Sunday, December 18, 2011

The darker side of capitalism

The gradual evolution of the society since the middle ages to the renaissance has witnessed a stark change in the character of the society, from a more connected, secure and related community to a society with an increased amount of individual freedom, but at the same time an increased sense of insecurity, loneliness, and fear. In his book – “The Fear of Freedom”, Erich Fromm articulates this dual aspect of the new gained freedom, out of the modernization of society, in a beautiful and elaborative fashion. Following excerpt from the book, tries to touch upon the new found vulnerability of mankind, as a result of increasing capitalistic outlook on life. It gives a better perspective on our work life situations. At this season of performance appraisals, I found this part of the book pretty relevant.

..But although man has reached a remarkable degree of mastery of nature, society is not in control of the very forces it has created. The rationality of the system of production, in its technical aspects, is accompanied by the irrationality of our system of production in its social aspects. Economic crises, unemployment, war, govern man’s fate. Man has built his world; he has built factories and houses, he produces cars and clothes, he grows grain and fruit. But he has become estranged from the product of his own hands, he is not really the master any more of the world he has built; on contrary, this man-made world has become his master, before whom he bows down, whom he tries to placate or to manipulate as best he can. The work of his own hands has become his God. He seems to be driven by self-interest, but in reality his total self with all its concrete potentialities has become an instrument for the purposes of the very machine his hands have built. He keeps up the illusion of being the center of the world, and yet he is pervaded by an intense sense of insignificance and powerlessness which his ancestors once consciously felt towards God.
Modern man’s feeling of isolation and powerlessness is increased still further by the character which all his human relationships have assumed. The concrete relationship of one individual to another has lost its direct and human character and has assumed a spirit of manipulation and instrumentality. In all social and personal relations the laws of market are the rule. It is obvious that the relationship between competitors has to be based on mutual human indifference. Otherwise one of them would be paralyzed in the fulfilment of his economic tasks – to fight each other and not to refrain from actual economic destruction of each other if necessary.
The relationship between employer and employee is permeated by the same spirit of indifference. The word “employer” contains the whole story: the owner of the capital employs another human being as he “employs” a machine. They both use each other for the pursuit of their economic interests; their relationships is one in which both are mans to an end, both are instrumental to each other. It is not a relationship of two human beings who have any interest in others outside of this mutual usefulness. The same instrumentality is the rule in relationship between the business man and his customer. The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person who0se aims the business man is interested to satisfy. The attitude towards work has the quality of instrumentality; in contrast to a medieval artisan the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment, and what he produces depends essentially on the market which promises that the investment of capital in a certain branch will prove to be profitable.
Not only the economic, but also the personal relations between men have this character of alienation; instead of relations between human beings, they assume the character of relations between things. But perhaps the most important and the most devastating instance of this spirit of instrumentality and alienation is the individual’s relationship to his own self. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity. The manual laborer sells his physical energy; the business man, the physician, the clerical employee, sell their “personality”. This personality should be pleasing, but besides that its possessor should meet a number of their requirements: he should have energy, initiative, this, that, or the other, as his particular position may require. As with any other commodity it is the market which decides the value of these human qualities, yes, even their very existence. If there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he “has” none; just as an unsalable commodity is valueless though it might have its use value. Thus, the self-confidence, the “feeling of self”, is merely an indication of what others think of the person. It is not he who is convinced of his value regardless of popularity and his success on the market. If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody. This dependence of self esteem on the success of “personality” is the reason why for modern man popularity has this tremendous importance. On it depends not only whether or not one goes ahead in practical matters, but also whether one can keep up one’s self-esteem or whether one falls into the abyss of inferiority feelings.

There are factors to help him overcome the overt manifestations of this underlying insecurity. In the first place his self is backed up by the possession of property. “He” as a person and the property he owns cannot be separated. A man’s clothes or his house are parts of his self just as much as his body. The less he feels he is being somebody, more he needs to have possessions. If the individual has no property or lost it, he is lacking an important part to his “self” and to a certain extent is not considered to be full-fledged person, either by others of by himself. Other things backing up the self is the prestige and power.

Such is the petty state of the so called modern civilization with all its advances. Most of these aspects are interestingly hidden from conscious realm of humanity, and the society behaves as a herd of sheep, intoxicated with such capitalistic propensities.
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