Freedom in the Work Situation Freedom in the Work Situation

Freedom means many things to many people. Do we mean by freedom, a freedom from – freedom from drudgery, from monotony, from the stupidity of manual work, freedom from the irrational authority of a boss or foreman, freedom from exploitation? Or, on the other hand, do we mean a freedom to – freedom participate actively in the work process or freedom to enjoy work? Actually our concept of freedom today is es-sentially a negative one: It is freedom from and not freedom to, because we are mostly concerned with what we are against and not what we are for – against whom we should defend ourselves rather than what we are living for. The word freedom shares this ambiguous quality with some other words that we frequently use. For instance, we use the word democracy and mean by it – more or less unconsciously – „consent manipulated without force. “ Or we use the word equality and mean by it sameness, rather than what equality meant originally that no man must be the means toward the end of another man. Or we speak of happiness and really mean unrestricted consumption. In discussing that ambiguous term, freedom, I will try to say something about th