(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Nicole Aschoff
The New Prophets of Capital
Verso, 2015
Most of us have experienced it: To contribute to a good cause, without having to give up the pleasures of consumption. Shopping feels better when we know that ten percent of revenue goes to rural wells in poor parts of Africa. The expensive cappuccino tastes better when a few dollars goes to vaccines in disaster-prone areas.
This is a trend that has grown stronger and stronger in recent years: capitalism with a human face. There are now a number of organizations, institutions and companies that adorn that part of their income goes to humanitarian work or to the poor. Yes, in fact, many will be able to profit from a more ecological profile, good fairtradeagreements and assurances that child labor will not occur. But maybe you also have a taste for this?
The paradox should be quite obvious. On the surface, it might look like Starbucks – to take on a global company with a humanitarian program – actually er well-meaning helpers when they give a crap to the needy. This is better than not helping at all, many would argue. Joda. It is difficult to completely reject such an argument, but it is crucial to understand how a humanized capitalism not only sustains the ravages of capitalism, but actually makes it easier to swallow. For an ecological and humanitarian business is just part of a marketing program that is still most focused on making money. The humanitarian face is just a mask; It is a matter of cosmetics, not structural changes.
The power of storytelling. We are all storytellers, says Aschoff in the brilliant The New Prophets of Capital. But even though our own stories are close to us, they often drown in other people's stories. "[On] rare occasions stories grow, often in direct proportion to the power of the counter, to become big, all-encompassing stories that define people, a social movement, or a moment in history." These stories swallow our own and structure them according to their own dramaturgy. Most of us know such metaphors: "The American Dream" is one of them. "The War on Terror" another. But also nations have stories that are peculiar to them, so the cabin and skiing are formative foundational elements that form part of Norwegians' identity and self-image. Dramatic events such as April 9 and July 22 will also always, in one sense or another, be included in the story of "the Norwegian".
The greatest story of our time is capitalism. "All of us, age-earners and capitalists alike, are locked into a system designed to perpetually accumulate more and more profit, not satisfy human needs or provide for the common good," Aschoff writes. There are many sub-narratives that both nuance and fortify capitalism as "master narrative". Max Weber's "spirit of capitalism," for example, derives from a Protestant tradition, where making money and saving was considered a virtue or a calling. This is also the "calling" Aschoff derives from his title: Prophets are, according to Weber, charismatic individuals who are missionaries to spread their doctrine.
Blurred inequality. Aschoff's book addresses exactly this aspect of capitalism, focusing on some very strong such "prophets": Bill and Melinda Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, John Mackey and Oprah Winfrey. What is his analysis about? Let's look at some of them.
Sheryl Sandberg, who sits at the top of the Facebook system, places great emphasis on individual achievements and aspirations. By asking other women to realize their dreams, capitalism is "atomized" as an oppressive system by merely anchoring success in the individual's achievements. If you fail, only your ability to follow the request is mirrored. Sandberg, who is a self-proclaimed feminist, believes that more women need to get into top jobs to do something about the lack of gender balance in working life. It's hard to disagree with her on that, but the situation isn't really solved by putting more ladies on top of these systems. The structural inequalities in society will continue to exist, especially for those with ambitions other than Sandberg – nurses and cleaning workers, for example.
Some of the same applies to Oprah Winfrey's spiritualized capitalism. Instead of examining the origins of alienation – which she recognizes as a major problem – she asks us to "look inward" and adapt to the existing system. Everyone can "do what they love," says Oprah: If they are unhappy in the job they have, they just have to change pasture. If you have no job, you need to grow networks and learn new things – read books, or become proficient in a foreign language. This is how Oprah herself got it – and it is this self-making that is the very hub of her philosophy. This is also where it breaks down, because by omitting the short distance between class differences and economic inequality, with its own history of success as a medium, Oprah conceals the real structural problems of capitalism: That not everyone is equal, or is treated equally don't change by "following one's dreams". By covering the inequalities and lulling us into her sugary dream, she makes us "the perfect, depoliticised, complacent, neoliberal subjects," Aschoff writes.
Other stories. But the most insidious prophets are Melinda and Bill Gates: They are doing a great deal of good in the world with their "philanthropic capitalism" (as Aschoff calls it). They help the poor, create schools, and distribute funds to the needy in both the United States and Africa. Nevertheless, they contribute to the destruction of capitalism by insisting that the market model is the optimal one – even for systems that do not work very well when operated under the laws of the market.
It is crucial to understand how a humanized capitalism not only sustains the ravages of capitalism, but actually makes it easier to swallow.
Let's take the school as an example: If the market is used as a template, the student will be a "raw material" that is processed in a machine consisting of teachers, Aschoff says, and the finished "product" will be a commodity that is measured by sales and demand logic. But children are not, and cannot be, a homogeneous size that can be refined in this way – in that case, children would become products in the form of conforming and obedient citizens, the author continues. The problem is also well known in this country, where education is quantified through competition and measurable results, which means that both the knowledge and the students, once again, are treated as goods. This will inevitably lead to winners and losers – and those who are excluded will be those who cannot easily "translate" into a salable product, or, in a transferred sense, can adapt to the standards required for the production of pupils and knowledge. to operate to keep the capital machinery up and running.
Rights, not goods. Thus, the important question remains: Which other models should we choose? Yes, we have to find stories that are able to outperform the capital-driven, Aschoff believes. Some tales have already stroked capitalism – already, among other things, to the collective movements of the 70s, which were based on natural housekeeping. The only problem is that many of these counter-narratives have sunk into nostalgia and become "something we remember, rather than a model for changing society". Today, even Sarah Palin is free to quote Martin Luther King – not because of the explosives in his mind, and their ability to constantly challenge existing suppression mechanisms, but for cosmetic reasons. This is of course problematic, since stories other than capitalism maintain a world of imagination that makes change into something both imaginable and possible.
By spinning the humanitarian mask of capitalism with such a fine thread that the mechanisms behind it hardly seem, its ideology is embedded in our detail world of life.
It's important not to lose courage – for stories can be reinvented and new ones can be written. After all, we are, as the author points out, storytellers – so poetry is a latent weapon in everyone's hands. What we need to focus on is that healthcare, education and human experience have a value in itself, outside of a competitive situation. We must also insist that education is a right, not a sales object, which brings us to the social democratic virtues: Health, school and basic cultural services should not be privatized but safeguarded, because these are too valuable services and areas of experience for the market to get define and deal with them. If these areas of society become commercialized, they also become the subject of a dispute over resources, which, in the end, will favor a few and exclude some others. If we keep our eyes fixed on the latter, any rosy mist that may rest on the gospel of the capital prophets disappears.
Fine-masked stories. Bill and Melinda Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, John Mackey, and Oprah Winfrey are individuals whose stories convey the harshness of capitalism to a more finely masked and softer form, but which also makes it particularly resilient in its ability to absorb criticism. By spinning the humanitarian mask of capitalism with such a fine thread that the mechanisms behind it hardly seem, its ideology is embedded in our detail world of life.
This is precisely why it is so essential to analyze the "soft" stories of capitalism today. To do this, we can not only look at the economic system formally, as production, earnings and added value, but as a network of narratives that soften the hard edges of capitalism and make it tolerable. Yes, more than that – make it true and universal. Aschoff, on the other hand, picks apart this "naturalization" of capitalism by focusing on the places in the "gospels" where it collapses. The New Prophets of Capital is therefore an essential thought exercise, too softThe version of oppression does not make its inherent violence any better, only harder to spot.
Think about it the next time you donate a femmer to wells in Africa by purchasing a cappuccino.
kjetilroed@gmail.com
