Who Benefits from the Story of Quitting to Be Free?

Introduction: The Two Halves That Always Arrive in the Same Order

Am I really going to be all right staying at this company? A job for life is finished. The company will not protect you. Depending on one employer is the most precarious position there is from here on — and after words like these, something is invariably held out. But there is a road. Quit and go out on your own.

How to quit and go independent, and the success stories, are already well documented. What this article takes up is the shape of that telling itself. Why do these two halves always appear in this order? And whom does this story suit?

Here is the conclusion first. The anxiety stoked and the hope sold do not fit together. What is stoked is the precariousness of depending on one company. Yet the independence held out merely increases the number of dependencies from one to several; it does not change the structure of dependence at all.

Stoke the Anxiety, Then Sell the Hope — the Order Is the Device

Tellings that recommend independence follow a fixed order. First stoke anxiety, then sell hope.

In the first phase the listener’s footing is shaken: the ground you think is stable is in fact precarious. This telling calls up a distinct anxiety. Once the anxiety has risen high enough, the second phase begins: now hope is held out. Earn by your own strength and you need not depend on a company. Get a way of working free in time and place and you need never be afraid again.

This order works because when a person is placed in an anxious state, they crave whatever will quiet the anxiety. What they would examine carefully when calm, they accept without doubt when anxious. Anxiety hurries judgement and makes examination skippable. Anxiety prepares the ground for swallowing hope undefended.

What matters here is that the two do not fit together. The anxiety stoked was “the precariousness of dependence.” Yet independence only increases the number of dependencies; it does not sever dependence. If anything, having more parties to answer loads on a new precariousness of a different kind. They do not fit — and the momentum of the telling’s order makes the mismatch invisible.

This pattern is not peculiar to the telling of independence. Stoke anxiety about health, then sell a health regime; stoke anxiety about old age, then sell a financial product. See through it once and it applies everywhere.

Asking Who the Story Benefits

When a story survives tenaciously despite conflicting with the facts, someone needs that story. Stories do not spread only because they are true. Often they spread because they are convenient for someone.

A qualification here. This is not a posture of accusing anyone of being the villain behind the curtain. Even with nobody holding ill intent, when a story is convenient for particular people, those people end up on the side that spreads it without meaning to. Interest reproduces stories without malice. What is worth watching is not anyone’s scheming but the structural tilt this shape itself carries.

The Side That Can Gather Labour Without Carrying Responsibility

There was a time when a company needing someone’s labour had essentially one method: employment. Employ a person and you take on not only wages but responsibilities — social insurance contributions, security of the position, management of hours, duty of care for safety.

Into this comes the independent individual as a supply of labour. Place an order and you obtain that labour while carrying none of the responsibilities that come with employing. When the work dries up you simply stop ordering, and managing hours has been made the independent person’s own job.

In this arrangement, the costs the company sheds have not disappeared. They have been transferred wholesale onto the shoulders of an individual. The side gathering labour became lighter because the side supplying it took on the weight.

And here the story plays its decisive role. If independent people recognised their position as “labour power made to carry someone else’s responsibility,” they would press for better terms. This story, however, retells that same position in altogether different words: you are a free independent operator choosing your work by your own judgement. The offloading of responsibility is retold as free choice.

▸ Why that dispersal does not sever dependence is taken up in escaping subcontracting does not end your dependence.

How the Sense of “I Chose This” Expands

When independent people willingly take on instability, what is at work is the sense of I chose this. Leaving the company was my decision; going independent was my decision. So the instability that followed is a consequence I should carry.

Here sits a hard-to-see substitution. What the independent person chose was strictly “whether to go independent,” not “the contents of the instability that independence brings.” The unsteady income, the absence of protection, the way of working without rest — these were not examined and chosen one by one. They come structurally attached to the choice of independence.

Yet the sense of “I chose independence” quietly swells into the sense of “I chose everything that comes with independence.” Only the entrance was chosen, and yet what waited beyond it comes to feel chosen too. And this expansion seals off, by the person’s own hand and in advance, any question about the instability.

Conclusion: Name What the Story Hides

Follow any device in this story and you arrive at the same single point: keeping ownership out of view as the question at issue.

Let me be clear here. This does not deny independence as a way of living. What is cut is not the action but the way of speaking that translates a structural change into an individual choice, and thereby seals off, in advance, any question about the structure.

What is needed is to ask with the parts separated: “what did I choose, and what did I not?” And when someone recommends independence to you: “does this hope actually solve the anxiety that was stoked?” Precisely when anxiety is being stoked, do not hurry your judgement; examine the hope calmly. That is how to protect yourself from the device of the telling’s order.

The whole picture is gathered in why starting a business does not free you from masters.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Standing, G. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011) Bloomsbury Academic
• Marx, K. Das Kapital, Band I (1867) Verlag von Otto Meissner
• Uno, K. Principles of Political Economy (1964) Iwanami Shoten