritarians. They are calling for subordination to private tyrannies, the worst kind of tyrannies.