(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Wendy Brown: Undoing the Demos. Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. Zone Books, 2015
? We know that capitalism is a bad thing – unless we have thought it out ourselves, we have it from a large number of thinkers on the left. Leading publishers like Verso Books and Semiotext (e) publish one book after another on neoliberal torment. Not that this is not in place, but one can occasionally get the impression that there is a lot preaching in excess for the church.
A good place to start, if you want to get in the flow, is Marxist David Harvey's writings, not least A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005). Here, the historical lines of the rise of neoliberalism – with Thatcher and Reagan in the lead roles, of course – are outlined better than most. One point Harvey is good at highlighting is how monetary values not only control the financial world, but also our perception of what is valuable at all.
“The problem, therefore, for socialist, communist, revolutionary, anarchist or whatever, is to find an alternative value form that will work in terms of the social reproduction of society in a different image. In introducing the concept of fetishism, Marx shows how the naturalized value of classical political economy dictates a norm; we foreclose on revolutionary possibilities if we blindly follow that norm and replicate commodity fetishism. Our task is to question it, ”Harvey writes in the above book.
Value Question. Wendy Brown's Undoing the Demos, one of the most interesting books on the devastation of neoliberalism of recent years, addresses the question of greens further. Brown, who is a professor of political science at the University of California, sees a direct link between our notion of value and what we perceive as "the people" – that is, the very foundation of what is supposed to be uplifting, non-totalitarian societies.
What is valuable is increasingly described through financial terms and images, she says: Most of what we do can be considered a translation practice where human characteristics and experiences are measured and weighed within a buy-and-sell metaphor. You "increase your value in the market" and "invest" in a future by talking nicely with future partners in love or work. One "sells" one's argument that an employer should "buy" your job application. Such a financed language sneaks into the most mundane contexts. "The pursuit of education, training, leisure, reproduction, consumption, and more are increasingly configured as strategic decisions and practices related to enhancing the self's future value," she writes.
This may not sound so dangerous, but Brown argues well that these concepts are not just images, but intervene in our notions of both value and the self on a very fundamental level. Compassion, solidarity or kindness – such virtues, which usually bind people together – can easily wear away when a competitive model for the market is transferred to our own lives, even at the language level. When competition and interest in "attracting investors" dominate, whether they are employers or future partners, reduced sensitivity to protect oneself and others from stress can result. Our performance, as an individual, both privately and in working life, thus also becomes easier to describe in market terminology, as the effect of downturns or rationalization of production.
The problem of class, exploitation and oppression is very difficult to overcome if we all compete with each other.
The weathering of democracy. Brown traces this instrumental market thinking, where capital accumulation is the most important, back to sociologist Max Weber and his analysis of various forms of rationality. While instrumental rationality basically just a means to reach a goal, it eventually became a goal in itself, he meant.
Capitalism – and especially the neoliberal variant – is a good example of this development, where the accumulation of monetary values, regardless of human effects, is the most important. The highest possible profit, with the least expense in production, is the credo we hear again and again. This not only leads to a weakening of labor rights and greater inequality, but also to the destruction of local businesses around the country because the rationalization of production, in other words locating it to a poorer part of the world without workers' rights, provides more goods for less money.
Expert. We do not have to go far to find examples of what Brown is talking about, for the privatization of working life that the blue-blue government proposes brings with it such a weakening of solidarity and labor rights under the cover of "more competition".
A few days ago we were told that the electronics chain Expert was cutting back on employees' rights – these were to work on commissions so that the one who sells the most, earns the most. Tariff agreements are essential for a working life, and especially for the most disadvantaged. One does not have to be a prophet to see that in every workplace there are employees who cannot maintain the same productivity as the most eager, for whatever reason. But this does not mean that the less productive should not be working, and at least not that they will earn less than those who sell the most, ie (most likely) the youngest, healthiest and most extroverted. Such measures allow for inequality and conflict – not equal rights.
The value of life. The very life and the value of life, including the relationship between people, are transformed into "human capital" through neoliberal rationality, Brown believes. This has potentially catastrophic effects on society and the individual, because it consumes the very essential distinctions we need to think about other aspects of life and how their value should be safeguarded. The problem of class, for example, or different forms of exploitation and oppression, is very difficult to overcome if we all compete with one another. In a market and in a public where there are many on the bone and few at the top, the solidarity between the weak and those who really need protection will be set aside for a desire to carve a position for themselves and theirs.
This not only undermines the sense of community and the quality of life of the individual, but the foundation of democracy, Brown believes. She's in on something vital here – for if we follow the obvious development of market thinking, it will make the most money-rich even stronger, because those are the ones we need to be recognized for in order to earn a living or realize our ambitions.
The form of democracy. This does not mean that there has ever been a functioning democracy, of course. Brown is fully aware of this, and she also points out that any democratic system that has existed has always been distorted by oppression, exclusion or some form of discrimination. "Democracy is an empty form that can be filled with a variety of content and instrumentalized for purposes ranging from nationalist xenophobia to racial colonialism, from heterosexual to capitalist hegemony," she writes – but adds: "It can be mobilized within the same regimes to counter these purposes. »
Democracy as a form of demand that we can strive to fulfill, and a political life and this space of imagination where these utopias live, are particularly important in this context. The has certainly led to many victories for the people – women's suffrage and the abolition of apartheid and monopoly, for example – although there are always jobs left to do. But if we no longer have a language for these rights, and only neo-liberal metaphors left, it all boils down to the "competition" in the world of work. Therefore, we must work to think "values" and not "money" when we think demos – "the people" – in the future.
