ABSTRACT
When industrial capitalism emerged in the U.S., the idea that a care ethic might govern the workplace could not have been further from the mind of most employers. Most employees were not governed by an ethic of rights that had any political or legal grounding. The market dictated work conditions. By selling their labor rather than the goods they made with it, wage laborers accepted a hierarchical form of managerial power and authority that is antithetical to a Spinozian care ethic based on sociability. It was not employee differences but their similarities that employers hoped to capitalize upon.
