The combination of ideological extremes—absolute collectivism and total separation of identity—forms a bleak portrait of labor and selfhood. "
In the imagined future of hyper-rationalized labor, where collectivist ideals and corporate control intertwine, the individual is no longer a sovereign being. The maxim "All labor belongs to the people. No worker belongs to themselves." encapsulates this grim reality. At the intersection of communism and the severance of self from work, we find a paradox: a society where the workforce is ostensibly unified in purpose but utterly fragmented in identity. This essay explores how forced disassociation between labor and personal autonomy creates a system that mirrors both ideological extremities—one that is equal in alienation, rather than empowerment.
The Apple TV+ series Severance introduces a radical bifurcation of selfhood—wherein workers, or "innies," experience an existence solely confined to the workplace, their "outie" counterparts living an entirely separate life with no memory of their labor. While this fiction is extreme, it reflects the conditions of historical and modern labor structures where the worker is meant to be wholly devoted to production. Under communist doctrines, the idealized laborer contributes tirelessly to the collective, theoretically benefiting all but often at the cost of individuality. The severance concept, when applied broadly, illustrates how the working class can be stripped of personal agency, whether through the psychological conditioning of loyalty to the state or the corporate mechanisms of depersonalization.
In this imagined dystopian campaign, society is divided into two archetypes: the Sheep and the Goat. The Sheep are the ideal workers—docile, productive, unquestioning. They believe in the system because they are told it exists for their benefit. They embrace the loss of personal identity, seeing themselves only as functions of labor. The Goat, by contrast, represents resistance—those who see beyond the illusion of collective ownership and recognize the fundamental theft of self. Yet, this resistance is framed as an aberration, a malfunction in the social order. The Goat is dangerous, unpredictable, a threat to stability. Campaigns emerge to reinforce loyalty among the Sheep, warning of the chaos and instability that follows if one strays from their designated function. The severed workforce becomes self-regulating, turning against any who question the necessity of their disconnection.
Under this regime, the notion that "all labor belongs to the people" is a deception; the people do not own their work—their work owns them. This is the ultimate dystopian turn: the illusion of empowerment masking total submission. Whether under state-mandated collectivism or corporate severance, the worker is reduced to an automaton, producing without self-recognition. The Sheep believe they have everything they need, while the Goat realizes too late that they have lost everything they were.
The combination of ideological extremes—absolute collectivism and total separation of identity—forms a bleak portrait of labor and selfhood. "The Sheep and the Goat" illustrates a system where compliance is rewarded with ignorance, and dissent leads to exile. In such a world, severance is not just a surgical removal of self-awareness in the workplace; it is the final step in ensuring that labor owns the worker, and not the other way around. The question then becomes: When the system is built to sever us from ourselves, is there any path back to wholeness?
