Multitudes 4 on the New Spirit of Capitalism

* Article: Nouvel Ere du Capitalism. By Boltanski and Chiapello. Special Issue of Multitudes #4.

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The authors wrote a book together, Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme, the 'New Spirit of Capitalism'.

Summary

Michel Bauwens, 2004:

Article 1

The authors identify a new 'spirit' of capitalism, centered around the 3 axes of enthusiasm, security, and justice, which has incorporated the 'artist criticism' of capitalism, which was expressed in the 1960s, but not the 'social criticism' of capitalism, which it had disabled in the 1990s. This critique is now resurging because the new model only answered the autonomy/creative requirements of the new cognitive classes, but not the demands for security and justice. And capitalism cannot exist without justifications. The lack of such justification shows the transitoryness of the current model.

A note on the events of 1968: 1968 was an exceptional event because it combined both the social and artistic movements and their separate critiques of capitalism. But today, after a 'system without alternatives' was dominant in the 1990s, the social critique has been re-invigorated, with an adaptation to the network. For example, the concept of 'exclusion' is a typical network concept. But where is the exploitation that causes the new social misery ? The differentiation is now between the succesful and the excluded, and is derived from the concept of mobility or adaptability, including at the psychic level.

Article 2: Maurizio Lazzarato on 'government by individuation'

This is an article about a new form of governance which analyzes problems, and their solutions, as related to the characteristic lifestyle of the individual, who is therefore categorized, controlled and 'responsibilized' (workfare). This is an attempt by the private sector to tie the social to work and efficiency/profit related criteria, so that they can take control of it.

Against these attempts, the authors states that social risk lies only marginally with such individuals, but on the contrary, it is the world of industry itself which has now life and death effects on 'society as a whole' (instead of on groups of exploited workers, as in early capitalism). These forms of democracy which rely on state-business-union partnerships are no longer adequate.

- Article 3: The society of risk

Other articles continue in the same vein: they describe the transition towards a society of risk, tied to the individual, and managed by private insurances, which transform risk into a profitable resource. If aid is to be given, then this is no longer a collective righ, but an individual contract, aiming to re-insert the individual in the world of work. This is the essence of the 'Refondation Sociale" proposed by Ewald Kessler for the Medef employer's organization in France. There is a constant erosion of collective rights, replaced by contracts, conditions and control, which pressure the individual. Since the eighties, it is understood that insurance will cover the strong, while public assistance will only cover the weak, the unemployed.

Article 4: Grumback interview

In an interview, T. Grumback explains how industrial capital was in a minority vis a vis the land-owning class, who, following the French Revolution's abolition of collective rights and corporations, only wanted to recognize individual contracs It is the massification of industrial accidents in the late 19th cy which led to a reformist debate on the issue. The ensuing reforms will 'socialize the risk' of accidents through insurance.

In the 1980s, legal protections were eroded by allowing 'negotiated exceptions', and collective bargaining broke down at the sectoral level, replaced by groups of entreprises. This gave rise to a differentiation between 'protected core workers' and marginalized temporary workers. Flexible collective contracts became the dominant new norm, over and above the law. At the same time, 'unemployability' came to be recognized as a systemic risk. Thus, funding is necessary to obtain social pacification, but with this demand: that unions become 'partners' in rationally calculated world, which precludes the progress that can result from conflict.