this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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"You might mean working according to someone else's plan."
Yes, this is what I meant by "working for".
"If you abolish ownership, then working "for" someone changes in meaning."
This is correct, if you stretch the meaning of "working for", it can mean anything in the world. However, when we take the context of a workplace (for example a factory that makes glasses), in a capitalist system where you need to sell your labor in order to have a barely adequate life, you do not work for anything else other than your capitalist boss.
You do not work for the people who need glasses.
You do not work for the glory of the working class.
You work for your capitalist boss. This is pretty easy to understand when you actually manage to develop some class consciousness (you'll get there).
It does not matter if your boss is "kind, considerate and willing to work with you", you still work for him.
I'd be much more in favor of working in a factory if that boss was non-existant, and it instead felt like a union or group instead of a factory where I'm told to shut my trap or risk being homeless, or forced to move somewhere else to find work.
Edit: Looks like I made the Libs mad with this one B)
Yeah, no one is mad at you because they're libs. They're downvoting you because you missed the entire point and went off on some bullshit.
You say "working on someone else's plan" is what you mean by "working for". You then go on to talk about selling your labor. These are two different things.
Under capitalism, the capitalist doesn't make a plan. They make a bet. Part of that bet is hiring planners to make the plans that other people will work on. This is why I asked the question I asked.
When you and the manager both sell your labor power to the capitalist for a wage, you both work for the capitalist, but you don't work on the capitalist's plan. You work on your manager's plan.
If you take the capitalist out, and if we define "working for" as selling labor, then "working for" is abolished under socialism, even though hierarchy remains.
If instead the definition of "working for" is "working on someone else's plan", then we have a discussion about the fact that planning is a type of labor. In some context, planning can be done by the people doing the work at the expense of efficiency, which is fine when our goal is maximizing liberty. But there are other contexts where the work to be done and the planning are significantly arduous and complex enough that different people need to do the planning and the execution.
When this is the case, inevitably, anarchists start talking about "voluntary hierarchies" as the correct prefiguration, but this meme is raising the common objections from some anarchists that there is no such thing as a voluntary hierarchy.
Hence, the discussion below about the reality of stratified systems and levels of complexity creating naturally stratified labor distribution, which lends itself to hierarchy.
More libshit word salad. Not biting.
What are you 14?
Why the smug condescension?
Pretty sure you're just repeating what was already said to you...
Yes, exactly. This is why socialism is important, not just trying to form a more ethical capitalism. Management is critical. Tacticians, for example, often focus on the immediate, while strategians focus on the large-scale and long-term. They coincide and reinforce each other, and no one person can do both adequately. Production is similar, there is a need for those focused on the bigger picture of organizing and those focused on the small, and though those at the smaller end may be working according to grander plans not set by themselves, this is not done to enrich the grander planners, but to come to success for all.
There's no need to be condescending, the person you are replying to is a communist. They are trying to get you to see the merits of socialist organization, not simply attacking all management.