Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.
Perry Anderson
Headline: Uber loses appeal in UK employment case
Sub-headline: Company must treat its drivers as ‘workers’, tribunal rules
Even Mr. Elvidge gives the game away by declaring Uber to be a taxi service, rather than the Neo-Liberal euphemism used by The Financial Times of ‘ride haling service’ . The power of the state and municipalities to act in the public interest didn’t collapse in 2008! But the Neo-Liberal Fiction that The Market is the totality of the human aspiration, in its political/economic/ethical dimension has proven to be an expression of a pernicious nihilism. See ‘Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution’, by Wendy Brown:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/undoing-demos
Tom Elvidge, Uber UK’s acting general manager, said: “Almost all taxi and private hire drivers have been self-employed for decades, long before our app existed. The main reason why drivers use Uber is because they value the freedom to choose if, when and where they drive and so we intend to appeal.”
Uber is an employer, who hires people and pays them for their labor. The notion that they are not employers, but merely brokers, is more of the same ‘freedom to choose’ Party Line spouted by Milton Friedman, of the Chicago Boys infamy. Mr. Elvidge, and his cronies at the Financial Times, will never stop their propaganda offensive, against the role of government to protect its citizens from the predations of Capital!
Old Socialist
https://www.ft.com/content/84de88bc-c5ee-11e7-a1d2-6786f39ef675
