Bullshit Jobs and the New Feudalists

BULLSHIT JOBS AND THE NEW FEUDALISTS.

The era of mergers and acquisitions which broke up admittedly bloated old corporations in order to bring about short-term boosts to shareholders resulted in the creation of a ‘noble class’ of executives, and subordinates whose only purpose was add to the prestige of those above them. One such employee was ‘Ophelia’, interviewed in Graeber’s book. “My current job title is Portfolio Coordinator, and everyone always asks what that means, or what it is I actually do? I have no idea. I’m still trying to figure it out….Most of the midlevel managers sit around and stare at a wall, seemingly bored to death and just trying to kill time doing pointless things (like that one guy who rearranges his backpack for a half hour every day). Obviously, there isn’t enough work to keep most of us occupied, but—in a weird logic that probably just makes them all feel more important about their own jobs—we are now recruiting another manager”.

This raises a couple of questions. How come the person ultimately in charge did nothing to prevent this flagrant waste of money? And how did an era of corporate bustups, mergers and acquisitions result in a proliferation of bullshit jobs?

Well, firstly one has to recognise a crucial difference between corporate raiders and the ‘robber barons’ they styled themselves on. The crucial difference is that people like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, whatever you think of their practices, actually built business empires. But corporate raiders like James Goldsmith and Al ‘Chainsaw’ Dunlap didn’t do much building. No, they just took advantage of deregulation and financial innovations like junk bonds to tear apart existing businesses, lay off thousands and gain short-term boosts to their shares. They were vultures. That’s not necessarily derogatory. Vultures play a necessary part in cleaning away carcasses. Arguably, the old corporate structure had become too bloated and inefficient and really the axe should have come down on it. What I am suggesting is that, while the raiders were good at profiteering from the death of the old corporate structure, they lacked the ability to prevent the rise of a new one just as liable to create bullshit jobs.

(James Goldsmith. Image from Adam Curtis)

The Influence Of Positive Thought

We can perhaps understand why by combining ‘managerial feudalism’ and its nobles looking for shows of status and flunkies providing a visible manifestation of that superiority, with the phenomenon I talked about in the series ‘How Religion Caused The Great Recession’.

In that series, I explained how early settlers of the United States practiced ‘Calvinism’. The Calvinist religion saw much virtue in industrious labour and particularly in constant self-examination for any sinful thought. Such an outlook probably helped settlers survive in what was, after all, the ‘Wild West’.

But as the harsh environments were gradually tamed, the constant self-examination for sinful thought and its eradication through labour came to impose a hefty toll on those who became cut off from industrious work. Faced with people succumbing to the symptoms of neurasthenia, and with the medical establishment seemingly unable to cure such patients, people began to reject their forebears' punitive religion. In the 1860s, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby met up with one Mary Baker Eddy, and together they launched the cultural phenomenon of positive thinking. Drawing on a variety of sources from transcendentalism to Hinduism, New Thought re-imagined God from the hostile deity of Calvinism to a positive and all-powerful spirit. And humanity was brought closer to God, too, thanks to a concept of Man as part of one universal, benevolent spirit. And if reality consisted of nothing but the perfect and positive spirit of God, how could there be such things as sin, disease, and other negative things? New Thought saw these as mere errors that humans could eradicate through "the boundless power of spirit".

But although intended as an alternative to Calvinism, New Thought did not succeed in eradicating all the harmful aspects of that religion. As Barbara Ehrenreich explained in 'Smile Or Die', "it ended up preserving some of Calvinism's more toxic features- a harsh judgmentalism, echoing the old religion's condemnation of sin, and the insistence on the constant exterior labour of self-examination". The only difference was that while the Calvinist's introspection was intended to eradicate sin, the practitioner of New Thought and its later incarnations of positive thinking was constantly monitoring the self for negativity. Anything other than positive thought was an error that had to be driven out of the mind.

So, from the 19th century onwards, a belief that the universe is fundamentally benevolent and that the power of positive thought could make wishes come true and prevent all negative things from happening, was simmering away in the American subconsciousness. When consumerism took hold in the 20th century, positive thinking would become increasingly imposed on anyone looking to get ahead in an increasingly materialistic world.

What all this has to do with the current topic, is that the cult of positive thinking that was begun with New Thought and amplified by 20th century consumer culture ended up having an effect on how businesses were run. Whereas, before the Great Depression, there had been campaigners speaking out against the excesses of the wealthy and the oppression imposed on the poor, the prosperity gospel that had begun in the 19th century and which was amplified by megachurches and TV evangelists responding to market signals from 20th century consumption culture, had a markedly different message: There was nothing amiss with a deeply unequal society. Anyone at all stood to become as wealthy as the top 1 percent. Just remain resolutely optimistic and all will be well.

But, unlike with the megachurches (which one could leave at any time) or television evangelists (which one could always just turn off) the books and seminars to be consumed at corporate events were often mandatory for any employee who wanted to keep his or her job. Workers were required to read books like Mike Hernacki's 'The Ultimate Secret to Getting Everything You Want' or 'The Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind' by T. Harv Ecker, which encouraged practitioners of positive thinking to place their hands on their hearts and say out loud, "I love rich people! And I'm going to be one of those rich people too!".

Remember, that Positive Thinking ideology considers any negativity to be a sin, and some of its gurus recommended removing negative people from one's life. And in the world of corporate America-where, other than in clear-cut cases of racial, gender, or age-related discrimination, anyone can be fired for any reason or no reason at all-that was easy to do: terminate that negative person's employment. Joel Osteen of Houston Lakewood church (described as "America's most influential Christian" by Church Report magazine) told his followers, "employers prefer employees who are excited about working at their companies...God wants you to give it everything you've got. Be enthusiastic. Set an example". And if you didn't set an example and radiate unbridled optimism every second of the working day, you were made an example of. As banking expert Steve Eisman explained, "anybody who voiced negativity was thrown out".

Such was the fate of Mike Gelband, who was in charge of Lehman Brothers' real estate division. At the end of 2006 he grew increasingly anxious over the growing subprime mortgage bubble and advised "we have to rethink our business model". For this unforgivable lapse into negativity, Lehman CEO Richard Fuld fired the miscreant.

A Bullshit Corporate Culture

So, the corporate culture had become one that was decidedly hostile to any bad news, such that even those in positions of high authority got the sack if they voiced any negativity. As for the lower ranks, whatever misgivings they had concerning the way things were had to be filtered through layer upon layer of management. If there’s already a culture of hiding negative reports on how business practices are shaping up, of putting a positive spin on everything, it’s not much of a step from there to not being entirely truthful about the usefulness of the people being hired. This is even more likely to happen if A) your status is defined by how many subordinates you have (and, therefore, to lose subordinates is to suffer diminished status) and B) if employees come to depend on the pretty generous salaries that often come with bullshit white-collar work, for example because their consumerist lifestyle has left them with substantial mortgages and credit card bills. If that’s the case, then it’s probably not a good idea to broadcast how unnecessary some jobs are.

The idea that those in ultimate authority might be prevented from knowing everything that’s going on in their business was encapsulated by a comment that one billionaire made to crisis manager Eric Dezenhall: “I’m the most lied to man in the world”.

It’s important to point out that the role of CEO is not itself bullshit. What is being argued instead is that some CEOs are effectively blind to all the bullshit happening in their firms. Why wouldn’t they be, when anyone bringing them bad news is liable to be sacked, when executives and middle-managers surround themselves with yes-men and flunkies, and when an obsession with increasing shareholder value is creating some decidedly dodgy business practices disguised through impenetrable economic jargon and management-speak? Such practices are well-suited to redirecting resources so as to create an elite minority with sufficient wealth and power to be deserving of the ‘nobility’ label, for creating elaborate hierarchies of flunkies who are just there to provide visible displays of their ‘superiors’ magnificence, and spindoctors pulling the wool over people’s eyes and preventing the truth from being revealed. Medieval feudalism had its priestly caste with their religious texts written in an obscure tongue with which to justify the divine right of kings and all that. Managerial Feudalism has the financial and banking sector and all the obscure language that comes with it, ceaselessly denouncing working classes whenever they demand living wages and justifying any money grab or show of status by the executive and managerial classes no matter how greedy and socially unjust.

It’s when we examine financialisation that we really understand how it can be that BS jobs exist. That’s a topic for next time.

REFERENCES

“White Collar Sweatshop” by Jill Andresky Frazier

“Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” by David Graeber

“Smile Or Die” By Barbara Ehrenreich