From Kings and Religion to Corporate Elites and Positive Psychology

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/from-kings-and-religion-to-corporate-elites-and-positive-psychology-b8bd0c1ae779

(image: factmyth.com)

Considering that modern western democracies are undoubtedly moving backwards in many areas, including women’s rights, the rights of minorities, social justice and welfare, and a host of other issues, due to the overwhelmingly powerful discourse of neoliberalism, and the actions that flow from this discourse, I would like to propose an interesting analogy which may not be too far from the truth in the near future.

Firstly, let us look at the ruling classes and their main social control mechanism in the feudal era. In what we now know as western societies, the feudal era was ruled by royal families, large landowners, and the church. In this period, the population was largely dependent on the rulers who provided ‘employment’ and possibly a small piece of land to create produce, in return for taxes. These taxes were very onerous, taking the bulk of the people’s earnings and leaving just enough to survive on.

We ask the question today of why ‘the poor’ are so acquiescent to the powers that be — but this has always been the case, mostly because of the power of the social control mechanisms that are utilized. In the feudal era, it was the power of religion that controlled the people (in addition to the fear of execution by the royals or the large landowners for doing something wrong).

As outlined earlier in this document, the work of Max Weber shows how the Protestant Church “teaches” people to regulate themselves, so religious teachings do have major social consequences. Of course, the Protestant Church was established in the post-feudal era; however, let us look at the social consequences of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Firstly, there is the idea of the all-powerful and vengeful god that people lived in fear of. They (the general public) believed that if they did something wrong that god would punish them through some terrible form of revenge. This was the stick for widespread social control through religion. But … there was also a carrot — if one was to behave oneself and do good deeds, then they may just be saved by god. So, these three forms of social control, the fear instilled by the kings and the large landowners, the revenge reeked by god, and the belief that one may be saved by god, was a very basic and direct mechanism of social control.

The mechanisms of social control are vastly more subtle and complex in the present age. Let us begin by making an analogy that the new ‘kings and large landowners’ of the present day are the members of the corporate elites whose needs are very well served by “democratic” governments across the western world. The other side of the equation is that the religion of the present-day is positive psychology and the ‘new-age’ spiritualism that has become so prevalent.

The analogy is continued in looking at the corporate elites. The overwhelming majority of the population is dependent in some way or other on the corporate sector, particularly in terms of employment, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the cars we drive, and so on. Except for the VERY few people who live off the land, build their own homes out of scrap, and who make their own clothes from raw materials, almost 100% of us are completely dependent on the corporate sector for everything — this is the way modern society has been organized. The level of dependency is possibly greater than it even was in the feudal era.

The most interesting aspect of the present era is the question of why ‘the poor’ aren’t more disillusioned and angry at the current set-up. After all, it is they who suffer the most, as anyone in current-day Greece (and may other countries) can tell us. There is a highly insidious and very controlling set of methods that are in place in modern western societies that have a large measure of control over the population. But … this control is not as direct and obvious as in the feudal era. There is more a sense of evolution, and then, opportunism by the elites in the development of these forms of social control.

The timeline really starts in the mid-1970s with the rise of the neoliberal ideology. Out of the remnants of the hippy era of the late 1960s, came the new-age era of self-help and positive psychology. It is no accident that these ‘technologies’ under individualizing tools that say to the individual “if I think positively, I can achieve anything” or “if I follow [guru’s] ideas, I’ll be successful”, through to the present-day ‘business’ seminars that tell us that with a ‘wealth mindset’, we can achieve great wealth. Right through the self-help literature, there is very little on the power of community; the focus is almost exclusively on the empowerment of the individual. The solutions are also couched as if there is always something wrong with the individual and that if they could only do ‘x’, then they will achieve their goals. This coincides very closely to the individualizing power of the neoliberal ideology who brands anyone who cannot achieve as a ‘loser’ or a ‘leaner’.

These self-help and positive psychology technologies only hold out false hope as very few people can make it on their own in such a complex and inter-dependent society such as todays. But … you hear these utterances everywhere, and they just serve to make people passive and accepting and unaware of the true barriers to their success — the corporate elites.

The analogy holds up well. Just as religion made the population passive, accepting and unaware of their true oppressors, so does positive psychology and the new-age individualising beliefs that the corporate elites, our new rulers, have used to their own advantage to enhance THEIR Levels of success and control over the direction of society. The class struggle is alive and well. It has been initiated by the corporate elites and is backed up all the way by present-day, apparently democratic governments, while the people are largely unaware what has actually changed.

What is neoliberalism and how does it work?

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/what-is-neoliberalism-and-how-does-it-work-34c6e6e96030

(Image: uncomputing.org)

We are currently living in a neoliberal era, but what does this actually mean? We need to differentiate neoliberalism from what came before; so this paper is an attempt to clarify this issue.

Firstly, let us say for the sake of the argument that the neoliberal ascendancy started in around 1974, just after the oil shock. This date gives us the generation of approximately 30 years of development of the ideas of Hayek and the Austrian School of Economics before the ideas started to gel into a dominant discourse in the mid-1970s.

In terms of neoliberal political figures, we can say that Margaret Thatcher was the first of the significant neoliberals; however, there were still significant opposing currents of thought. Today, we have what I would characterise as a neoliberal western world which has the ideological power to have an enormous imperialist influence over much of the global south (or the developing world). This can be seen in the push for the developing nations to take on board policies to ‘reform’ their public services through outsourcing, privatisation, the expensive application of outside consultancies, and so on, all to gain access to loans by global neoliberal agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the European Central Bank, in the case of the ‘European south’.

Secondly, one can say that neoliberalism is an ideology that combines personal technologies with governmental technologies. These personal technologies are concerned with regulating the self, while the governmental technologies are concerned with regulating the state.

It is the intersection of these two sets of technologies that characterises neoliberal capitalism and that I will explain in some detail below.

Personal technologies

The particular personal technologies of the neoliberal era have deep roots in history, stemming from what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic. According to Weber, in the early stages of capitalism, Protestants worked hard (hence the Protestant work ethic) and lived frugally, seeing this as a sign that they were good and righteous, and therefore, that this MIGHT be a further sign of being one of the chosen few to be taken up to heaven after they die. Of course, there was no guarantee of this, but Weber says that they constantly worked hard and looked for these signs. This was what set Protestantism apart from Catholicism and, according to Weber, led to the development of Capitalism. This was also a very strong manifestation of self-regulation. They curbed their desires and appetites and lived very sober, frugal, hard-working lives.

It is these attempts at self-regulation that we call ‘personal technologies’. They are techniques employed to ‘work on the self’ and to continuously improve oneself.

Governmental technologies

If we take the state in its widest possible sense, then we can talk about, not only the government as part of the state, but also many other institutions of society, such as corporations, trade unions, banks, the parliament, and so on. In fact, any institution that is in negotiation with others to ‘govern’ or ‘manage’ the population can be considered to be part of the modern western state.

This was not necessarily as apparent prior to the neoliberal era, as previously, it appeared that the state was ‘the government’, whatever that actually means. In the neoliberal era, after the mass privatizations, the public-private partnerships, and the outsourcing of public services, there has been a blurring of the notion of what constitutes ‘the state’.

The neoliberal era

What sets the neoliberal era apart from previous political and social configurations is the combining of personal and governmental technologies. Some examples here will be instructive:

1. There is a constant discourse emanating from ‘the state’ that individuals (the building block of a society) should (which is a moral term) improve themselves and that those who don’t are users, bludgers, or even worse, criminals. We can see this in the language used in the 2014 Australian federal budget in which the Treasurer used the terms “lifters” and “leaners” and “the deserving” and “the undeserving” when referring to basically the middle-classes and the working classes (of course, there was no word for the rich because they, apparently do not require one, because who they are, is apparently, obvious). This is an example of the state stepping in to label various sectors of the population, ‘assisting’ them to regulate their own behaviours. This, of course, is not a conscious thought process, but is more of a manifestation of the ‘conscience collective’, as Emile Durkheim would have put it.
2. There has also been a ‘psychologisation’ of society in the neoliberal era which has facilitated the process of self-regulation. We see the explosion of self-help books and resources, and the proliferation of coaches, with so much of the population wanting to coach the rest of the population who have little desire to be coached. We see a huge proliferation of psychologists in all companies and organisations, and we see thriving schools of psychology propping up entire collapsing faculties of social sciences in our universities. And we see the state using this psychologisation as a convenient way to label people as failures or winners. Those who can regulate themselves and compete as time-crazed producers and consumers are the apparent winners, while those who can’t are the losers. This labelling results in our elected representatives justifying the cutting of services that affect those labelled as ‘losers’ the most.
3. Finally, neoliberalism is also perversely associated with neoclassical economics, even though this link is contingent on a number of factors rather than a link made of necessity. Again, the sense of self-regulation moves across to the realm of economics in which people, as individuals, are expected to operate their lives as if they were running a business. This, of course, is also linked to the notion of avoiding any sense of subsidisation. Thus, in the economy, every service or good must “stand alone” and not be subsidised by any other part of the organisation or of the economy. If IT does not make a profit, then IT must be left to fall over at the whim of the market. In the personal economy of the neoliberal world (that is, in the life of the individual), one must not be subsidised (or propped up or helped) by the collective (by public services for example) — if one succeeds, then one is contributing; if one fails, then they must be left to fall through the cracks.

VIDEO: Climate Change and the Problems of Neoliberalism by Dr Christian Parenti

In this short video, Dr Christian Parenti argues that neoliberalism is closely linked with the climate crisis. According to Parenti, what we need is a guided capitalism and an expansion of the public sector. Christian Parenti has a PhD in sociology (co-supervised in geography) from the London School of Economics and is a professor in the Global Liberal Studies Program at New York University. His latest book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011), explores how climate change is already causing violence as it interacts with the legacies of economic neoliberalism and cold-war militarism. The book involved several years of travel and research in conflict zones of the Global South. Christian’s current research focuses on the environmental history of state involvement in American economic development, from the earliest days of the republic onward. As a journalist, he has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His articles have appeared in Fortune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Middle East Report, London Review of Books, Mother Jones, and The Nation (where he is a contributing editor). He has also helped make several documentaries and has won numerous journalistic awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and “Best Magazine Writing 2008” from the Society for Professional Journalists. He also received a 2009 Emmy nomination for the documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi.

Against Civility: Why Habermas Recommends a Wild Public Sphere

by Steven Klein, Aeon: https://aeon.co/ideas/against-civility-or-why-habermas-recommends-a-wild-public-sphere

Demonstrators in Madrid, Spain, in 2014. Photo by Sergio Perez/Reuters

Have we become unreasonable? In democracies around the world, anxious commentators exhort their fellow citizens to be more open-minded, more willing to engage in good-faith debate. In our era of hyperpolarisation, social-media echo chambers and populist demagogues, many have turned to civility as the missing ingredient in our public life.

So, how important is civility for democracy? According to one of the greatest theorists of the democratic public sphere, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, not very. Habermas is deeply concerned with protecting our ability to solve problems through the use of reason. Yet he believes that democracy is best served when the public sphere is left open, anarchic and conflictual.

For Habermas, the function of public debate is not to find a reasonable common ground. Rather, the public sphere ‘is a warning system’, a set of ‘sensors’ that detect the new needs floating underneath the surface of a supposed political consensus. And if we worry too much about civility and the reasonable middle, we risk limiting the ability of the public sphere to detect new political claims. To get those claims on the agenda in the first place often requires uncivil and confrontational political tactics. 

Habermas’s vision of politics focuses on the power of a wild public sphere. His great fear, one he expresses already in his habilitation thesis in 1962, published in English as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, is that large-scale, formal political and economic institutions are increasingly shutting themselves off from public criticism. Habermas traces the development of the idea of the critical public in 18th-century Europe, one that would hold state power accountable through the use of reason, and then its decline in an era of public-relations management focused on minimising the role of the public in political decision-making. While Habermas has been accused of romanticising the European Enlightenment, his goal was to draw attention to the stark gap between the ideals of the critical public and the reality of political and social domination.

Like other individuals associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Habermas has always been guided by the hope of creating an emancipated society – one where the use of political, social and economic power can be fully justified to those potentially affected. To this Frankfurt School ideal, Habermas adds an insight that goes back to Aristotle – that the central human capacity is language. The fact that we can understand one another, Habermas argues, means that we are committed to using reason to resolve disputes. In our day-to-day life, we have to continuously use language to organise our lives and make plans – instances of what Habermas in 1981 called ‘communicative action’.

Habermas thinks this has radical consequences. In all these instances, we accept, just by entering into the continuous flow of communication, that the only thing that should count are reasons that everyone accepts. Habermas’s critics point out that, in the real world, social differences in power affect whose voices are heard and whose ideas are recognised in all deliberation. But this point is not incompatible with Habermas’s insights. From his early work, he has seen reasoning as a fundamentally social practice, one that must always include moral and political questions. Bringing to light these subtle forms of power and exclusion helps to realise the ideal of rational enquiry.

What follows politically from Habermas’s theory of communication? Again, one possibility is to find some way to make people live up to an ideal of disinterested, civil deliberation. In the face of increasing polarisation and the potential breakdown of the rules of the game, we should search for some way to restore the underlying norms of mutual forbearance that ensure politics does not descend into civil war. But this is hardly the direction in which Habermas goes. It’s not that he then prizes incivility in and of itself. Rather, Habermas worries that a public sphere shackled by excessive regard for the norms of deliberation and rational debate loses its essential function. And that function is to bring to light questions, issues, concerns and needs that are currently invisible to political leaders and the larger public. 

In Between Facts and Norms (1992), he argues that ‘liberal misgivings about opening up an unrestricted spectrum of public issues and topics are not justified’. Rather, because of its ‘anarchic structure’, contestation in the public sphere can enable the perception of ‘new problems’ and help to overcome ‘the millennia-old shackles of social stratification and exploitation’.

Confrontation, protest and incivility are all components of deliberative politics as Habermas understands it. These forms of conflict, of refusing existing norms and institutions, are what bring to light whether those institutions and norms can survive rational scrutiny. Habermas goes so far as to call the ability to withstand and even celebrate civil disobedience the ‘litmus test’ for the maturity of a constitutional democracy. 

Even as Habermas has a famously ambitious understanding of our capacity for the collaborative search for truth, his is an activist’s view of politics. Consensus is not the highest good. Rather, the possibility of a society based on rational consensus becomes visible only in moments of dissensus, when the failure of existing norms is unmasked. Enlightenment comes about when social groups show that the dominant social organisation fails to take into consideration their legitimate claims and concerns. This is why Habermas is clear that he is interested, not in rational political communication as such, but ‘the history of its repression and re-establishment’.

Habermas’s recent work has focused on the fate of European integration, of which he is a prominent defender. This activist current in his thought has receded as he has worried more and more about the lack of long-term political vision on the part of Europe’s leaders. Yet he has also more recently come to recognise the dangerous failures of those institutions to produce their own legitimacy. The more those institutions, such as the European Union, insulate themselves from the unruly forces of the public sphere, the more they provide ammunition for whoever can claim to speak on behalf of a suppressed public opinion. Large-scale political institutions, from the European Union to the modern administrative state, approach politics as a set of management problems, best solved without extensive input from a potentially recalcitrant public.

Democracy, according to Habermas, requires a vibrant political sphere and political institutions that are able to respond to and incorporate the energy that arises from debate, protest, confrontation and politics. Perhaps it’s not citizens who have become unreasonable. Rather, their leaders have too long refused to listen, instead treating the public as nothing more than a periodic reservoir of votes, an obstacle to be managed on the path to smooth, technocratic governance.