Manufacturing Discontent: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society

221 Pages·2005·0.735 MB·English

by  Michael Perelman

Manufacturing
Discontent
The Trap of Individualism
in Corporate Society
Michael Perelman
P
Pluto Press
LONDON (cid:127) ANN ARBOR, MI
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First published in English 2005 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Michael Perelman 2005
The right of Michael Perelman to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 2407 X hardback
ISBN 0 7453 2406 1 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Perelman, Michael.
Manufacturing discontent : the trap of individualism in corporate society
/ Michael Perelman.
p. cm.
ISBN 0–7453–2407–X (hardback) –– ISBN 0–7453–2406–1 (pbk.)
1. Social responsibility of business––United States. 2. Corporations––Social
aspects––United States. 3. Individualism––United States. 4. Consumption
(Economics)––United States. I. Title.
HD60.5.U5P39 2005
306.3'4––dc22
2005001626
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Printed and bound in Canada by Transcontinental Printing
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Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction ix
In the Beginning ix
Attacking the Myth of Individualism x
There Is No Alternative xiv
1. The Individual Subsumed in the Corporate Economy 1
The Myth of Individualism 1
The Real Meaning of Individualism 2
Back to Adam Smith 4
Markets Uber Alles 6
Freedom of Speech—for Whom? 8
The Perverse Consequences of the Corporate Abuse
of Power 10
Pensions and Individualism 13

2. People as Consumers 16
People as Consumers 16
The Futility of Excessive Consumption 21
The Democratization of the Potlatch 24
Planned Obsolescence 27
Prosperity and Happiness 30
Markets and Happiness 33
Sabotaging Happiness 35
Consuming Culture 38

3. What Corporate Society Does to Workers 40
Individual Freedom and Authority in the Workplace 40
Flexibility for Whom? 42
Unemployment as a Disciplinary Device 47
Costs of Job Loss 49
Manipulation of Labor Markets 50
Monetary Policy to Maintain Unemployment 54
The Wages of Fear 55
Risks of Working 56
The Pain of Servitude 59
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vi Manufacturing Discontent
The Lethal Economy of Time 61
Sovereignty in the Workplace 65
The Retreat to Consumption 68
Imagine 70

4. Corporate Accountability 73
Corporations as Individuals 73
Corporate Crime and Punishment 75
The Corporate Obligation to Commit Crime 79
Responsibility and Tort Reform 83
Subcontracting 89

5. Accountability vs. Responsibility 91
Introduction 91
The Virtual Impossibility of Accountability 94
Cleaning Up the Mess 96
Globalization and Corporate Accountability 97

6. The Role of Risk 100
Introduction 100
Risk, Uncertainty, and Profi t 107
Knight: On Closer Examination 109
Protection Against Business Risk 111
Other Protections Against Business Risk 114
The Absence of Protections for Ordinary People 119
Knight on Turnover and Job Security 120
Risk and “Sound Science” 122
Downplaying Risk for the Corporations 125
Devaluing Life 128
The Madness of Risk Assessment 129
The Politics of Risk 132
The Precautionary Principle 134
Broader Considerations of Risk and Individualism 138
Risk and the Individual in a Market Society 139

7. Food, Fear, and Terrorism 143
The Political Economy of Fear 143
Asbestos and the World Trade Center Disaster 148
Amazing Grace 149
Controlling the Message 152
The Precautionary Principle Again 155
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Contents vii
The War on Terror 156
Fear of Irrationality or Irrationality of Fear 162
The War on Terror and Statistical Murder 163
Food, Terrorism, and the Individual’s Right to Know 167

8. Individuals as Citizens 169
Mesmerizing Society 169
A Fully Informed Public 170
Keeping the Public in the Dark 172
Keeping the Congress in the Dark 175
Elections 177
A Hint of a Good Society 179
Concluding Remark 181
References 183
Index 203
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank Wendy Diamond, Kuau Garrson, Bob Cottrell,
Richard Ponorul, Aldo Matteucci, and especially Joanna Bujes for
their excellent help. Most of all, I am indebted to Blanche Perelman,
without whom this would not have been possible.
viii
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Introduction
IN THE BEGINNING
This book is about power—raw power—the raw power of corporations
alongside the powerlessness of individualism. Never before in the
history of the world have corporate powers been as strong as they are
today. Corporations brazenly are using their strength to accumulate
even more power.
This corporate power is corrosive. Corporations continue to use
their power in ways that harm people as consumers, workers, and
citizens. I will describe a number of these threats to human and
environmental health, education, and even democratic processes, as
well as a host of other destructive consequences of corporate power,
including the trampling of the individual rights that corporate
society claims to hold dear. Corporate power makes idiots of us
all—in the original Greek sense the word, which referred to people
concerned only with their own individual affairs and not those of
the larger community.
The continuing growth of corporate power will be irreversible
without concerted political activity. A political movement capable
of standing up to corporate power will require that people shed
those aspects of individualism that inhibit them from identifying
as members of society rather than as isolated individuals.
This book describes how the distorted ideological perception of
society within the United States has facilitated the construction of a
corporate society in which corporate power grows at the expense of
individual. The leaders of corporate society want us to see ourselves
as a multitude of individuals satisfying our needs through the
alchemy of the market, a market that we rule through the exercise
of individual choice. The market’s even-handed anarchy is supposed
to be our modern wheel of fortune, impassively turning poor workers
into kings.
This corporate society represents a twofold threat to the rest of the
world. Most directly, the inordinate military power of the corporate-
driven United States is capable of laying waste to any part of the world
that it so chooses. More subtly, the institutional changes that have
infected the United States are spreading throughout the world—partly
through the enormous political and military infl uence of the U.S.
ix
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x Manufacturing Discontent
government, and partly through cultural sway. Mostly, however,
competitive pressures have been responsible for this ongoing
capitulation to the U.S. model.
For those of you outside of the United States, let this book serve
as a warning: unless people around the world put up strong political
resistance, what has happened in the United States is liable to repeat
itself wherever you may be. Even ostensibly social democratic leaders
are rapidly dismantling social democracies. Within this environment,
pensions, labor market institutions, and environmental regulations all
must give way to the logic of the corporate juggernaut. All the while,
an evolving international trade regime is giving giant corporations
virtually unrestricted freedom to roam the world unencumbered by
national regulations. In considering the disaster presently befalling
the United States, I am reminded of Karl Marx’s citation of the Roman
poet, Horace, in his introduction to Capital: ‘De te fabula narratur!’—
it is of you that the story is told.
This book leads to an unmistakable conclusion. Although
individualism might seem to be antagonistic to corporate power,
it actually reinforces corporate power. Only by joining together
larger social groups—social groups that can tap into the potential
of their members’ individual strengths—will people be able to
successfully challenge corporate power. I will explain why, if people
allow themselves to become deluded in believing that their strength
lies exclusively in their individuality, corporate power will almost
inevitably increase relative to that of the rest of society. In short,
individualism represents a dead end.
ATTACKING THE MYTH OF INDIVIDUALISM
The book begins by describing the myth of individualism and the
power that this myth has over us. The fi rst chapter offers a brief
introduction to corporate society, emphasizing the many ways that
corporate rights trump individual rights. This chapter describes how
corporations cause problems that make corporate-friendly policies
appear to be the only solution, leading to a never-ending spiral of
corporate power.
It describes how conservative interests act to blunt the impact
of growing protests against the primacy of business interests by
actively promoting the false ideology of individualism, expressed
by the myth of consumer sovereignty. As the pop artist Andy Warhol
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Introduction xi
has said, ‘Buying is much more American than thinking’ (Warhol
1975: 228).
According to this warped ideology, individuals are constituted by
the choices they make as consumers. No matter that they toil away
at mindless tasks day after day. No matter that they are turned into
dispensable and interchangeable corporate pawns. When they come
home, they can celebrate their freedom and unique identity by freely
choosing whether to drink Coke or Pepsi.
This ideological vision of individualism is a warped individualism
that allows individuals to make some limited choices, while many
of the most important choices lie beyond them. When we come to
believe this myth and to defi ne our identity through shopping, not
only have we lost the means by which we could act together to create
our world, we no longer even see the need for such association. After
all, the corporation is our friend and aims to satisfy our every need.
In every sense, the myth of individualism is an absolute dead end.
Chapter 2 looks at the negative social consequences of the framing
of people as consumers. Consumerism, with its grotesque striving
for excess, is antisocial from the start. The attempt of people to
distinguish themselves through consumption is self-defeating for
all concerned, except for the corporate interests. Besides profi ting
from consumer excesses, consumerism prevents the sort of social
cohesion needed as a counterweight to corporate power.
Consumptionism by defi nition is never fulfi lling. Envy and the
desire to distinguish oneself at the expense of others are what drive
consumptionism. Within this mindset, nobody can ever have enough.
A society that focuses on consumerism leads to what the economist
Tibor Scitovsky called, “the Joyless Economy” (Scitovsky 1976).
The chapter explains why disappointment is endemic to a
consumer society: Each act of consumption tends to bring about a
sense of disappointment in its wake. No purchase, no choice is fi nal;
planned obsolescence and a barrage of advertisements make each
purchase seem wanting within a short period of time.
Over time, consumerism will prove to be destructive, even
for the corporations themselves. In order to maximize profits,
corporations try to rein in labor costs needing people to purchase
an ever-increasing output. Corporations can only meet these twin
objectives when people borrow in order to consume. Eventually,
this debt burden becomes more than people can bear, ultimately
leading to depressions, which destroy many corporations and can
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xii Manufacturing Discontent
even bring down the entire economic system upon which corporate
power depends.
Next, in Chapter 3, I examine what corporate society does to
the individual as producer, as worker. While we are formally free
to choose our professions, few of us actually get the opportunity to
fi nd employment in fulfi lling work. The odds are fairly high that a
working-class person will fi nd herself or himself with little choice
but to take a mind-numbing job. Corporate employers attempt to
push workers to the limit, while keeping them fearful of losing their
jobs. Increasingly, even professional work, such as that of doctors, is
losing the type of independent control that makes such occupations
attractive.
Boredom and alienation are only part of what workers must endure.
Between 1980 and 1998, approximately 109,000 civilian workers died
from work-related injuries. Deaths from occupation related diseases
run about three times as high. Unemployment is also dangerous,
causing great numbers of deaths from heart attacks and strokes, while
contributing to rising rates of homicides and other crimes, as well as
taking a serious toll on family life.
We do not hold corporations accountable for the consequences of
their relentless drive for profi ts. Corporations have won all the rights
of individuals, but with few of the responsibilities. Chapter 4 describes
some of the ruses that corporations use to avoid responsibility.
Looking at the subject of corporate crime and punishment, I detail
the shockingly lenient treatment of corporate crime, as well as
the belief of some federal judges that corporations even have an
obligation to commit crimes if this contributes to the bottom line.
The lack of corporate accountability sharply contrasts with the harsh
treatment of individuals for even petty crime. It raises the question
as to whether the unemployed youth who is shut away is not the
tragic scapegoat of an inchoate anger that is powerless to fi nd the
real culprit.
Chapter 5 describes some of the techniques that corporations use
to avoid responsibility, while calling for increased accountability
from every other sector of society. More often than not, the call for
accountability is part of a larger objective of promoting corporate
control of those few parts of society that have partially eluded
corporate control, such as public education.
In the next chapter, I look at the techniques that corporations use
to increase that anger. This anger helps them to avoid responsibility,
while calling for increased accountability from every other sector of
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