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the dumb docility in which their bosses have tried to immure them

[...] The idea implicit in Working, as a kind of subtext, is something like this: the workers know they are being screwed, but they do not revolt, because what they do instead is to use all their brains and all their sensitivity to give their work meaning, to drench it with beauty and excitemen…

On one level, they are drowning in what Georg Lukács called "false consciousness": they don't even know they're being exploited! On another level, they are the salt of the earth.