The modern world is, along with the States of the largest corporations, the value of which social thought is misunderstood, because their study is in fact banned. From their depths occasionally exposing the leak. Large and wealthy employers, they are more likely to produce admiration than criticism. Meanwhile, transnational corporations in the form in which they have developed over the past few decades, increasingly able to substitute for the state, democratic politics and social life, so a critical look at them is needed. Especially as one of the means to which they resort for its successful functioning is fear.
To think about it at least may 1st
The most noticeable feature of contemporary capitalism from its earlier versions, including more recently, during the cold war, is total domination of large corporations. Thumbing through the papers To .Marx, G. Rohrmoser, D. Harvey, L. Boltanski, Robin K., I. Wallerstein, K. Calhoun, C. Linblom, we venture to Express the hypothesis that the corporate organization of production, corporate spirit and the Corporation, as such, the phenomena, the most “equitable” global society, which became, according to D. Harvey, “class revenge of the rich”. If our hypothesis is correct, then all the defects of modern capitalism — the fruits of the corporate organization of economic life in the twenty-first.
Corporations — a decent age. About the first we learn in V. 13 for Example, trading house Venetian merchants from the sort of Polo (Polo, Marco — the most famous representative) suggested a family of corporate organization. However, as rightly noted by M. Weber, the capitalist Corporation — something fundamentally different, and in its pure form it consists in the early twentieth century. At present, more than half (according to others — 90%) of actors — corporations. And they just “ask” the table to an analyst.
However, under US pressure, imposed a ban on the study of corporations the international scientific community and at the same time, there is a strict information blockade about what is happening inside them. This is what we learn for example, in L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello in the “New spirit of capitalism”, where they write: “it is Curious that with all the growth in influence of multinational companies, which have to be considered the most important economic phenomenon of the last time, they almost do not attract the attention of researchers. In 1993, at the request of the U.S. government, was liquidated by the UN Centre for the study of multinational enterprises. Some specialists was transferred to Geneva (UNCTAD), where continued to implement a highly truncated research program”.
The Corporation is closed for discussion and the outside world. But we know something about what is happening there because of, for example, the wonderful work of American political scientist K. Robin, “Fear” and included the observation of a journalist who made public the organization of production in the Chinese branch “the Apple”.
The Corporation as a model of organization of production
Corporation — pyramidal hierarchical structure with an opaque system of governance and the lack of mechanisms to protect the interests of employees: no unions, no rights, no democracy; strict regulation of stay at the workplace; the certainty of functional responsibilities and qualification requirements – competencies. Corporate capitalism “in order to save” transformerait worker in media skills, operations — product and tool. “The application in respect of the employees of those normalization procedures, which date back to the techniques of normalization products, which involves the use of “competencies” in management mechanisms, also leads to the fact that the transformation of people into commodities takes absolutely official forms… the logic of competences leads to the fact that people are directly given to “economic value” (L. Boltanski, E., Capello).
Simultaneously, the Corporation is also a special universe with resources comparable to budgets of some countries, their media, legal and consulting services, educational institutions, etc. That significantly alters the structure of public life, imposing restrictions on social institutions and democratic procedures in General. The space of democracy is shrinking. Corporate organization is very “efficient” from the point of view of the employer: the costs of production are dumped on the territory, which was “lucky” to become an object of interest of the management of corporations, and the costs of a market economy from its required operation – in exchange for the accumulation is reset to the worker, not the entrepreneur, owner, shareholder, because of constitutional and other rules governing labor law, passed at the discretion of administration and management. Institute for the protection of workers ‘ rights is just not there. And all this is called graceful word “flexibility” of the labour market.
The principles of operation of the Corporation
However, the Corporation is an excellent tool for the intensification of labour, carries a much more serious threat: it shatters class solidarity of employees — which 50 years ago was their main force, speaking effective tool for overcoming the class solidarity of the employers. Corporate organization saves on the political opposition and wage, introducing all sorts of differentiated forms of remuneration and reward, all sorts of “efficient contracts”, “roadmap” etc., and numerous options of fines, adding non-economic pressure on the worker, for example, promoting their espionage for each other. A sort of cynical bourgeois trick of the mind: the absolute control of the behavior and management are carried out by the same workers on the principle, opened by the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in the concentration camp: the majority does not revolt and do not resist the minority, because “samoupravlenia”.
Middle managers come from the ranks of the majority, faithfully serve the interests of the administration of the illusory and detached from their social group. Encouraged to play on the ambitions and feelings more ambitious and hungry for career growth of representatives of a majority. As a result, the inability of workers to realize their common “class” of interest, and the Corporation transformered to the Institute for the production and reproduction of inequality. And, if you try to understand, what exactly does this or that company, regardless of the declared “production” functions, you can call social and political problems, which she of course decides: “everywhere the same: the means of production in the factory, in public administration, in the army, and University using speed of bureaucracy is concentrated in the hands of those who are in this machine dominated” (Weber). That is, the Corporation defends the interests of shareholders, administration, management, bureaucracy, management for control, defends the interests and preferences of Trustees, reproduces the social hierarchy — the existing distribution of power and domination within the Corporation, and, therefore, within society through the labor activity of the oppressed and exploited: in a bizarre way the latter themselves reproduce the conditions of their oppression.
Reform of the social sphere as the transformation of social institutions in the Corporation
The Corporation is not only sociological, but also psychological category. If you believe I. Wallerstein, during the revolution of 1968 European elites, mainly the “social-democratic”, not enough spirit to use violence vs the rebellious youth, but the fact of the mass revolutionary movement made me think of the elite about the nature and the conditions which make possible the serious riots. The ruling party asked the question: “How to do the impossible protest and revolution in the principle?” No doubt that the organizers and participants of the revolution — the representatives of “free professions”: students, intellectuals, teachers, media workers, that is the part of modern society that has free time and critical thinking — a direct result of proper education. The answer to the question — “how to do the impossible revolutionary?” — obvious: to curtail the welfare state. Or to force to function the institutions of the welfare state: education, science, culture on the principle of corporations, that in fact one and the same. And for that you need to destroy social time in the structure of work, free and social.
Social time is a key resource for self-development, communication, acculturation. And confirmation of solidarity. His absence transformerait a free man, according to the apt expression of Karl Marx, in a partial person. Books, museums, theatres, just a free conversation with like-minded people becomes impossible. They have neither the strength nor the time. For example, the educational space of the Russian Federation currently operates on the principle: “work never stops”. In this work meaningless, is a little different from cleaning floors with a toothbrush in famous places: the endless reports, and other, growing exponentially, bureaucratic waste paper, “effectively” takes away the physical and intellectual force, and with it leisure and social time. (Yes, we will definitely not up to the revolution on Saturday: because by Monday it is necessary “to develop” the next CMO, APIM, FOS, etc. and to bring them into line with the competencies. And in the next month to completely redo everything). Aside from the rhetoric of “quality education”, which deceives no one, – on education, no question, but only about the redistribution of financial flows in the relevant institutions. And most importantly – they are transformed into corporations with the same “flexibility” but not ordinary workers, teachers, professors, scientists, i.e. the “representatives of the cultural-politically important circles” (M. Weber).
Reform of the social sphere in the same direction in different parts of the world began in the early 70-ies of the XX century This process was captured in the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon countries, then European. Have they started in the 90s, when we decided to join the ranks of “civilized countries” by choosing the worst way to abandon all national benefits, for example, exchanging brilliant Soviet science on the questionable law of the Russian “elite” to become part of the global. Although the task itself is fundamentally not feasible. As noted by Bourdieu, does not matter, as is the pyramid of global inequality and power — vertically or horizontally “should” or “lies”. From which it follows that the elite of the periphery – always no more than a peripheral elite.
The modern world resembles the geometry of the pyramids in the pyramid. Pyramid — a graphic image of global inequality. The entire planet is divided into the pyramid, within each country — similar processes. Resources are redistributed in favor of the top of the global pyramid. Different ways. That is to say, the sequestration budget, no matter how good intentions nor justified, it just leads to withdrawal from countries of global periphery and semi-periphery to the core and center, because so organized modern global financial oligarchy. As noted by I. Wallerstein, not going less taxes, state budgets are growing, but they are removed from society under various pretexts, passed financial and banking institutions of a particular country and then forwarded in global financial institutions. Thus, national States are weakened, and the population remains without institutions of social reproduction.
Neoliberalism as an ideology of the corporations insists on the destruction of the state, citing its inefficiency and even hostility to the individual. And there is a sensible grain. However, instead of a state with bureaucratic structures and other defects, we offer many of the same bureaucratic structures, often with transnational jurisdiction, powerful, and even without any options of social responsibility. To paraphrase the thesis of one representative of the CIA instead of a single slow-moving dragon, which can be kept under control, we offer thousands of sprawling poisonous snakes, which cannot be controlled.
The psychological effects of corporate organizations
The Corporation as a mechanism for the smooth production of inequality and injustice is so effective that there is a suspicion, not based on whether its structure on a well established psychological concept, knowledge of basic tools of mind control and behavior of individuals and masses, the elites and the population. In our opinion, is the use of American behaviorism, as a method of description of human behavior (by the way, the recent history of Russia has shown that elites manage to be extremely simple). Recall that the founder of behaviorism, John Watson, was convinced that “in perfectly fitted body consciousness is absent”. And even promised to create person-to-order.
Thus the American theory of the behavior summed theoretical basis for the opportunity to see in person to any tyranny – the “productive” organizational ideas for the functioning of corporations and the prologue for the processes of dehumanization of culture and society. Gorgeous and painful example is the category of “Fear-American” in the work of Corey Robin’s “Fear”. Fear is the strongest motive, because we are talking about the threat of life. This motive is stronger than hunger, for which Europe is forced into submission and “production capitalism,” in the colonized countries. I.e., Corporation shamelessly manipulates limiting mental States. At the same time, any ban on solidarity leads to the fact that man remains alone with his phobias. He’s helpless. In the end, the “being” of the worker in the Corporation – the constant fatigue, stress and hopelessness. And he has no idea about the other, non-corporate, purposes of existence, he sees no alternatives: it is the “new proletarians” there is a special psychology of defeat.”
“If we want to confront the “fear” UN-American”, then this struggle must be commenced and completed in the workplace, since that is where most citizens regularly experience fear and repressive violence against the person”. And further: “at work Fear is generated by the existence of hierarchy in companies for the purpose of maintaining this hierarchy. Employers use fear not because I am sadistic or cruel people, but because they are convinced that fear is the fuel that powers the American economy. “The wall street journal writes: “the workplace does not happen and should not be free from fear. On the contrary, fear can be an effective management tool.” is very typical quotes from the works of K. Robin.
Corporate capitalism has taken away all the gains of the proletariat in nearly 200 years. All that has been achieved since the uprising of the Silesian weavers, which inspired Karl Marx, down to the strike movement of the early twentieth century and the gains of socialism during the cold war. And subtracting, has mobilized unprecedented resources, financial and intellectual, to make impossible any repetition of such victories of organized labor over capital. This world disfranchisement of the workers, lose the absolute class of the poor and the oppressed, destroying the energy of utopian projects, as correctly stated by J. Habermas. The absence of utopia is a fundamentally different organization of society, a social and political project deprives the employee of the resources of the resistance, and aided by a powerful propaganda which convinces us daily that we live in the best of worlds. And moreover, in the only possible world. And all other options – “the road to serfdom or fascism.
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Even imagine the beautiful utopia that “from the womb of the future for our descendants will revive the peace and joy of life” (M. Weber) is prohibited. This model of social existence makes unhappy a growing number of people all more happy the absolute minority. Weber called these the lucky “big rentiers (shareholders, bankers, financiers) — but they withdrew themselves from the field of struggle for existence: competition, crises, instability and pervasive insecurity. All the rest — absolute majority, there is a keen sense that they have permanently compressed a space of life, like shagreen skin, replacing lost predictable stress. The question is: can the social system to function normally and to develop when it is based on absolute total anomaly?
