[lbo-talk] Karl Rove's plan

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Fri Jun 8 06:00:57 PDT 2012


Ken H: "A successful company that gives great returns for investors is regarded as a great public good. A successful union that gets g ood salaries and benefits for its members is often regarded a public bad and needs to have its rights limited and gains reduced. A successful company is a model for business people but a successful union is envied by many workers who rather than use it as a model they help the corporate elite reduce its power and destroy it."

[WS:] This is one of the most lucid observations made on this list lately. It is akin to Galbraith's remark about dual motivation systems used in conventional economics, one for the rich (they will not work if not sufficiently compensated) and one of the poor (they will not work if compensated too much). I think it goes back to Marx Weber's (_Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_) analysis of pre-modern and modern rationality.

The Weber connection suggests that this not simply hypocrisy or even brainwashing with business propaganda. It has something to do with the Weberian notion of legitimacy, more specifically, who can make a legitimate claim to representing public interests, or for that matter, propose bona fide rational solutions. It seems that corporate management is seen as a legitimate agent of both, while labor (organized or otherwise) lack this legitimacy - it can only represent their own "special interests" and their own point of view (rather than universally recognized rationality.)

The real question is, however, why it is the case? If the study of the professions and the role of legitimacy in professional projects (see for example Andrew Abbott book, "The System of Professions" or my paper on how this works when the "system of professions" does not https://www.box.net/shared/kta42o4not ) is any indicator, the key to legitimacy is the association with knowledge (or at least with what passes for it at a given historical time). Doctors are legitimate medical professionals while healers are not, because the former claim to posses what is widely recognized as objective knowledge on which their practice is based, whereas the latter do not. The outcome of the practice does not matter that much (both can be ineffective or only accidentally effective) - what matters is the formal association with legitimate knowledge, which is considered a good in itself. Likewise, the management is supposed to be based on the application of "knowledge" (economics, psychology, etc.) whereas labor does not.

Of course this association with knowledge is not self-evident. it is carefully constructed and cultivated to the point of becoming what sociologists call "stock knowledge" i.e. a belief taken for granted without the need of any proof. The professions carefully engaged in that construction and cultivation - the process known as "professional projects". Labor did not. In fact, labor often took the opposite path, that of anti-intellectualism and and derision of formal knowledge and its agents ("egg-heads.) By so doing, it shot itself in the foot - it undermined its own claim to legitimate representation of public interests and consequently it is seen only as a "special interest group" that needs to be held in check by those who legitimately represent "public interests."

-- Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."



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