Fevre - Individualism and inequality the future of work and politics

Individualism and Inequality

For Natasha, Adam and Owen in New England

Individualism and Inequality

The Future of Work and Politics

Ralph Fevre

Professor of Social Research, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK

Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA, USA

Ralph Fevre 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 2JA
UK

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
William Pratt House
9 Dewey Court
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA

A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935794

This book is available electronically in the

DOI 10.4337/ 9781784716516

ISBN 978 1 78471 651 6 (eBook)

Contents

List of figures

The Modern Messiah

Acknowledgements

1. Neoliberalism takes over

2. Anti-slavery and the secret of human rights

3. Adam Smith and American individualism

4. Inequality, welfare and the cultivation of character

5. American ideology: millennium and utopia

6. Classes and evolution

7. Sowing the seeds of neoliberalism

8. Education, individualism and inequality

9. An introduction to people management

10. From stupid to self-actualizing workers

11. The neoliberal settlement

12. The apotheosis of individualism at work

13. The hidden injuries of cognitive individualism

14. Insecurity, intensification and subordination

15. The future of work and politics

Bibliography

Name index

Subject index

Figures

UK trade union membership since 1892 (thousands of members)

Age of trade union members, 1995 and 2014 (percentages)

OECD trade union density, selected countries 19992013 (percentages)

Four ways of making sense in Western culture

The causes of ill-treatment in the British Workplace Behaviour Survey

The Modern Messiah

The cover illustration makes use of a cartoon satirising Oscar Wildes 1882 American lecture tour and published in the San Francisco periodical The Wasp. Wilde makes an appearance in Chapter 10 and, like other Britons discussed in this book including Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Robert Owen and Herbert Spencer his ideas were influential on both sides of the Atlantic. The way that these thinkers ideas were transformed in the USA is of special interest to the story of individualism since, once they had been transformed, the ideas helped to shape American history. They were then re-exported to the UK and other European countries and, in this way, an American culture of individualism spread across the globe.

In a curious way, G.F. Kellers cartoon of Oscar Wilde, titled the Modern Messiah, exemplified the American transformation of British ideas about individualism. The kernel of truth in the portrayal of Wilde as Christ entering San Francisco on a donkey is that all Wilde had to offer to Americans was a system of beliefs. The credulous Americans pictured in the cartoon had been bowled over, or pretended to be bowled over, by what The Wasp considered an arrogant, affected and pretentious attempt to make aesthetics the focus of personal and public life. Wildes tour took place a decade before he published his manifesto for romantic individualism The Soul of Man under Socialism (see Chapter 10) but in The Modern Messiah we already have a satirical representation of the artistic potential of every individual. Every American from children to portly businessmen to The Wasps customary objects of hate, i.e. members of the San Francisco Chinese community is sporting the sunflower which Wilde chose to symbolize his attempt to elevate human sensibility.

The most scornful element of the cartoon is perhaps Kellers insinuation with the addition of a dollar sign to the sunflower Wilde is holding that the great artist is himself motivated by the common-sense end of making money out of the credulous Americans. In a curious way, this trope anticipates the way that, in the next century, American capitalism was able to turn the romantic individualism of Wilde and others to its own ends. It is worth noting that the sunflowers in Kellers cartoon double as advertisements for the cigars sold by the proprietor of The Wasp and that Keller himself began as an illustrator of cigar boxes. Later chapters of this book explain how our enthusiasm to be artists in, and of, our own lives has been transformed into one of the key resources of neoliberalism. The book argues that the future of work and politics and particularly future trends in inequality will be strongly influenced by the fate of this culture of individualism.

Acknowledgements

The time to write this book was provided by Cardiff University in the form of a research leave fellowship. Later chapters report on research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the UKs Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. All of the colleagues who worked with me on these projects helped me to develop my thinking, but I am particularly indebted to Amanda Robinson and Theo Nichols. Indeed, it was from a conversation with Theo that the first idea for the book emerged. Current colleagues at Cardiff who have obliged me to think about the ideas in the book include Finn Bowring and Deborah Foster. I also owe a debt to all of my students at Cardiff (past and present) for letting me try out some of these ideas on them, and to Claire Crawford, Natasha Fevre and Adam Wood who have helped me to think about the similarities and differences between the USA and the UK.

1. Neoliberalism takes over

Inequality was rising up the political agenda of many affluent countries before the financial crisis of 2008. Five years later, most of these countries were returning economic data which showed the worst of the recession was over. With growth and prosperity slowly returning, inequality was a pressing issue once more, described by Barak Obama in this way:

Since 1979, when I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent, but the income of the typical family has increased by less than eight percent. Since 1979, our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of that growth has flowed to a fortunate few The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income it now takes half. Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, todays CEO now makes 273 times more. And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country. (Obama 2013: n.p.)

The president emphasized that these trends were worse in the USA but had nevertheless affected almost all the rich countries of the world.

The largest study of inequality so far undertaken suggested that the more equal world Obama remembered in the 1970s was something of an anomaly (Piketty 2014). Most incomes did not come from investing in capital but incomes from capital tended to grow much more quickly than incomes from wages or state benefits. Capitalism naturally concentrated the ownership of capital (which generated further wealth) in fewer and fewer hands. Even if capital was destroyed by wars and depressions, states had to take extraordinary measures in order to avoid concentrations of income and wealth. From the 1970s, most rich countries ceased to take effective counter-measures and inequality returned to historic levels and then kept on growing. Further impetus was given to the growth of inequality because, over this same period, more powerful employees (like the CEOs mentioned by Obama) got away with paying themselves larger incomes which, in turn, gave them access to capital.