The Perpetual War of Capitalist Development

In the New Spirit of Capitalism, Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello depart from the traditional Marxist conception of ideology as a superstructure that stems from the economic base so as to mystify the exploitative material relations that underpin the workings of the capitalist economy. In doing so they reinject into critiques of capitalism a newly elaborated notion of the moral economy as articulated by E.P Thompson. Critique for them does not solely fall within the privileged domain of the academic, but rather is articulated through everyday critical sensibilities of participants as much as in other discursive milieus.

By taking seriously the notion of a spirit or drive to capitalism as articulated by Max Weber in relation to the protestant ethic, the question ca be asked anew: what motivates people to go to work even as they are able to articulate increasingly grim critiques of the capitalist system?

They zero in on this task quite well by focusing on the cadre, or what later became the managerial class in France.

What are the promises of capitalism to this increasingly educated class of people and how are they articulated in order to elicit their voluntary and enthusiastic participation? Broadly speaking there are three justifications upon which this solicitation articulates its legitimacy: personal excitement, reference to the common good and mechanisms for generational security. As such, managerial texts that almost inherently intend to reform the spirit of capitalism “must present engagement in reformation as a personally exciting venture, demonstrate that the measures proposed are justifiable in terms of the common good, and, finally, explain how they will deliver to those who invest in them a certain form of security for themselves and their children” (page 86).

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The New Spirit of Capitalism is somewhat of manifesto for the introduction of affects in the mobilization of individuals. From the beginning of text ideology is taken seriously as “a set of shared beliefs, inscribed in institutions, bound up with actions, and hence anchored in reality” (page 1).

The rejection of ideology as mystification articulated in the Marxist vulgate has important implications for another belief in this superstructural corpus: the functioning of the state as a mere ideological protector of capitalist relations of production. Although it is not one of their main aims in Part 1, there are continuous hints that the state must be taken up seriously and as a result, through new theoretical lenses. The first allusion to this is mediated through the work of Albert Hirschman on page 10: “The emergence of practices in tune with the development of capitalism was interpreted as conducive to a mellowing of manners and a perfecting of modes of government.” Capitalism is then a tool in the toolbox of governmentality, perhaps the greatest one to ever be manufactured. Boltanski and Chiapello, on page 71, dedicate a few sentences to the occurrence of military metaphors in their two corpuses of interest. It seems that rare as they were in the 1960s corpus, they have almost disappeared in the 1990s one, except for when presented as pejorative. While this statement might be true, I think it can also be slightly misleading to the effect of obscuring an important point.

It seems to me that the very discourse about the spirit of capitalism is oversaturated by a militaristic mentality that is not endemic to its articulation through metaphors. On page 15 for example they speak of the recruitment or defection of cadres, whereas even more strikingly on page 18, there is a somewhat lengthy description of the promises of the corporate world to recruits that were directly based upon the military model (subsidized accommodation, holiday camps, training bodies and the list could go on). It seems that the religious fervor identified by Weber as a central tenant of the first spirit, was largely militaristic at the very least in the second iteration. I would hesitate to make any hasty proclamations about the third spirit just as the authors would. It is quite telling that during the second spirit, as articulated on page 67, “the adoption of American methods, which are more democratic but also more efficient, is felt to be a matter of survival in France, for the power of the United States is such that French authors fear being unable to resist and economic invasion.”