It is your own empirical generalization, and it is correct.

No man in the industrial machine is a free-will agent, except the large capitalist, and he isn't, if you'll pardon the Irishism.* You see, the masters are quite sure that they are right in what they are doing.

That is the crowning absurdity of the whole situation.

They are so tied by their human nature that they can't do a thing unless they think it is right.
They must have a sanction for their acts.
* Verbal contradictions, called BULLS, were long an amiable weakness of the ancient Irish.
"When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right.

And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought.