The excerpt is from a great piece by Christopher Lasch writing in the short lived journal “Democracy”. Written in the 80’s, details the systemic problems facing US democracy. The situation described shows the roots of where we are now, and how (unfortunately) we have arrived here.
“The centralization of power in the United States and the decline of popular participation in community life have become dramatically visible only in the
period since World War II. The roots of these conditions, however, go back to the formative period around the turn of the century. We have been living ever since then with the long-term consequences of the momentous changes inaugurated at that time.The most important of these changes, of course, was the emergence of the corporation and the spread of the corporate form throughout
American industry. Often misunderstood as a shift from entrepreneurial to managerial control, the corporation emerged out of conflicts between capital
and labor for control of production. It institutionalized the basic division of labor that runs all through modern industrial society, the division between brainwork and handwork-between the design and the execution of production.
Under the banner of scientific management, capitalists expropriated the technical knowledge formerly exercised by workers and vested it in a new
managerial elite. The managers extended their power not at the expense of the owners of industry, who retained much of their influence and in any case tended to merge with the managerial group, but at the expense of the workers.Nor did the eventual triumph of industrial unionism break this pattern of managerial control. By the 1930s, even the most militant unions had acquiesced in the division of labor between the planning and execution of work. Indeed the very success of the union movement was predicated on a strategic retreat from issues of worker control. Unionization, moreover, helped to stabilize and rationalize the labor market and to discipline the work force. It did not alter the arrangement whereby management controls the technology of production, the rhythm of work, and the location of plants (even when these decisions affect entire communities), leaving the worker with the task merely of carrying out orders.
Having ·organized mass production on the basis of the new division of labor-most fully realized in the assembly line-the leaders of American industry
next turned to the organization of a mass market. The mobilization of consumer demand, together with the recruitment of a labor force, required a far-reaching series of changes that amounted to a cultural revolution; The virtues of thrift, avoidance of debt, and postponement of gratification had to give way to new habits of installment buying and immediate gratification, new standards of comfort, a new sensitivity to changes in fashion. People had to be discouraged from providing for their own wants and resocialized as consumers. Industrialism by its very nature tends to discourage home production and to make people dependent on the market, but a vast effort of reeducation, starting in the 1920s, had to be undertaken before Americans accepted consumption as a way of life.
As Emma Rothschild has shown in her study of the automobile industry, Alfred Sloan’s innovations in marketing-the annual model change, constant upgrading of the product, efforts to associate it with social status, the deliberate inculcation of an insatiable appetite for change-constituted the necessary counterpart of Henry Ford’s innovations in production. Modern industry came to rest on the twin pillars of Fordism and Sloanism. Both tended to discourage initiative and self-reliance and to reduce work and consumption alike to an essentially passive activity. […]
When I read this section I was immediately drawn to the sections highlighted in purple. What I hear from conservative commentators and business commentators is that what it takes to succeed in society is to get out there and play the market, or innovate, or work hard and save money and improve yourself et cetera. Usually, along with their sprightly commentary on how bootstrapping oneself to greatness, is another piece on the evils of the nanny state and how those damn social programs (WELFARE *clutches chest* *dies*) are making people into lazy dependent sloths who do nothing but keep the productive people down.
Of course, like most capitalistic propaganda, it is utter shite. The message retains its ubiquity and longevity in our society only because of its constant repetition in the business press and media.
“The virtues of thrift, avoidance of debt, and postponement of gratification had to give way to new habits of installment buying and immediate gratification, new standards of comfort, a new sensitivity to changes in fashion.“
I quote this again because damn, if this isn’t an indictment of how capitalism has malformed our society, I’m not sure what is. This way of life we now live was a choice made by the elite classes, as to how society was to be run. Clearly, attributes like avoiding debt and postponement of gratification have no place in a modern civilized society (!).
Racking up debt, conspicuous consumption, becoming dependent on the market – didn’t just *happen* – they were orchestrated to feed the industrial elite’s needs and as always, at the expense of the working class.
So, the business class essentially builds/nurtures a culture of dependency – that is, actively discourages self production and self-reliance – and then has the temerity to bluster about Big Government creating a welfare state chock full of slothful, gormless, dependent people.
Create a society where dependency is rewarded, and then proceed to blame the people for becoming dependent. Fascinating stuff this capitalism is.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
4 comments
January 17, 2017 at 4:04 pm
robert browning
A good, article/piece/blog/excerpt right to the heart of the matter as control by billionaires accelerates.
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January 17, 2017 at 7:42 pm
Meg
“the decline of popular participation in community life ” – I’m not even sure what that means. Perhaps that I don’t understand the concept is a reflection of what he’s talking about in the first place.
Let’s not forget that the drive for complex hierarchical control and culture of dependence and blaming dependents is male created and male driven. Instant gratification with no consequences or thought to whom it hurts to get it – who does this sound like, if not the men who are privileged enough to feel entitled to it? Capitalism is the macrocosm of women’s everyday microcosmic realities being blamed for men’s behavior and everyone demanding we fix everything they do (right now! or else women don’t deserve human rights!) without any regard to how any of this has affected us.
The complex power structures of male domination are all a reflection of the master/slave paradigm, which inevitably creates dependents by demanding submission of the Other (whether by race, sex, religion, ethnicity or class ect). The core of this is the “traditional family” wherein women and children are mere dependents and live at the mercy of men’s generosity. Right there you have half the world’s population classed as subordinates, and thus dependents to be blamed for men’s stuff. From there it metastasize into hierarchies men find themselves subject to like employee/employer relationships, constituent/politician, ect. Women are subject to these too but are first and foremost subject to men and men’s misogyny. Capitalism and it’s dependence-creating is the only logical outcome of male domination just as much as inevitable environmental collapse. Men dominating women, then in turn, dominating other men. What fun (not).
Women may also be entrenched in it, or have learned to play by the rules, but it’s not women who created it, created the rules, or move the goal posts whenever the dependents start getting good at the game and/or gaining more leverage and traction. That would be men. To blame women would be to, once again, blame the dependents on a system they never created and were subject to the most violent and abusive controls.
It made me smile when you brought up civilized society since there are radical environmental feminist types who think civilization is anything but. Of course they are correct, how could they not be? Civilization requires violence and exploitation to perpetuate itself. But it never ceases to amaze me when they lump women into the blame-words like “civilization” or “humanity” that *did XYZ therefore we’re all miserable* as if it’s not enough that women have historically and presently been dragged into men’s messes since forever (starting with practices like bride kidnapping and forced arranged marriages and other practices of heternormativity – again, the culturally sanctioned microcosmic male dominated dependent-creating systems that would become everything we see today including capitalism).
RE: welfare state. There are lots of American men who rage against this, and whom blame the Democrats for blacks and poor women becoming dependent on social safety nets. They want to strip away people’s ability to pay rent and eat in the name of anti-racism or “tough love,” which is always their excuse to sit back and gloat while people starve and be miserable. They obviously haven’t thought about the consequences or implications of it all because they don’t have to, and because they’ve never had to think about the long term effects of men’s decisions. When I was growing up, we starved quite frequently because my mother refused to be on food stamps or other forms of public assistance. She listened to and internalized the message that any dependence on the system is to be a worthless failure. Wage gap, lack of workforce opportunity lack of political representation be damned, it’s my mothers fault if we don’t eat. Right? To be sure, my mother is a highly independent woman who raised her daughters the same way, but there were costs to that when she started listening to men and men butting their opinions into our lives. In particular are huge costs to my own neurological development which I would find out later in adulthood after finally getting treatment under Obamacare (which everyone now hates and wants to abolish because of course they do. Once those of us in the bottom of the barrel start getting even the tiniest crumbs, it’s time to take them away). There will be those who would blame my mother rather than the men who drummed that message into her brain, and thus ruining *my brain* in the process (and they did. I have the pictures to prove it). Blame anyone but men. Blame the dependents and those subject to it’s most vicious and abusive controls. Full circle.
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January 17, 2017 at 8:43 pm
Bernie Orbust
“The virtues of thrift, avoidance of debt, and postponement of gratification”
My grandfather (Grand Generation, parents of spoiled Baby Boomers) had these virtues: i.e., the virtues of being born into poverty. (We live in an enormously virtuous world!)
Misers also have these virtues. Conservatives have these virtues: i.e., they attempt to inflict them on all others while they indulge, to excess, on other people’s money (they have, in some way, swindled.)
CONSUMED WITH CONSUMPTION
There’s nothing wrong with consumption. (And everybody’s critical of everyone else’s ‘conspicuous consumption’ having a subjective and self-serving definition of it.)
If you’re not consuming you’re either bored or unconscious. Reading a book is consuming information. Thinking of what you’ve read is digesting what you’ve consumed. Ranting on the internet might be contributing to something to be consumed by others: your two cents worth.
Can a person read too many books? This is a case of: a person can’t consume too much. Therefore consumption isn’t the problem. Irresponsible consumption is the problem. Therefore externality is the real problem: a process of consumption that involves stealing or gambling with other people’s money or livelihoods.
DROWNING IN DEBT
The reason that people are swimming in debt, public and private, is because robber barons have been looting the economy over the past 40 years. The kind of debt we amassed fighting two world wars – paid down during the postwar era – has been built back up for doling out tax cuts to the wealthy starting with Reagan. “Not paying the bills creates jobs!” (To paraphrase.)
The main reason for private debt overdrive is borrowing to maintain collapsing living standards – also caused by various methods of oligarchal leeching and gouging. (A process that is quickly running out of steam.)
In fact, global oligarchs have leeched so much money out of the Western economy it now teeters on the verge of collapse into the fascist revolutions and world war – repeating the history of the 1920s and 30s.
ECONOMICS IS EVERYTHING
In terms of economics – and economics is everything in terms of turning our barbarian proto-civilization into an actual civilization – consumption is not the problem: it’s the solution.
By the early 1970s, unprecedented growing real incomes ($22k to $48k by 1973*) had produced inflationary pressures: too much money chasing too few services (goods are ultimately services.) Today we have the opposite problem: not enough wealth (real incomes have plummeted to $38k**) and a mountain of services (most of which are informational and infinitely green.)
Therefore the solution is obvious: restore progressive taxation; recover looted wealth with tariffs, wealth taxes and estate taxes; bring in strong regulations to eliminate externalities; ensure proper distribution of incomes by maintaining moderate levels of inequality; invest in people to create wealth and equality of opportunity – and foster human development; reduce the work week so people have more time to consume – which creates more wealth (i.e., GDP growth.)
GDP is the measure of all services produced (in a year.) It can also be the measure of all services consumed (which would be equal if globalization hadn’t produced the most mercantilist international economy in history.) Therefore the more people consume (responsibly) the faster the economy grows, the more wealth is created, and the more wealth there is to invest in global human development, green infrastructure and public benefits.
KEYNESIAN UTOPIANISM
In short, the solution to our problems is the Keynesian mixed-market economic system developed by JMK during the Great Depression.
Keynes was actually a Utopian who predicted the end of the economy. This is shown in a simple compound interest formula:
$50,000 * 1.05^60 = $933,959.29
That is, with Keynesian-era GDP growth (5%), GDP per capita (related to real incomes) will make everyone real millionaires in about a 60 year period (‘real’ means accounted for inflation.) This means that machines will do most of the work and people will have an enormous capacity for personal development: imagine the (real) freedom!
According to Keynes, we should have a 14-hour work week by now. What happened? Milton Friedman happened: i.e., a return to (classical) looternomics, the Gilded Age and obligatory economic collapse.
NOTES
* Real median incomes among prime working-age males (US.) This statistic can be used to measure changes in the economy over time with minimum bias. The female counterpart would have informational biases that distort the outcome: i.e., there are more women in the workforce now than there were during the 1950s. This in itself produces rising real incomes in this group. But it wouldn’t show the downward pressure on real incomes that the male statistic shows. Despite female incomes rising, they are still significantly below male incomes.
** The size of the economy has tripled since 1973. This means real incomes and wealth should be tripled. But they have fallen. What this has produced is a glut of exponentially-growing capital in the hands of insatiably-greedy de-facto sociopaths aggressively seeking more and more rents: a real-world game of Monopoly coming to its inevitable conclusion.
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January 23, 2017 at 4:43 pm
The Arbourist
@Meg
I see it as a move away from community and more toward individual pursuits and goals. The overarching idea is that the elites have seen the power of common people when they band together and change society for themselves – this is a state of political being that must be avoided – thus, the movement to glorify the individual and atomize society. That is my take on it wo/ going back over the article in full again.
A saddening part of this is how normalized it has become in society as it is being reinforced by so many interlocking power systems.
Made me think of DGR. I like much of what they say, but I’m pretty sure I have no place in the world they are working toward. My skill set – teacher/pseudo-intellectual – doesn’t cut it in a post-industrial/neo-agricultural age. :/
I for one, would welcome the new set of female overladies. They have such a low bar to meet in regards to organizing civilization more… civilly.
The much lauded boot-strap community that had exactly zero help from their parents, upbringing and social class… :/
Jebus on a pogo-stick. :/ I’m sorry you had to go through that, it is completely unfair and unnecessary in societies as wealthy as ours. I’ve been so very luck not to have had to starve, I can only imagine the trauma and horror you must have experienced.
I see kids in our schools in similar situations, fortunately the in-school lunch programs I’ve interacted with have all been top-drawer.
The level and quality of reasoning and argument demonstrated here would not suggest so.
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