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'The Language of Capitalism Isn't Just Annoying, It's Dangerous' (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: When General Motors laid off more than 6,000 workers days after Thanksgiving, John Patrick Leary, the author of the new book Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, tweeted out part of GM CEO Mary Barra's statement. "The actions we are taking today continue our transformation to be highly agile, resilient, and profitable, while giving us the flexibility to invest in the future," she said. Leary added a line of commentary to of Barra's statement: "Language was pronounced dead at the scene." Why should we pay attention to the particular words used to describe, and justify, the regularly scheduled "disruptions" of late capitalism? Published this month by Haymarket Books, Leary's Keywords explores the regime of late-capitalist language: a set of ubiquitous modern terms, drawn from the corporate world and the business press, that he argues promulgate values friendly to corporations (hierarchy, competitiveness, the unquestioning embrace of new technologies) over those friendly to human beings (democracy, solidarity, and scrutiny of new technologies' impact on people and the planet).
These words narrow our conceptual horizons -- they "manacle our imagination," Leary writes -- making it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our economy and society. We are encouraged by powerful "thought leaders" and corporate executives to accept it as the language of common sense or "normal reality." When we understand and deploy such language to describe our own lives, we're seen as good workers; when we fail to do so, we're implicitly threatened with economic obsolescence. After all, if you're not conversant in "innovation" or "collaboration," how can you expect to thrive in this brave new economy? [...] Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies, what we're living through is just the next iteration of an old system of global capitalism. In other words, he writes, "cheer up: things have always been terrible!" What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our "belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts. He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.
These words narrow our conceptual horizons -- they "manacle our imagination," Leary writes -- making it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our economy and society. We are encouraged by powerful "thought leaders" and corporate executives to accept it as the language of common sense or "normal reality." When we understand and deploy such language to describe our own lives, we're seen as good workers; when we fail to do so, we're implicitly threatened with economic obsolescence. After all, if you're not conversant in "innovation" or "collaboration," how can you expect to thrive in this brave new economy? [...] Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies, what we're living through is just the next iteration of an old system of global capitalism. In other words, he writes, "cheer up: things have always been terrible!" What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our "belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts. He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.
This doesn't require a book, everyone knows about corporate speak. Write your thoughts on a blog. You will get a couple of thousand readers.
When companies have the power to disrupt societies, one manager thinking and taking bullshit can do a lot of damage. It always has been that way but these days or highly optimised society has become more fragile which makes bullshit more likely to cause damage.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Not the language of capitalism.
it's a common propaganda technique. We all laughed when the Iraqi information minister tried to do it since he was completely doomed.But when you control the media the technique's the same every time.
Put another way: "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.".
Works too. This is why we need to teach critical thinking via the humanities in school. Critical thinking _can_ be taught, but you need a subject that's simple enough for folks who don't do it naturally and where being 50% right has value. STEM doesn't work for that. You'll note the wealthy make it a point to give their kids a well rounded education. This is why.
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...the reality is the reason we have so many problems is because people who are irrational have equal power with the people who are rational.
For those who rail at these words, the reality is right now we live in a lawless oligarchy that's has been basically stealing everything that is nailed down and has been since the US's founding. To even suggest any modern capitalist state "is a democracy" is just utter bullshit when it has been owned lock stock and barrel by corporations for most western states history with brief interruptions of world war 1 and world war 2 and the cold war to try to soften the ruthless harshness of capitalist societies.
Now with the fall of the USSR corporations are unchecked and out of control and being enabled by a heavily indoctrinated public.
Don't think so? Every time IP law came up for review to benefit the public it was pushed to benefit the rich and their corporations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The reality is the general public in the US worships their robber barrons. George carlin said it best about americans.
Carlin
Look at the distribution of wealth, it is just insane, anyone who thinks they live in a society that benefits the many is uninformed.
US distribution of wealth
https://imgur.com/a/FShfb
Wealth in america
The Yellow Vests seem to disagree with you that France is doing fine. But true enough that US interference in other countries is a big factor in our refugee "crisis." Look at how we made of mess of Honduras recently.
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Seriously, what we do to all of the Southern continent with our foreign police really pisses me off. We wreck their economies and governments and then we bitch that refugees from the disasters we caused come up her and take our jerbs.
The term "jerbs" is what really pisses me off.
"jerbs" = "someone else's jobs"
When it comes around to your own job though, suddenly people around here don't like the H1B program. Funny, that.
Hmmm...you mean like Nicaragua? Daniel Ortega, that paradigm of left wing-nut populism, is currently throwing opponents into jail and refuses to allow the people to unelect him. Last we heard, the U.S. hasn't had squat to do with Nicaragua for several decades during which he became Dear Leader, stopped being Dear Leader, and now is Dear Leader again...for life...which may not be long for him.
Cuba has had an exemplary left wing-nut government for many years...still sucks. Try starting a political party there and see what Castro's goons (they are still there after he went all stiff and incommunicado) do to you.
Last we checked, the Central American gangs were winning the drug war, and they won't brook any opposition to their loving rule. Yep, those countries should be breaking out into Left Wing Heaven any day now.
France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada are all capitalist countries. I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make.
I do agree with you that we should just stay the fuck out of other countries business though. If they want to try to build their own little socialist utopias, let them.
Corporations are no longer stewards of society in general, and only looking after interests of shareholder. As such corporations have no reservations to damage society to the benefit of shareholders. This, in itself, is what will doom Western society.
You can't have powerful agents (i.e. corporations) act as sociopaths and have society as a whole succeed. There are two solutions to this - reduce power of corporations (i.e. socialism) or change rules governing corporate behavior to disincentivize antisocial behavior (i.e. strong regulation and anti-monopolist laws). Without this, we will have a new era of Robber Barons. Arguably, silicon valley technocrats are already there.
I think people are overly concerned about the MBA-speak used, but aren't paying sufficient attention to the actions of said MBAs.
"Late-stage capitalism" or whatever you want to call it is about squeezing every single drop of productivity out of an already-stretched system. This is where the disruption comes in...everyone is focused on removing every pocket of slack. Replace taxi companies with a phone app that summons drivers directly to you to kill taxi companies. Outsource every single corporate service to the lowest bidder rather than hiring people directly to lower your costs. It's a race to the bottom and if you ask me, it is beginning to have an effect on society in general.
When I graduated in the late 90s, it was still very common for people to have decent mid-level jobs at large companies. A generation before, it was even more pronounced. Now, in the name of agile and disruption, businesses are killing any stability that was there in favor of contracting positions and outsourcing functions. The problem is this...in a previous time it was possible to party your way through a management degree, get randomly selected for some generic position at a company, and use that position to establish a decent family life. The societal change that's happening is that fewer people are able to stay employed in an area. This will eventually lead to people being more nomadic, having fewer children, renting apartments instead of buying houses, and not contributing to any sort of community.
Once you're out of your 20s, most people aren't really excited about pulling up stakes and moving across the country over and over again to chase yet another contract position. Those plants GM is closing are going to dump a ton of previously well-established workers into the nomad pool, chasing lower-wage positions. Union factory work used to be the only way for people with less education to earn enough to support a decent quality of life. This is the disruption people need to think about. If you put the work in by getting educated, your reward should be a stable living that lasts a career. The problem is that these cycles of consolidation and slack-removal are growing shorter and people are likely to experience a major disruption more than once in their working lives.
Economies that have humans involved need slack. The current system just assumes we're machines.
Those countries (like most of Europe) run what is called a social democracy. Basically it's a democracy on a capitalist framework that respects property rights and such, but where the state assumes the duty of providing a basic level of care for everyone, and where they acknowledge (and act on) the need for government to regulate the market to some degree, either to address market failure, or to correct what they think are unacceptable inequalities.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Those are all extremes and fail because they are so. Capitalism has worked best in the past when properly regulated. The keyword is properly. Breaking up Ma Bell was great for telecommunications in this country. Unfortunately we don't do this anymore. The very idea that we have banks or other companies that are too big to fail should be a sign that we're not regulating properly.
It is a difficult task and even harder to maintain over the long haul as corporations have way too much influence in government and also will do what they can to corrupt the intent of many regulations whether it be through lobbying congress or embedding stooges like Ajit Pai. Too many regulations or regulations that don't make sense and you stifle innovation, not enough and corporate greed leads right back to its destructive roots.
Growing up in Vermont when I did was during the birth of Ben and Jerry's. They had a novel concept that local companies should support the local community every way they can. They instilled a corporate morality into their company and it provided a great example where a corporation can actually do a lot of good and still make a lot of money. They pooled dairy farms in the surrounding area helping those farmers even to this day. They've grown so they are helping even more farmers today despite being sold to a much larger corporation. Most business owners border on the sociopathic though and will not see spending money on the local community as anything but a loss of profit.
Ford had it right while not being perfect he understood that to make a product you have to pay workers enough to afford your product. That is overly simplistic of course as there is a lot more to society than a paycheck. If Ford helped build roads and schools they would have had even larger demand and people to fill the demand. I've yet to work for a company in my professional life that understood the concept of soft dollars without just seeing it as sunken costs. Hard dollars is all a lot of people seem to understand.
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PS - Sweden is capitalist. Note that they have a stock market...
Venezuela does too, it is called the Caracas Stock Exchange. So Venezuela is just as capitalist as Sweden, and I guess the U.S.
So why are righties always claiming that Venezuela is socialist through-and-through and proof that socialism always fails?
Because they define all successful economies as "totally capitalist, man!" and all failed economies as "proof of the universal failure of socialism everywhere". In other words it is plain dishonesty. All economies in the world of any size are mixed economies, with some level of regulation for the capitalist component (and the socialist component as well, for that matter).
Venezuela's economy tanked because its government was taken over by corrupt incompetent authoritarians whose only interest is self-aggrandizement.
But don't worry, that can't happen here.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
of the episode of South Park it came from. Randi Marsh didn't care until it was his job, then he was furious and joined the chorus of "They took our jerbs".
This is why we need to push real solutions to the problem. There are a ton of out of work construction workers seeing Mexican and South American immigrants doing the jobs they used to do. Just like there's a mountain of out of work tech workers seeing their jobs go to H1-Bs. Workers in America need to learn solidarity. They need to understand that if you make a living by working you are a member of the working class no matter what color your collar.
If us techies don't start doing that then the blue collar guys are going to get tricked into voting for folks that'll screw us all over. Maybe "tricked" is the wrong word. If they've been abandoned what's the point of caring if the elites in Silicon Valley get screwed? That's where the concept of "stigginit" comes from. Where you're just lashing out.
What's frustrating is that in 2018 we should be able to see these things for what they are: common tactics by our ruling class used to divide and conquer the working class. Race, religion, collar color, wedge issues. Over and over again we see the same pattern. We even have numerous examples of the ruling class talking about how they're going to create issues to separate us (go google the history of how abortion became a political issue in America sometime).
The tricks are all there out in the open, but nobody really seems to call them out on it. Bernie Sanders does I guess (he repeatedly tries to bring folks together) but not sure how far he's gonna get. They're already running adverts on TV against him and he hasn't even announced he's running for the primary...
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