How to turn a liberal hipster into a capitalist tyrant in one evening

[Hexen]

How to turn a liberal hipster into a capitalist tyrant in one evening

Paul Mason (http://www.theguardian.com/profile/paul-mason) A new play, World Factory, asks the audience to run a clothing factory in China – and even the creators have been surprised at how people have behaved




http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/5/22/1432305264243/Wold-Factory---how-would--007.jpg
(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/turn-a-liberal-hipster-into-global-capitalist-world-factory#img-1) World Factory … how would you cope? Photograph: photograph by David Sandison Contact author
@paulmasonnews
(http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews)
Sunday 24 May 2015 15.00 EDT Last modified on Sunday 24 May 2015 19.10 EDT

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635 (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/turn-a-liberal-hipster-into-global-capitalist-world-factory?CMP=share_btn_fb#comments)



The choices were stark: sack a third of our workforce or cut their wages by a third. After a short board meeting we cut their wages, assured they would survive and that, with a bit of cajoling, they would return to our sweatshop in Shenzhen after their two-week break.
But that was only the start. In Zoe Svendsen’s play World Factory at the Young Vic, the audience becomes the cast. Sixteen teams sit around factory desks playing out a carefully constructed game that requires you to run a clothing factory in China (http://www.theguardian.com/world/china). How to deal with a troublemaker? How to dupe the buyers from ethical retail brands? What to do about the ever-present problem of clients that do not pay? Because the choices are binary they are rarely palatable. But what shocked me – and has surprised the theatre – is the capacity of perfectly decent, liberal hipsters on London’s south bank to become ruthless capitalists when seated at the boardroom table.
The classic problem presented by the game is one all managers face: short-term issues, usually involving cashflow, versus the long-term challenge of nurturing your workforce and your client base. Despite the fact that a public-address system was blaring out, in English and Chinese, that “your workforce is your vital asset” our assembled young professionals repeatedly had to be cajoled not to treat them like dirt.
World Factory review – interactive play smartly unravels fashion industry



Young Vic, London
Audience members are cast as owners of clothing factories in China and presented with binary choices in a breakneck, thought-provoking piece

Read more



And because the theatre captures data on every choice by every team, for every performance, I know we were not alone. The aggregated flowchart reveals that every audience, on every night, veers towards money and away from ethics.
Svendsen says: “Most people who were given the choice to raise wages – having cut them – did not. There is a route in the decision-tree that will only get played if people pursue a particularly ethical response, but very few people end up there. What we’ve realised is that it is not just the profit motive but also prudence, the need to survive at all costs, that pushes people in the game to go down more capitalist routes.”
In short, many people have no idea what running a business actually means in the 21st century. Yes, suppliers – from East Anglia to Shanghai – will try to break your ethical codes; but most of those giant firms’ commitment to good practice, and environmental sustainability, is real. And yes, the money is all important. But real businesses will take losses, go into debt and pay workers to stay idle in order to maintain the long-term relationships vital in a globalised economy.
Why do so many decent people, when asked to pretend they’re CEOs, become tyrants from central casting? Part of the answer is: capitalism subjects us to economic rationality. It forces us to see ourselves as cashflow generators, profit centres or interest-bearing assets. But that idea is always in conflict with something else: the non-economic priorities of human beings, and the need to sustain the environment. Though World Factory, as a play, is designed to show us the parallels between 19th-century Manchester and 21st-century China, it subtly illustrates what has changed.
http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/5/22/1432309544438/1eb44622-ffad-471a-939b-c8d428eabf73-620x372.jpeg (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/turn-a-liberal-hipster-into-global-capitalist-world-factory#img-2)
A worker in a Chinese clothing factory Photograph: Imaginechina/Corbis A real Chinese sweatshop owner is playing a losing game against something much more sophisticated than the computer at the Young Vic: an intelligent machine made up of the smartphones of millions of migrant workers on their lunchbreak, plugging digitally into their village networks to find out wages and conditions elsewhere. That sweatshop owner is also playing against clients with an army of compliance officers, themselves routinely harassed by NGOs with secret cameras.
The whole purpose of this system of regulation – from above and below – is to prevent individual capitalists making short-term decisions that destroy the human and natural resources it needs to function. Capitalism is not just the selfish decisions of millions of people. It is those decisions sifted first through the all-important filter of regulation. It is, as late 20th-century social theorists understood, a mode of regulation, not just of production.
Yet it plays on us a cruel ideological trick. It looks like a spontaneous organism, to which government and regulation (and the desire of Chinese migrants to visit their families once a year) are mere irritants. In reality it needs the state to create and re-create it every day.
Banks create money because the state awards them the right to. Why does the state ram-raid the homes of small-time drug dealers, yet call in the CEOs of the banks whose employees commit multimillion-pound frauds for a stern ticking off over a tray of Waitrose sandwiches? Answer: because a company has limited liability status, created by parliament in 1855 after a political struggle.
http://i.guim.co.uk/media/w-460/h--/q-95/19cabf4c6bee511edf2d9291dd270b8e36691760/0_217_3000_1800/500.jpg
Chinese factory activity slumps to lowest for a year as demand slows



Read more



Our fascination with market forces blinds us to the fact that capitalism – as a state of being – is a set of conditions created and maintained by states. Today it is beset by strategic problems: debt- ridden, with sub-par growth and low productivity, it cannot unleash the true potential of the info-tech revolution because it cannot imagine what to do with the millions who would lose their jobs.
The computer that runs the data system in Svendsen’s play could easily run a robotic clothes factory. That’s the paradox. But to make a third industrial revolution happen needs something no individual factory boss can execute: the re-regulation of capitalism into something better. Maybe the next theatre game about work and exploitation should model the decisions of governments, lobbyists and judges, not the hapless managers.
Paul Mason is economics editor of Channel 4 News. Follow him @paulmasonnews (https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews) Read his blog here (http://www.channel4.com/news/paul-mason). World Factory runs at the Young Vic until 6 June.









Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/turn-a-liberal-hipster-into-global-capitalist-world-factory?CMP=share_btn_fb

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't really understand the surprise. Liberal hipsterdom has little to do with anti-capitalism.

The very idea of the 'liberal' today has connotations in tech start-ups (think Palo Alto 5-10 years ago), alternative business structures, social enterprise and 'charity'. Liberal, hipster culture is a fundamental cog in the capitalist machine today. Truly 'alternative' ideas are appropriated for commerical purposes (think Che t-shirts, Rhythm and Blues' mainstreaming, and even facebook advertising) or shunned altogether (anti-capitalist social and political ideas).

Supporting change for change's sake is the name of the game for reformists, and supporting any idea that is not in the 'mainstream' of media, social, and political opinion at any particular time is the preserve of liberal hipsters. Inevitably, they search for fad after fad, after each idea is hijacked by mainstream commercial entities.

Shit's fucked. There's a song that goes "our culture is carrion and we're all vultures", and to an extent I think that's a very accurate representation of mainstream culture today. Narcissistic, self-hating, disunited.

[ckaihatsu]

Today [capitalism] is beset by strategic problems: debt- ridden, with sub-par growth and low productivity, it cannot unleash the true potential of the info-tech revolution because it cannot imagine what to do with the millions who would lose their jobs.

The computer that runs the data system in Svendsen’s play could easily run a robotic clothes factory. That’s the paradox.


This is a misnomer -- as though the operational efficiency of computer usage is an unfinished revolution, one that, if allowed to complete itself, would emerge to render millions of workers superfluous to a more-effective configuration of labor, for production.

The dynamic of (neoliberal) austerity isn't due *whatsoever* to the mechanics and efficiencies of computer technology, but rather is an economic-managerial *philosophy* and *paradigm choice* of those in bourgeois politics.

One could just as validly say that with the extant problems of governments' debt-riddenness, subpar growth, and low productivity, the true potential of capitalism lies in *expanding government spending* (Keynesianism), but that 'strategy' hasn't been on the table since 1981.

https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-five-industrial-cycles-since-1945/from-the-1974-75-recession-to-the-volcker-shock/

[Tim Redd]

The dynamic of (neoliberal) austerity isn't due *whatsoever* to the mechanics and efficiencies of computer technology, but rather is an economic-managerial *philosophy* and *paradigm choice* of those in bourgeois politics.

The current capitalist crisis of severe recession/depression for the masses is due to the laws of capitalism Marx lays out in Capital. It is not anyone's matter of "choice".

[ckaihatsu]

The current capitalist crisis of severe recession/depression for the masses is due to the laws of capitalism Marx lays out in Capital.


True.





It is not anyone's matter of "choice".


But how economic policymakers *respond* to these objective circumstances *is* a matter of choice, such as what the Troika is doing with Greece.

[bricolage]

lol, since when does going to the theatre = hipster?
but yeah sure the position you hold in a structure or economic model will determine how you behave in it, some of us have been saying that from day.

[Jacky Hearts]

No surprise. Liberalism as an ideology is based around contradictions.

They want to limit the state because they believe that 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' (Acton) but don't see a problem with the limitless attainment of de facto economic power in the context of the Capitalist economy.

[ckaihatsu]

Keynesianism


Also want to add that even *monetary policy* shouldn't be considered to be above the class divide since governments put forth expenditures for left-wing-type concerns like education, welfare, and social services in general, as well as right-wing-type programs like warfare, corporate bailouts, and 'national security' in general.

This means that *any* government spending can be seen as Keynesian since it registers as a deficit on the government's books, and major nation-states almost *always* run deficits, since they can.

Any look at recent U.S. history would see that Keynesianism is alive and well -- in the form of extra military spending (wars on Iraq and Afghanistan) and the government bailout of the banks in 2008.

It's the Keynesianism *for the people* that is conventionally considered to be of a past era -- which it is -- but *military Keynesianism* continues on without having to carry the burden of that now-maligned basis term.

[Hit The North]

No surprise. Liberalism as an ideology is based around contradictions.

They want to limit the state because they believe that 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' (Acton) but don't see a problem with the limitless attainment of de facto economic power in the context of the Capitalist economy.

Sure, but this is not what the article is about, nor are the audience who are invited to participate necessarily liberal hipsters or liberal of any kind.

The point of the article is very much in line with Marxist analysis:

Individual behaviour is determined by rules arising from social relations and social structures. Out of these relations an ethos arises which seeks to formulate and justify the rules set up by the indispensable relations of production.

The question isn't about the abstract ideas people have in their heads, whether liberal or communist; the question is about their position within the relations of production and fields of social power. This is what, ultimately, explains human behaviour.

I like this play as it illustrates some important sociological concepts. Role playing a capitalist helps to explain how it isn't the individual boss that needs replacing, but the system itself.

[Jacky Hearts]

Sure, but this is not what the article is about, nor are the audience who are invited to participate necessarily liberal hipsters or liberal of any kind.

The point of the article is very much in line with Marxist analysis:

Individual behaviour is determined by rules arising from social relations and social structures. Out of these relations an ethos arises which seeks to formulate and justify the rules set up by the indispensable relations of production.

The question isn't about the abstract ideas people have in their heads, whether liberal or communist; the question is about their position within the relations of production and fields of social power. This is what, ultimately, explains human behaviour.

I like this play as it illustrates some important sociological concepts. Role playing a capitalist helps to explain how it isn't the individual boss that needs replacing, but the system itself.

Basically what you literally just said is that 'power corrupts', but your explanation used longer words. The conclusion is still correct, however you look at it, that power has a negative to human psychology and, yes, all social relations involving hierarchy are thus negative.

[Hit The North]

This is a misnomer -- as though the operational efficiency of computer usage is an unfinished revolution, one that, if allowed to complete itself, would emerge to render millions of workers superfluous to a more-effective configuration of labor, for production.


I don't think this is what Mason is saying. He's arguing that the current relations of production and distribution cannot accommodate the logic of technological developments because that logic leads toward our liberation from labour - and without labour, there can be no capital. A system based on the life-and-death requirement to accumulate on the basis of exploited labour-power cannot sanction a society of leisure and free association. It is a classic example of the Marxist observation that the relations of production act as a fetter on the further development of the productive forces, is it not?


The dynamic of (neoliberal) austerity isn't due *whatsoever* to the mechanics and efficiencies of computer technology, but rather is an economic-managerial *philosophy* and *paradigm choice* of those in bourgeois politics.


I agree, but I don't see an "alternative paradigm" of how to manage capitalsit crisis which departs very far from austerity and argues that we should work toward a moneyless economy no longer dependent on the exploitation of human labour power. The choice within the capitalist paradigm is austerity or austerity-light, or some version of social democracy.


One could just as validly say that with the extant problems of governments' debt-riddenness, subpar growth, and low productivity, the true potential of capitalism lies in *expanding government spending* (Keynesianism), but that 'strategy' hasn't been on the table since 1981.

https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordp...volcker-shock/ (https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-five-industrial-cycles-since-1945/from-the-1974-75-recession-to-the-volcker-shock/)


But the actual solution lies outside of the system - in overthrowing the system. We know this. So it doesn't matter what "strategic choice" is made within the limits of capitalism as, in the end, capitalism has no potential, except the potential to lay the basis for its own overthrow. So even a "Keynsianism for the people" cannot help capitalism to free itself from its own inherent contradictions.


But how economic policymakers *respond* to these objective circumstances *is* a matter of choice, such as what the Troika is doing with Greece.

Not a great example, though, considering that the Greek government is about to be crushed by EU intransigence. And not because the EU is anti-Greek, but because the logic of the system means that the fallout of eradicating the debt for Greece would be catastrophic for the dominant economic model.

So it is not true that policymakers are absolutely free to respond to objective circumstances, because those objective circumstances have a logic of their own - and one that bears down on social actors in powerful but unequal ways.

[oneday]

Basically what you literally just said is that 'power corrupts', but your explanation used longer words.

No he didn't, he said that corrupt power is created by the system.

[Hit The North]

Basically what you literally just said is that 'power corrupts', but your explanation used longer words. The conclusion is still correct, however you look at it, that power has a negative to human psychology and, yes, all social relations involving hierarchy are thus negative.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm a Marxist, not an anarchist, so my analysis focuses on the content of the material relations, not merely their form. If I'd wanted to argue that "power corrupts", I'd have written that and saved some time.

[Jacky Hearts]

No, I'm not saying that. I'm a Marxist, not an anarchist, so my analysis focuses on the content of the material relations, not merely their form. If I'd wanted to argue that "power corrupts", I'd have written that and saved some time.

But isn't it correct that those material relations are effectively a source of power.

[Hit The North]

But isn't it correct that those material relations are effectively a source of power.

Of course, but it is a specific kind of power and one which derives from a structural relation which even the capitalist cannot ignore. My point is that your earlier post seemed to indicate that you thought the ideology of liberalism was the problem being highlighted by the play - that it would cave in to the logic of capitalism; whereas my point was that even a communist would need to follow the same logic if s/he wanted to win the game.

Whether power always corrupts is an abstract question that is perhaps interesting but not what I was addressing. As an aside, Tony Cliff, a dead Marxist, used to argue that when it came to the workers movement, it was powerlessness that corrupted.
..................

[Jacky Hearts]

Of course, but it is a specific kind of power and one which derives from a structural relation which even the capitalist cannot ignore. My point is that your earlier post seemed to indicate that you thought the ideology of liberalism was the problem being highlighted by the play - that it would cave in to the logic of capitalism; whereas my point was that even a communist would need to follow the same logic if s/he wanted to win the game.

Whether power always corrupts is an abstract question that is perhaps interesting but not what I was addressing. As an aside, Tony Cliff, a dead Marxist, used to argue that when it came to the workers movement, it was powerlessness that corrupted.
..................

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to imply. I understood what the subject of the original post was getting at. It was more just my own dry observation about the flaws of Liberalism, which I'm really hung up about at the minute due to the fact I'm studying it for an exam, so I was probably just venting because it's a STUPID SHITTY PIECE OF WANK STAIN SELF-CONTRADICTING MAKES NO SENSE IDEOLOGY :glare:

[ckaihatsu]

This is a misnomer -- as though the operational efficiency of computer usage is an unfinished revolution, one that, if allowed to complete itself, would emerge to render millions of workers superfluous to a more-effective configuration of labor, for production.





I don't think this is what Mason is saying. He's arguing that the current relations of production and distribution cannot accommodate the logic of technological developments because that logic leads toward our liberation from labour - and without labour, there can be no capital. A system based on the life-and-death requirement to accumulate on the basis of exploited labour-power cannot sanction a society of leisure and free association. It is a classic example of the Marxist observation that the relations of production act as a fetter on the further development of the productive forces, is it not?


I agree with your Marxism, of course, but I don't think that Mason is a Marxist, because of these parts:





Our fascination with market forces blinds us to the fact that capitalism – as a state of being – is a set of conditions created and maintained by states.




But to make a third industrial revolution happen needs something no individual factory boss can execute: the re-regulation of capitalism into something better. Maybe the next theatre game about work and exploitation should model the decisions of governments, lobbyists and judges, not the hapless managers.


---





The dynamic of (neoliberal) austerity isn't due *whatsoever* to the mechanics and efficiencies of computer technology, but rather is an economic-managerial *philosophy* and *paradigm choice* of those in bourgeois politics.





I agree, but I don't see an "alternative paradigm" of how to manage capitalsit crisis which departs very far from austerity and argues that we should work toward a moneyless economy no longer dependent on the exploitation of human labour power. The choice within the capitalist paradigm is austerity or austerity-light, or some version of social democracy.


Of course capitalism can't fix itself, but those who *are* in positions to make 'choices' over economic policy -- Keynesianism vs. monetarism -- should be held accountable for that decision-making.





One could just as validly say that with the extant problems of governments' debt-riddenness, subpar growth, and low productivity, the true potential of capitalism lies in *expanding government spending* (Keynesianism), but that 'strategy' hasn't been on the table since 1981.

https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-five-industrial-cycles-since-1945/from-the-1974-75-recession-to-the-volcker-shock/





But the actual solution lies outside of the system - in overthrowing the system. We know this. So it doesn't matter what "strategic choice" is made within the limits of capitalism as, in the end, capitalism has no potential, except the potential to lay the basis for its own overthrow. So even a "Keynsianism for the people" cannot help capitalism to free itself from its own inherent contradictions.


True, and I'm not recommending Keynesianism in any sense -- however, the people certainly do *not* benefit, and are hurt more, by economic policies that rein in the circulation of money, for purposes of increasing its valuation (versus that of gold).





But how economic policymakers *respond* to these objective circumstances *is* a matter of choice, such as what the Troika is doing with Greece.





Not a great example, though,


I heartily disagree since the Greece situation is a microcosm of the larger world's contradictions of capitalist dynamics (deflation), juxtaposed with the elitist management of the same.





considering that the Greek government is about to be crushed by EU intransigence.


You cannot conceivably justify this position because it's simply a blithe dismissive fatalism, and you're also not providing any reasoning for this conclusion of yours.

Presumably it's due to economic factors, based on what you've said above, but if that's the case then you're ignoring the very real factor of populist resistance and even *working-class* resistance to EU diktats.





And not because the EU is anti-Greek, but because the logic of the system means that the fallout of eradicating the debt for Greece would be catastrophic for the dominant economic model.

So it is not true that policymakers are absolutely free to respond to objective circumstances, because those objective circumstances have a logic of their own - and one that bears down on social actors in powerful but unequal ways.


Certainly, but policymakers shouldn't be seen as *justified* in singling-out one or more specific countries for being 'the bad guys' in terms of debt-to-GDP ratios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The computer that runs the data system in Svendsen’s play could easily run a robotic clothes factory. That’s the paradox. But to make a third industrial revolution happen needs something no individual factory boss can execute: the re-regulation of capitalism into something better. Maybe the next theatre game about work and exploitation should model the decisions of governments, lobbyists and judges, not the hapless managers.

The solution proposed? Tehno-utopia!

And I mean that in the sense of both technological and technocratic.

Eeeeugh. Gives me the fucking heebie-jeebies.