the structural violence of unemployment

The globalisation of financial markets, when joined with the progress of information technology, ensures an unprecedented mobility of capital. It gives investors concerned with the short-term profitability of their investments the possibility of permanently comparing the profitability of the largest corporations and, in consequence, penalising these firms’ relative setbacks. Subjected to this permanent threat, the corporations themselves have to adjust more and more rapidly to the exigencies of the markets, under penalty of “losing the market’s confidence”, as they say, as well as the support of their stockholders. The latter, anxious to obtain short-term profits, are more and more able to impose their will on managers, using financial directorates to establish the rules under which managers operate and to shape their policies regarding hiring, employment, and wages.

Thus the absolute reign of flexibility is established, with employees being hired on fixed-term contracts or on a temporary basis and repeated corporate restructurings and, within the firm itself, competition among autonomous divisions as well as among teams forced to perform multiple functions. Finally, this competition is extended to individuals themselves, through the individualisation of the wage relationship: establishment of individual performance objectives, individual performance evaluations, permanent evaluation, individual salary increases or granting of bonuses as a function of competence and of individual merit; individualised career paths; strategies of “delegating responsibility” tending to ensure the self-exploitation of staff who, simple wage labourers in relations of strong hierarchical dependence, are at the same time held responsible for their sales, their products, their branch, their store, etc. as though they were independent contractors. This pressure toward “self-control” extends workers’ “involvement” according to the techniques of “participative management” considerably beyond management level. All of these are techniques of rational domination that impose over-involvement in work (and not only among management) and work under emergency or high-stress conditions. And they converge to weaken or abolish collective standards or solidarities (3).

In this way, a Darwinian world emerges - it is the struggle of all against all at all levels of the hierarchy, which finds support through everyone clinging to their job and organisation under conditions of insecurity, suffering, and stress. Without a doubt, the practical establishment of this world of struggle would not succeed so completely without the complicity of all of the precarious arrangements that produce insecurity and of the existence of a reserve army of employees rendered docile by these social processes that make their situations precarious, as well as by the permanent threat of unemployment. This reserve army exists at all levels of the hierarchy, even at the higher levels, especially among managers. The ultimate foundation of this entire economic order placed under the sign of freedom is in effect the structural violence of unemployment, of the insecurity of job tenure and the menace of layoff that it implies. The condition of the “harmonious” functioning of the individualist micro-economic model is a mass phenomenon, the existence of a reserve army of the unemployed.

Pierre Bourdieu, The Essence of Neoliberalism

Free-trader Vulgaris

The consumption of labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other commodity, outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face “No admittance except on business.” Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.

This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the “common weal and in the interest of all.”

On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the “Free-trader Vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.

Karl Marx, Capital Vol.1 Ch.6

a marvellous instrument for revealing talents

      [Despite the fact that strong demographic and economic growth rates improve social mobility, and therefore theoretically limit income inequality], one should be wary of the conventional wisdom that modern economic growth is a marvellous instrument for revealing individual talents and aptitudes. There is some truth in this view, but since the early nineteenth century it has all too often been used to justify inequalities of all sorts, no matter how great their magnitude and no matter what their real causes may be, while at the same time gracing the winners in the new industrial economy with every imaginable virtue. For instance, the liberal economist Charles Dunoyer, who served as a prefect under the July Monarchy, had this to say in his 1845 book De la liberté du travail (in which he of course expressed his opposition to any form of labor law or social legislation): “one consequence of the industrial regime is to destroy artificial inequalities, but this only highlights natural inequalities all the more clearly.” For Dunoyer, natural inequalities included differences in physical, intellectual, and moral capabilities, differences that were crucial to the new economy of growth and innovation that he saw wherever he looked. This was his reason for rejecting state intervention of any kind: “superior abilities . . . are the source of everything that is great and useful. . . . Reduce everything to equality and you will bring everything to a standstill.” One sometimes hears the same thought expressed today in the idea that the new information economy will allow the most talented individuals to increase their productivity many times over. The plain fact is that this argument is often used to justify extreme inequalities and to defend the privileges of the winners without much consideration for the losers, much less for the facts, and without any real effort to verify whether this very convenient principle can actually explain the changes we observe.  

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014: 84)

like some magician

"If you want to get rich quickly," Konstanjoglo broke in abruptly and sternly, for he was in a bad humour, "you will never get rich. But if you want to get rich without thinking of how long it will take you, then you'll get rich quickly."
  "So that's how it is," said Chichikov.
  "Yes, sir," said Konstanjoglo abruptly as though he was angry with Chichikov himself. "One must love one's work. Without that you can do nothing. One must love farming—yes, sir! And believe me, it is not at all boring. They've taken it into their heads that life in the country is dull and depressing. Why, I'd die, I'd hang myself from depression, if I had to spend one day in town as they spend it in their stupid clubs, pubs, and theatres. The fools, the stupid idiots, the breed of jackasses! A farmer can't be bored. He has no time to be bored. There's not an inch of emptiness in his life. Its completely full. Think of the diversity of his work and what work! Work that truly exalts the spirit. Say what you like, but in the country man walks hand in hand with nature, with the seasons, he participates and communes with everything that goes on in creation. Have a good look at the annual cycle of works: how even before the coming of spring everything in nature is already on the alert and full of expectancy. The seeds must be got ready, the corn in the barns has to be carefully sorted out, measured, and dried, new rates of taxation have to be fixed. The income and expenditure for the whole year has to be carefully considered and calculated in advance. And as soon as the ice starts breaking up and the high-water level of the rivers has gone down and everything is dry again, the earth begins to be turned over—the spades get busy in the kitchen gardens and the orchards and the ploughs and harrows in the fields: planting and sowing ... Do you understand what it all means? A trifle! It's the next harvest that is being sown! It's the happiness of the entire earth that is being sown! It's the sustenance of millions that is being sown! Summer comes. ... The mowing and haymaking begins. ... Soon harvesting time is upon us; after the rye comes the wheat, then the barley and the oats. The work is in full swing; there is not a moment to be lost; if you had twenty eyes there'd be work for them all. And when all this has been happily accomplished and all the grain has been carted to the threshing floors and stacked, and the winter crops have been sown, and the barns, the threshing barns, and the cow-sheds have been repaired for the winter and the women have completed all their work, and the balance of all that has been drawn up and you can see what has been done, why, it's ... And winter! there's threshing on all the threshing floors and the carting of the threshed grain from the threshing floors to the barns. You go round the flour-mill and the factories, you have a look at the workshops, you pay a visit to the peasants to see what they are doing. For my part, if a carpenter knows how to wield his axe, I'm ready to stand for a couple of hours watching him: his work gives me much pleasure. And when on top of it you realize that this work is being done with some purpose and that everything around you is multiplying and multiplying, bringing in both fruits and profits, why, I can't tell you what one feels at the time! And not because your money's growing—after all, money's not everything—but because it's all the work of your hands; because you see that you are the cause and the creator of it all, and that, like some magician, you are scattering riches and abundance everywhere. Where could you find delight to equal it?" said Konstanjoglo, lifting his face from which the wrinkles had suddenly disappeared. Like an emperor on the day of his solemn coronation, he looked transfigured and it seemed as though rays of light were issuing from his face. "Yes, nowhere in the world will you find anything to equal this delight. It is here, yes, here that man imitates God. God has left the work of creation to himself as one of the highest delights and he asks man also to be a creator of like prosperity all around him. And they call that dull work!"
  Chichikov listened with delight to the sweet sound of his host's words like the singing of a bird of paradise. His mouth watered, his eyes grew moist and shone with sweetness, and he could have listened for ever.
 ... "You can talk as much as you like," said Platonov, who was walking behind them, "but it's boring, all the same."

Gogol, Dead Souls (1969: 238-329)

money is the most reliable thing in the world

One day, with the first sunshine and the floods of early spring, the father, taking his son with him, set out in a little cart, drawn by a chestnut piebald nag, of the kind known among horse-dealers as "magpies"; it was driven by a little hunchback, the progenitor of the only serf family owned by Chichikov's father, who performed almost all the duties in the house. They drove with the "magpie" for over a day and a half. They spent a night on the road, crossed a river, had their meals of cold pie and roast mutton, and reached the town only on the morning of the third day. The streets of the town dazzled the boy with their unexpected splendour, making him gape for several minutes. Then the "magpie" plunged with the cart into a big hole at the entrance of a narrow lane running downhill and thick with mud; it took the "magpie" a long time to get out of it; after struggling with all her might to wade through the mud, urged on by the hunchback and by the master himself, she finally succeeded in dragging them out into a little yard standing on the slope of the hill. Two flowering apple-trees grew in front of the little old house, covered with shingle and with one narrow opaque window, and there was a small garden at the back. Here lived a relative of theirs, a wizened old woman who still went to market every morning, drying her stockings on the samovar afterwards. She patted the boy on the cheek and admired his plumpness. There he was to stay and go every day to the town school.
  After spending a night there, his father set off home again next morning. No tears were shed by his father at parting. He was given fifty copecks in copper coins for pocket money and to buy sweets and, was was far more important, this wise admonition: "Mind, Pavlusha, do your lessons. Don't play the fool and get into mischief. Above all, do your best to please your teachers and superiors. If you please your chief, you will be all right and you will get ahead of everyone, even if you turn out to be a bad scholar, and even if God has given you no talent. Do not make friends with your classmates. They will teach you no good. But if you do make friends with them, play with those who are better off and might be useful to you. Don't entertain or treat anyone, but behave in such a way that you may be treated by others and, above all, take care and save your pennies: money is the most reliable thing in the world. A classmate or friend may cheat you and be the first to leave you in the lurch when you're in trouble, but money will never let you down whatever trouble you may be in. With money in your pocket you can do anything and money will see you through everything." Having delivered himself of these precepts, the father parted from his son and dragged himself off home again on his "magpie" and from that day his son never set eyes on him again, but his words and precepts sank deeply into his mind.

Gogol, Dead Souls (1961: 235-236)