Working life in Sweden and market fundamentalism...

“The Culture of the New Capitalism”

From a review of "The Culture of the New Capitalism" by Richard Sennett and a paper for a university degree by Kristina Finnholm here in Sweden (see my earlier blogposting in Swedish about this review here, here is my amateur-translation from Swedish to English of parts of this earlier posting):

“…the new capitalism’s culture creates non-free people.”

Contrary to what we are told.

“…it was long since the state and the capitalism created a common security/safety with long-term relations./…/

…when the big institutions have become fragmented peoples’ lives have become fragmented too.

…Sweden and Norway [can be stressed] as good societal experiments. The social democrat welfare model showed that stable societies aren’t economically stationary or stagnant.

Here a successful combination of relative stability and growth was combined (or shown). On top we had managed to combine a more fair distribution of the welfare and a generally seen higher standard of living, internationally seen, than USA and England.”

I think this is true. And possible to create in other countries too.

“The physical work environment has in many ways improved, but not the psychosocial work environment. A new human being is about to become created. A person that rejects his/her history and lets go of her/his past. A human being living in short-sightedness.”

This felt so good to read, because I think it’s sound, psychologically, to have contact with ones history and past, ad thus confirmed feelings I have. It feels so good realizing one isn't alone in those feelings.

“The market has become the superior norm beyond dispute forming human beings.”

No, we haven't been and still aren’t really allowed to question the market as superior norm beyond dispute!

“However, the sociological research has for a long time shown that most human beings don’t function in this way. We need a constantly continuing life-narrative containing a confirmation that we are clever craftsmen/women (or workmen/women) at the same time as we are glad for the experiences we have gotten [during our lives, both as private people and in working life, glad and proud over them when there are reasons for this. But when we aren't: why is that??].

The new ideal in working life more resemble the dream about the consumer glad for buying. The one whom is prepared to reject everything that is old and replace it with new things - even if these old things are fully functional.”

And we treat human beings in this way too! Replacing old people, throwing them away... But of course you can wonder why? Do they deserve it?

”In those days there are no margins or social considerations among the employers any more/…/

…increased economical growth doesn’t automatically lead to more jobs. This mantra – economical growth – stands out like a fundamentalist religion. A sort of natural law you definitely can’t call in question. Many have lost their jobs even when companies have shown record profits.

…many companies ignore their employees./…/

There is also a blind faith in consults. Many industrial managements have no self-confidence and put their trust to this consult whose business concept in fact is both about being salesman and adviser. How many are capable of examining the consults suggestions and recommendations?

In praxis it is exactly those consults that are governing the companies at the market. All are frightened to silence and the treadmill [ekorrhjul] is spinning more and more violently.

Nobody dare to protest. All are exchangeable. The stress is increasing as the social maladjustment. The one not managing the pressure has nothing at work to do. The problem is your own, nobody else’s [that about blaming the victim]. Is this the sort of working life we shall have? Is this sort of working life, and world, a natural law? How far shall the market powers govern? The four-part-alliance closed The National Institute for Working Life here in Sweden. The work environment at Swedish working places didn’t improve by this.”

Voices in Sweden about the financial crisis and the state of affairs in the world…

the family Bonnier eating dinner.

[Slightly edited October 5, quite angrily written, so I wonder how my English was?]. Voices in Sweden about the financial crisis and the state of affairs in the world today: It has been about creating needs in a constantly, perpetually ascending spiral in societies all over the world. A have-mentality. But do we need to be slaves under consumption?

The bank bosses have gotten million bonuses and million parachutes.

The worst enemy to the finance and corporation world is contentedness.

Still the most important idea of business is to create needs and desires (or cravings) in a constantly ascending spiral. Nobody shall be satisfied.

Quite ironically: at the same time we are blamed for being too demanding!!! One of the contradictions and confusions again!?

It stood about the bourgeois’ scale of value and view on man. Are there people wanting to live outside their (the bourgeois’) conception of the world, in another world we think is possible a writer wonders?

Can the time come when having two cars will be seen as something embarrassing and not – as it is now – something enviable.

One writer writes that the modern “extortion”, with the help of media, advertisement, pr-consults, lifestyle-agents and trademarks, forces a lifestyle on people that has shown to be deeply destructive, but all this is (or could be, even if I think it is difficult, with all the pressure around) something one can do something about oneself, in contrast to the wage-slavery during the former turn of the century.

In the middle of this I saw that tonight (or tomorrow, I didn’t look properly) they are sending a new version of “Let’s dance”, this time the competitors are learning to dance on ice (with skates!!). Yes, this is what people are entertained with…

One can rebel against oneself and ones own have-desire, the desire you have been enticed into. You can start to grin at medias holding up the rich as models and idols (as even the newspaper ICA-kuriren here in Sweden started to a couple of years ago, and then I unsubscribed); the same medias who have been worshiping the finance-men and managers whom now have thrown the world into crisis. Haven’t they “forfeited their pound”?

No, they need to make even worse things?? But people lower on the status-scale failing aren't apologized, sometimes at all. Yes, people are treated differently, depending on their status, where on the scale they stand. What about people's equal value only seen to the fact that they are born to this world? Quite ironically. And others get ashamed for much smaller "crimes”!! That about proportions…

This obsession with the rich and successful, supplied by the media, doesn’t it all of a sudden feel incredibly out-of-date?

One person here writes about (not least) a moral fiasco for Bush, for a politics that has failed so much and in so many areas.

Does the free market actually function? Isn’t it ruled by a few actors actually?

One writer thinks it would be honorable if the ones analyzing the finance-capital as a positive, creative power in the economy some years ago (the written words are still there, and can be read even today), stating that the new global market with all its insurances and reinsurances is sound, could apologize for their analysis. Admit to what they wrote some years ago.

Or that they at least could search on the words “the economy’s ability to function” and get surprised over that they only a few years ago thought that a big welfare state and high taxes are checking for the (the economic, and overall) “growth.” Sweden and the Scandinavian countries are proofs that a big welfare state and quite high taxes aren't curbing for the economical growth? But our current government is now rapidly destroying this? (but the situation here hasn't made us lazy workers I think. We are, or have been, hard workers? And interested in other countries and phenomena in the world? Our society hasn't been a closed society, even if we have had social democratic, i.e., "left wing", government for long? But a government that has turned more and more to the right, yes!).

The most usual prevarication today is the statement that the problem is about “anonymous owners”, which means owners not steered by a steady “owner hand”, like the Wallenberg’s or Bonnier’s in Sweden.

People try to earn money on money, instead of investing them in our real lives.

The financial crisis isn’t an accident, but an element belonging to the capitalism.

It’s the taxpayers who have to pay for the speculators loans, instead of seeing their money going to school, care and nursing, or what it’s called in English. All those instances are forced aside by what the (many times well paid) speculators have done.

The ones winning on all this are the members in corporations’ managements, because the system makes so they get their bonuses and bizarre wages apart from the fact if the businesses goes well or not.

It’s a myth that the market is stable; the ones winning on these situations are those living on the differences in prizes, so what’s happening isn’t an accident.

How can one interpret our current finance minister saying that the world economy is influenced by “raw avariciousness”?

Can there be two comments to this?

1/ He is an eager supporter of market economy and this statement only reinforces the myth that this ought not to happen, that the crisis has nothing to do with the system itself.

2/ On top of it he individualizes the problem. He says that the speculators are greedy in the same manner as he says that the ones with no job are lazy!

What we see now is a saving-action for the capitalism. There is no movement which can take over. What’s so dangerous about our time is that there is no strong worker’s movement, and this increases the risk somebody else takes over, in the worst case the fascism.

See the American neurologist Jonathan Pincus on his findings, and further about perversion and perverted needs.

Texts I have used in this posting you find here.

Laing and anti psychiatry...

About these clips:

”…shows the how R.D. Laing [the unofficial website of R. D. Laing] and the Anti Psychiatry movement attacked the Psychiatric and Medical establishment in the United States. Laing argued that Madness and Sanity were only convenient labels used by society to exercise control over people. It also shows how his ideas then influenced another psychologist David Rosenhan to conduct an experiment that would later seriously undermine psychiatric practice at the time.

Ps. These clips are taken from a British documentary series called The Trap: What happened to our dreams of Freedom. The series are created by Adam Curtis a British documentary film maker. I can strongly recommend just about every documentary he has ever made. For Freudian psychology and its influence on consumer culture see The century of the self and for contemporary politics and the War on Terror see The power of nightmares. Both are brilliant, History of ideas at it's finest.”

Pleading the cause of the oppressed…

it looked like this on parts of the road when I drove here on Tuesday! (parking-permissions on the windscreen, not so beautiful! :-))

[Updated in the end March 29. I will perhaps proof-read this text later. I did the translation very quickly - once again. Now I am going to the town to shop food, tomato-seeds etc.]

Some blog postings triggered thoughts… About oppression and who need to plead the cause (föra talan) of the oppressed? Who ought to be spokesman to the oppressed? Who need to plead the child's/children's cause? Can the child do this on her/his own? Who need to plead to other oppressed’s cause?

There was a review of a new book about “the mother” of the Master Suppression Techniques Berit Ås. Angela Davis had said to Ås that it isn’t poverty in itself which causes rebellion. For rebellion (and questioning) to happen/occur or take place a leader from the higher societal classes ["higher societal classes" in a metaphorical sense too!!??] is needed to step forward and lead the oppressed people/person(s) and their revolts(s) [a therapist has this role too? Helping her/his client understanding, questioning, seeing as wrong, rebel against wrongdoings that were done - and are done].

I draw parallels to different relations and different levels of the society, and even to the world’s...

A child needs having someone pleading its right on the “lowest” level already… A child needs help to be able to question and see as wrong and to rebel. Without this what happens?

Children in general in society need this too!? That things are spoken about and able to speak about. That about taboos... What's unspeakable and taboo, things one isn't allowed to touch upon?

And what does a child actually need (respectful treatment for its person, feelings etc.)? What does a grown up need? What are righteous, justified needs for a human being in a society, things we all need and which are justified for all living human beings?

All with power of different degrees have more responsibility for what they do, say, behave etc. towards the one under him/her. Journalists have responsibility for what they write…

The postings which triggered this posting were written from a feminist view(stand?)point…

About how it is in society today, and how it was. And a common denominator is that there is a real backlash in society. Which I agree to too.

I want to translate from the texts:

Ås is influenced by the Norwegian psychologist Robert Levin (a former teacher of hers?). According to him and his research the democratic leadership is the most effective, functions most effectively, and the authoritarian leadership results in discord, dissension and bad cooperation in the groups exposed to this sort of leadership [thinking of our quite authoritarian school-minister Jan Björklund, leader of the liberal party here, and other authoritarian 'leaderships' such as those in therapies, help-forums etc. What does an authoritarian leadership cause in these, and what has it caused?].

Ås and the interviewer, and author of the book about Ås, thinks that the society in fact is leaning on an invisible women-cultural basis, that would fall apart, fall to pieces, if women one day decided to come out on strike (if they should say: No, we don't find ourselves in this!?). This culture is held together with women’s unpaid jobs, the work which isn’t valued, isn’t paid and isn’t spoken of but is taken for granted – as the air we breathe. Ås also says that it is the exploitation of women which characterizes the man’s culture.

And back to what Angela Davis said; that it isn’t poverty in itself which cause rebellion. A leader from the higher societal classes is needed for rebellion. A reflection from me: and to these “higher societal classes” mothers belong for children, fathers too, men for women in many occasions (because men still have more power, a higher status etc.) etc. etc. …

The reviewer writes that today when the individualism is highest fashion and the prevailing liberal ideology claims that all are unrestrictedly egoistic [but why are we if we are???] we are made blind to this fact.

Of course this lays in the oppressors interests, that we all get suspicious towards these persons fighting for many people’s rights and not least that we dispatch those people fighting for groups they themselves aren’t part of, don't belong to [as Cecilia von Krusenstjerna, daughter to the former VD for Volvo P. G. Gyllenhammar in a discussion-program recently about "Are we on our way back to a maiden-society? (having servants again)"!!]. Nonetheless such a disinterested, altruistic behaviour has been the condition, not only for the working-class’ climbing from unrestrained sucking out, but also for women’s liberation. For example, without the support from men women’s fight for equality would have been in vain.

The reviewer thinks on J. S. Mills standpoints, as well as the men which made it possible for women getting Academic exams and work with research despite powerful critics from contemporary co-brothers.

That Berit Ås is very critical to the neoliberalism’s emphasis on the egoism and the individualization of society you can’t miss. She believes in teamwork and cooperation, on the thesis that together we are strong; alone we can’t bring any change about.

But I would add that teamwork and cooperation shouldn't be a prescription in everything we do either; that all have to be involved in everything!!?? Must one exclude the other though? Because, yes, I need my own time and I need a certain amount of freedom... The collective doesn't have to (and shall/should not) exclude the individual... I am an individualist too, but also need people around me!? Does the collective have to exclude the individual or vice versa, the individual exclude the collective*? What would be the soundest? What did Pia Mellody say about independence/dependence?

A younger woman than the reviewer above writes in another posting, on her blog:

“It feels a little cliché-like to say, but it’s true that we live in a time, an era, with an enormous fixation on appearances and looks [is this blog a satire upon this, or only about joking and having fun???], where human dignity is converted into bridges of the noses, rows of teeth and body-shapes [Aren't we good as we are, and if not why not? Do we need to be perfect? In every sense? Being superhuman beings? People rebelling through self-destructiveness and/or destructiveness? And the power, stand in for our parents, tells us whom, what and how we ought to be? Yes, what is actually human dignity?]? Or, we are already there?

I often walk over the cemetery to my work, an old cemetery in central Uppsala, with mossy stones over great dead men and their more or less deeply, under the forgetfulness’ anonymity, buried spouses. A picture of past times./…/

…that one still is there with the wave of life and its strong forces of sickness, and just establish, accept, the dead ones implacable suborder.”

Quotes from Angela Davis:

"Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel [driva fram] people toward social emancipation [social frigörelse]."

"Imprisonment [fångenskap] has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems."

Was tipped by a friend about the shorter version on “Psychopathy and Consumerism” titled “Consumerism the fastest Growing Religion” – thanks!

Addition March 29: as you can rad in the article above about consumerism.

“Few societies could imagine themselves surviving very long when one of their central institutions was advocating unrestrained greed.”

And what is this need about? About early unfulfilled needs? And see about "Seven Deadly sins"!! In Swedish here. But what are they about in turn too?

And see about John Dewey and the progressivism!

Consumerism...

Consuming Life by Zygmunt Bauman.

I got this tip from a friend about "The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – CSPCC". On the home-site it stands:

"What is Empathic Parenting?

Being willing and able to put yourself in your child's shoes in order to correctly identify his/her feelings, and

Being willing and able to behave toward your child in ways which take those feelings into account.

Empathic Parenting takes an enormous amount of time and energy and fully involves both parents in a co-operative, sharing way.

Credo of the CSPCC

Recognizing that the capacity to give and receive trust, affection and empathy is fundamental to being human, and...

Knowing that all of us suffer the consequences when children are raised in a way that makes them affectionless and violent, and...

Realizing that for the first time in History we have definite knowledge that these qualities are determined by the way the child is cared for in the very early years..."

And there was an article “Psychopathy and Consumerism: Two Illnesses That Need And Feed Each Other”, there one can read for instance:

"A psychopath or partial psychopath has an impaired capacity to form intimate, trusting mutually satisfying relationships with other human beings as a result of impaired attachment in the earliest years. Unable to find pleasure and satisfaction from others, the psychopath or partial psychopath must turn to things -- goods and services, toys and travel -- to fill the emptiness within.

The emptiness of the hollow man must be filled, and consumerism has learned how.

It is said that a culture creates the kind of people it needs. Maybe we're into frequent separations and changing, shared, paid caregivers in the first three years of the lives of our children so they will grow up with an insatiable need to shop till they drop.

If you're unable to obtain satisfaction from BEING, which is based on love and the pleasure of sharing, then the HAVING MODE, as Eric Fromm put it, is your only choice. 'The HAVING MODE, concentrates on material possession, acquisitiveness, power, and aggression and is the basis of such universal evils as greed, envy, and violence...'"

We fill our needs in other ways too? In destructiveness and self-destructiveness of different kinds… But, yes, many of us fill needs through buying things, to different degrees!??

Searched on shopping and found those two articles “I love shopping" and “Shopping you out of consumerism” (both in Swedish).

PS. About Zygmunt Bauman and his personal moral back when he was young in this article in the Guardian "Professor with a past".

PPS. Ingeborg Bosch has written about forcing a child to share at a too early age... The child will develop into a sharing individual on her/his own if one gives it that chance or opportunity? (not that anyone should be forced to share either?? Whether child or grown up?) I think I have written about this somewhere. Now I am going to pack the car and drive north though... It's plus degrees and cloudy... It's so nice with spring.

Addition in the evening: now I am at the country-side, something I really like. After lunch I took a nap (one whole hour I think) looks like I needed it!!! Need to relax really?? After a lot at work and a lot of emotions...

After the nap I took a walk with a cute dog in the wood here. It's still a lot of snow there. And when I drove here it snowed!!!

Eskil the dog has got a new toy, a sounding one, and when I came he showed it to me!! He wanted to play??? It's so fun that he still wants. He is after all 5 years!!