Manufacturing Discontent

Michael Perelman

Description

Corporate power has a huge impact on the rights and privileges of individuals -– as workers, consumers, and citizens. This book explores how the myth of individualism reinforces corporate power by making people perceive themselves as having choices, when in fact most peoples' options are very limited.



Perelman describes the manufacture of unhappiness - the continual generation of dissatisfaction with products people are encouraged to purchase and quickly discard - and the complex techniques corporations employ to avoid responsibility and accountability to their workers, consumers and the environment. He outlines ways in which individuals can surpass individualism and instead work together to check the growing power of corporations.



While other books have surveyed the corporate landscape, or decried modern consumerism, Perelman, a professor of economics, places these ideas within a proper economic and historical context. He explores the limits of corporate accountability and responsibility, and investigates the relation between a wide range of phenomena such as food, fear and terrorism.



Highly readable, Manufacturing Discontent will appeal to anyone with an interest in the way society works - and what really determines the rights of individuals in a corporate society.
Introduction

1. The Individual Subsumed in the Corporate Economy

2. People as Consumers

3. What Corporate Society Does to Workers

4. Corporate Accountability

5. Accountability vs. Responsibility

6. The Role of Risk

7. Food, Fear, and Terrorism

8. Individuals as Citizens

References

Index

Sujets

• Political Science
• Histoire
• Theory
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781783718481
• Langue: English

Extrait

Manufacturing Discontent
Manufacturing Discontent
The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society
Michael Perelman
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    978-0-7453-2406-7
ISBN    978-1-8496-4280-4
ISBN    978-1-7837-1849-8 Kindle
ISBN    978-1-7837-1848-1 ePub
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 on demand in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, UK
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction  
In the Beginning  
Attacking the Myth of Individualism  
There Is No Alternative
1.  
The Individual Subsumed in the Corporate Economy  
The Myth of Individualism  
The Real Meaning of Individualism  
Back to Adam Smith  
Markets Uber Alles  
Freedom of Speech—for Whom?  
The Perverse Consequences of the Corporate Abuse of Power  
Pensions and Individualism
2.  
People as Consumers  
People as Consumers  
The Futility of Excessive Consumption  
The Democratization of the Potlatch  
Planned Obsolescence  
Prosperity and Happiness  
Markets and Happiness  
Sabotaging Happiness  
Consuming Culture
3.  
What Corporate Society Does to Workers  
Individual Freedom and Authority in the Workplace  
Flexibility for Whom?  
Unemployment as a Disciplinary Device  
Costs of Job Loss  
Manipulation of Labor Markets  
Monetary Policy to Maintain Unemployment  
The Wages of Fear  
Risks of Working  
The Pain of Servitude  
The Lethal Economy of Time  
Sovereignty in the Workplace  
The Retreat to Consumption  
Imagine
4.  
Corporate Accountability  
Corporations as Individuals  
Corporate Crime and Punishment  
The Corporate Obligation to Commit Crime  
Responsibility and Tort Reform  
Subcontracting
5.  
Accountability vs. Responsibility  
Introduction  
The Virtual Impossibility of Accountability  
Cleaning Up the Mess  
Globalization and Corporate Accountability
6.  
The Role of Risk  
Introduction  
Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit  
Knight: On Closer Examination  
Protection Against Business Risk  
Other Protections Against Business Risk  
The Absence of Protections for Ordinary People  
Knight on Turnover and Job Security  
Risk and “Sound Science”  
Downplaying Risk for the Corporations  
Devaluing Life  
The Madness of Risk Assessment  
The Politics of Risk  
The Precautionary Principle  
Broader Considerations of Risk and Individualism  
Risk and the Individual in a Market Society
7.  
Food, Fear, and Terrorism  
The Political Economy of Fear  
Asbestos and the World Trade Center Disaster  
Amazing Grace  
Controlling the Message  
The Precautionary Principle Again  
The War on Terror  
Fear of Irrationality or Irrationality of Fear  
The War on Terror and Statistical Murder  
Food, Terrorism, and the Individual’s Right to Know
8.  
Individuals as Citizens  
Mesmerizing Society  
A Fully Informed Public  
Keeping the Public in the Dark  
Keeping the Congress in the Dark  
Elections  
A Hint of a Good Society
Concluding Remark
References
Index
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.
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 influence of the U.S. 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 first 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 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 define 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 d