HEiST! - CrimethInc

Beyond
Stealing
from
Work
rather than with his or her own interests. People
identify with the interests of those who exploit
them for a variety of reasons: notions of right
and wrong (which are often framed by those in
power), the idea that they might become employers
themselves one day, a hesitance to acknowledge
the embarrassing fact of their own
exploitation. Employers thrive on the tensions
and competition between their employees: so
long as the employees don’t view themselves as
having shared interests, they will not act together
to defend themselves. Instead, they may turn
each other in for small-scale attempts to redress
the grievous imbalances of the workplace.
Capitalist values are founded on the idea
that those who own capital deserve the power
it affords them; in concrete terms, this includes
the power it gives them over others’ lives, even
though this is hardly a “democratic” relationship.
Capitalism implies a meritocracy: the best
and brightest are rewarded with the most power,
and everyone else ends up serving them. In
practice, of course, the cutthroat competition
of the market often rewards the most rapacious
and merciless with the most power. Stealing
from one’s workplace can be seen as an attempt
to distribute power and resources according to
a logic of need rather than of conquest.
Employees who turn in co-workers for stealing
may be trying to abide by the Golden Rule
– do unto others as you would have them
do unto you. But stealing from a corporation
is fundamentally different than stealing
from another human being. The wealth of
a corporation is the accumulation of profit
derived from workers who are not paid the
full value of their labor and consumers who
pay more than the production cost of their
purchases. Redistributing this wealth is not
stealing so much as it is reversing the effects of
a theft that is already in progress. Workplace
theft is thus a challenge to the morality of
capitalist meritocracy; at best, it can imply a
totally different value system.