The term ‘horizontal violence’ was originally coined by Fanon (1963) to describe intergroup conflict (in colonized Africans) as a result of oppression. This conflict leads to aggressive behavior directed horizontally within the oppressed group, even to the point of murder! As the days of the pandemic tick by, we are witnessing overwhelming evidence that the Trump administration is using COVID-19 as an instrument to institute a capitalist dystopia. This is today’s new potential reality through the national security state apparatus. While there is no denying that people are suffering (and dying) from COVID-19 and neoliberal austerity, we must be acutely aware that the state’s reaction is not protecting individuals from the virus. Black Americans have long known the need of government to act on systemic racism, and be held accountable for its promises. As a result of the BLM movement, communities across America are learning the truth about racial disparities rooted in hundreds of years of discriminatory practices, policies, and laws that continue to negatively impact the Black community.
If ‘utopia’ denotes an ideal or dream society, ‘dystopia’ is the word used to refer to an imagined nightmare world – normally the world of the future. But the first citation for the word ‘dystopian’ in the sense of ‘one who advocates or describes a dystopia’ comes from a speech made in the House of Commons by the Victorian philosopher, John Stuart Mill on March 12, 1868: “I may be permitted, as one who, in common with many of my betters, have been subjected to the charge of being Utopian, to congratulate the Government on having joined that goodly company. It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, cacotopians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear favor is too bad to be practicable.” The definition of a dystopia today is an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice.
Ayn Rand’s central philosophical work, her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, incorporates elements of science fiction, mystery and romance. The novel showcases a dystopian America where businesses suffer due to archaic laws and regulations. The novel explores several themes, all of which would later go on to contribute to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, that embraces open greed, rejection of empathy and strict atheism. But this didn’t stop it from becoming an international bestseller, as millions were drawn to her central message of individualism and unfettered capitalism, even if they didn’t buy into her whole philosophy. In the 1990s, a survey by the Library of Congress named Atlas Shrugged as the most influential book in the US, after the Bible. Beyond politics, the novel also had an impact in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs identified with its emphasis on heroic individuals and their work ethic.
The emergence of the Tea Party – a wing of the Republican Party which favors a shrinking of the state – appears to be driving her recent resurgence. John Galt is often referred to on placards and T-shirts. “She’s become a more dominant influence than she’s ever been and that’s bad because she’s made it cool to be selfish. It’s bad for the people outside her favored elite, the 99%. And it’s bad for the morality of the US,” says Gary Weiss, author of Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul. In 2009, sales spiked as the economic crisis raised questions on government interference in the markets. Rand intended her novels to be more than just fiction: she wrote them as a literary presentation of her philosophy of ‘Objectivism’, which can be summarized as a defense of a political philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism and a moral philosophy of egoism.
Workers enjoy the flexibility and freedom to make their own schedules by simply accessing a smartphone app, while businesses can tap into a wide network of part-time employees when they need them. It just stood to reason that in the coming dystopia, everyone would have to settle for “jobs” with little security, low pay, and no benefits. The gig economy is the idea that, increasingly, work will be short-term and temporary in nature, as traditional, secure, long-term salaried jobs are made obsolete by technology. As the share of freelancers in the workforce has edged higher in some countries, there has been a growing debate among economists over whether this is largely a good thing, allowing greater flexibility and worker choice, or the start of an alarming dystopian future in which insecure workers fight with increasing desperation for poorly paid piece of work. The gig economy is now the future of labor.
We need more transparency about the nature of gig work itself. Users, investors, workers, and regulators all need to know more about the nature of the jobs being created and how they might fall short of decent work standards. We need more accountability within the sector. At the moment, many platforms operate in regulatory gaps, and often allege that existing regulation doesn’t apply to them. “We’re a technology company,” they will claim – rather than recognize that they are in fact a high-tech taxi company, food delivery company or cleaning company, and so on. We therefore need to ensure that work and workers are either protected by existing regulation or we need to develop new approaches. Besides its much-touted “flexibility,” the gig economy isn’t much of a place to build a career. Instead, over the course of less than a decade, the self-described “tech companies” that connect people to gig work have managed to erode hard-fought labor protections in place for a century.
Although gig work was initially seen as a way to maximize worker freedom and create opportunities, it has, in its short history, proven corrosive. Sociologist Alexandrea Ravenelle notes “for all its app-enabled modernity, the gig economy resembles the early industrial age…the sharing economy is truly a movement forward to the past.” In general, gig workers don’t receive the basic labor rights afforded to their counterparts in the traditional economy. The lack of minimum wage, overtime payment, employment insurance coverages, paid time off, employer contributions to retirement savings, extended health and maternity benefits, and others has led to profound economic insecurity on the part of these hardworking professionals. The status quo has caused many gig workers to suffer financially, psychologically, and physically. COVID-19 exposes the fact they have few safety nets, the value of their unstable incomes from their unconventional jobs can erode significantly.1
Horizontal accountability has eroded, people are losing faith in government everywhere, with horizontal checks and balances in favor of the executive. This pandemic has increased horizontal violence in America. Workers are being pushed back into the workplace, despite the current risks, in order to “save the economy”. This is being fast-tracked through the uses of technology, like surveillance, that will ultimately target marginalized working-class communities. We are witnessing the ruling-class attempt to save itself with a chokehold over the U.S. courts, elections, prisons, police, government, and economic system. We are witnessing the lengths the economic elite is willing to go to ensure a capitalist dystopia. The country is heartsick, frightened, divided. And President Donald Trump is failing on every front. We can’t turn back the clock to a world with no platforms. But by looking to strategies that involve transparency, accountability, worker power and democratic ownership, we have in front of us the tools to move towards a less exploitative and more just platform economy.
Rand argues in Atlas Shrugged that the freedom of American society is responsible for its greatest achievements. For example, in the nineteenth century, inventors and entrepreneurs created an outpouring of innovations that raised the standard of living to unprecedented heights and changed forever the way people live. Rand, who thoroughly researched the history of capitalism, was well aware of the progress made during this period of economic freedom. We should acknowledge that transparency and regulation will only get us so far. Real change will happen when workers are able to collectively rather than individually negotiate with their bosses. Gig workers are often treated as individual businesses who should compete against one another. But it is only when they come together as colleagues that they can collectively bring about better wages and working conditions.
Trump’s attacks on inspectors general, whistleblowers and the media are part of his effort to present a particular vision of his presidency. Truth is indispensable to constitutional democracy. Shared acceptance of facts allows people to hold their government accountable – to point out when its policies are having adverse effects, or when its words do not match its deeds. This is a norm of democratic society that enables functional governance. The present dystopian nightmare in the US stems from deficiency in horizontal accountability – the checks and balances in a constitutional system of separation of powers – an essential feature of the constitutional state that underpins liberal democracy. When horizontal accountability is undermined there is a democratic deficiency – as when the executive is not sufficiently accountable to the legislature through such acts as government secrecy and lack of transparency. Accountability is an important aspect of election integrity. Elections are, after all, the main means by which citizens hold their elected officials accountable. In turn, electoral administrators and policy makers are held accountable for the quality of electoral process they administer.
1 Ephrat Livni. (26 Feb 2019) The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worker protections. https://qz.com/1556194/the-gig-economy-is-quietly-undermining-a-century-of-worker-protections/