Moving Left with a New Politics of Being

Within contemporary Western societies, no matter your experience of life and oppression, one pervasive idea that we hear is that we are fundamentally individuals. This story is reinforced from the adorable rom-com where the wise-cracking friend tells the lead, ‘you can’t change a man’ to the interactions with the State where we are a claimant, an immigrant or the employer, for whom we are an employee. I am not saying that any of these things are inherently problematic, just that individualism is the beat of our lives.

Every now and then, some progressive organisations and individuals will tie together some common thread of experiences- being violated as women, discriminated against as disabled people, a hidden and violently excluded gay community. All of a sudden we are no longer isolated atoms of problems and anxieties but beings in socio-history resisting being woven into a place. This is a powerful and radical story, but it is still seen as such and that is part of the problem.

As individualism produces itself in every conversation, each appointment, lesson, snap and tweet, parenting book and soap opera, ‘collective’ identity is dangerously political. We discuss it in the wrong place and risk being accused of ‘grievance’ or even radicalisation. At the same time, capital uses the invisibility of individualisation to push its reach into even deeper levels of epistemological hegemony.

We see this in the rise of questionable ‘self-employment’, gig economy applications, where people are contractors for an abstract logo and brand, denied the access to the benefits of regular employees, such as sick pay and restrictions on working hours. The Treasury Secretary of the UK Government, Liz Truss even tweeted last week that this generation are ‘#uber-riding #airbnbing #delivero-eating #freedom fighters.’

The identity of the flagging Conservative Party in the UK (capital’s campaigning, bill-signing hand), relies on this hyper-individualisation of identity, work and services through the practice of choice . Of course the ethical implications of these choices and some having more choices than others is never mentioned. This is a process which we are already seeing the ugly side of.

Within this blog post, I want to argue that this is not the only way of being. A socially-conscious orientation to others or generosity is possible. By this, I do not mean giving to charity, although that is one way to be generous. What I want to focus on is ‘corporeal generosity’, a term coined by Australian Philosopher Rosalyn Diprose, for Diprose ‘Generosity... is not reducible to an economy of exchange between sovereign individuals. Rather, it is an openness to others that not only precedes and establishes communal relations but constitutes the self as open to otherness. (p4)’. On the topic of what it means to be human, Diprose poses that; 'The claim underlying the analyses in this book is that generosity is not only an individual virtue that contributes to human well-being, but that it is an openness to others that is fundamental to human existence, sociality, and social formation.’

What all this means, in much less beautiful language, is that our existence is inseparable from history, society and the people that surround us. People are motivated to change, grow, transform, on the basis of social comparison, empathy, mimicry and that it is no bad thing.

Additionally, our eventual position within the social structure is dependent on whether those who are most like us in recent history have had their contributions, or gift giving, acknowledged, who has accrued gifts and who has set the terms of fair play.

Unlimited Kudos and Hyper-Carceralism- the twin powers of a Neoliberal age.

How did we get into the utter state that we seem to be in? How can Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates be rewarded with wealth beyond imagination, and the esteem and power that go with this, when other individuals in this world suffer homelessness, destitution and indefinite detention or solitary confinement.

Answers to how this situation came about are varied- from Max Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’, the belief that the asceticism of protestant christianity, in forgoing pleasure and believing in hard work made way for the valourisation of material accumulations under capitalism and was key to its successful spread throughout Europe. Arguably, Christian teaching also promoted the idea of individual redemption, which suggests that self-improvement and self-discipline is key to gaining a fast-pass to heaven and eternal life.

Though this is part of the story, there is more to individual identity construction and maintenance than this and individualisation has survived and thrived in the shift to secularism in Western nation states. Read (2009), suggests that recent changes in capitalism, and its shift to a less regulated and more all-encompassing 'ideal' form called neoliberalism has come with corresponding shift in individual identity formation. Neoliberalism has its most pervasive impacts not in the realm of shaping government policy and corporate practice, but in a transformation of common sense. Read (2009) borrows from Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘Homo Economus’ to explain that;

‘The worker has become “human capital”. Salary or wages become the revenue that is earned on an initial investment, an investment in one’s skills or abilities. Any activity that increases the capacity to earn income, to achieve satisfaction, even migration, the crossing of borders from one country to another, is an investment in human capital.’ (p28)

In this analysis human beings are disconnected from each other, with whom they are locked in permanent suspicion and competition. We are also maniacal minds disembodied from our own attributes, skills and abilities. Within such a society, the mind and soul is to act as a Captain of Industry, disciplining the body and the circumstances which surround us both as an oppressed labouring class and as a resource to be controlled and maximised. This is revealed in the idea that;

‘Neoliberalism constitues a new mode of "governmentality”, a manner, or a mentality, in which people are governed and govern themselves.’ (p29)

We are increasingly directed to act as the Corporate Executives of our own bodies, capacities and surrounding. Our renumeration and social position tied to a share price that our efforts must attempt to inflate.

Millennial Sadness and Doom

What does it mean when self-worth and relationships must adhere to a metaphor of share-price? The impact is this extreme form of judgement and responsibility is drastic. It blankets our relationships and mental health like a molten ash volcano storm from a disaster B-movie. No one know this better than young people whose identities have been formed in this environment.

A recent study by Curren and Hill (2017) of over 41,000 college age students from the US, Canada and UK, revealed that measures of perfectionism have increased substantially in the millennial cohort of young people (those born during or after the late 1980s). Young people are expecting more of themselves and others and believe that they will be judged more harshly than young people one generation before.

This study highlights the central contradiction of neoliberalism, because while this sounds like it's practically a compliment, it is closely associated with forms of mental distress, including aspects of anxiety, depression and eating disorders, where approval is withheld until strict personal standards are met (Lloyd, Schmidt, Khondoker and Tchanturia, 2014).

This extreme burden, the strain placed on how we relate to our bodies, ourselves and others, does not occur apart from the space-time continuum. Retreating welfare provision, the deregulation of work, a loss of community space and worker organisation mean that people do not have much choice but to rely on the investment and cashing-in on their own human capital as the only way to survive.

For those who our society doesn’t believe to be working hard enough towards this end, the most extreme carceralism is reserved. In the UK, those claiming Universal Credit, or mainstream benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, those in the ‘all-work requirements’ group of claimants can incur a sanction if they refuse to apply for a specific job, if they don’t seek more hours or even if they are fired and this is judged to be their own fault.

This means that your benefits will be stopped for as long as the Department sees fit given the nature of your ‘employment’ offence.

This is consistent with what Wacquant (2010), has referred to as a centaur state 'guided by a liberal head mounted on an authoritarian body’. This is a state that facilitates the economic agenda of the dominant class, through light-touch regulation and low corporate and wealth taxation. Though the apparatus of the state does not disappear entirely - it is exercises an authoritarian apparatus of discipline on the poor, the disabled, the immigrant - expanding coercion, incarceration and force as it pulls back social welfare programmes.

The idea of a nanny state based on governance for the common good is replaced by a punitive bad-daddy state. Wacquant observed this in the increasing punitiveness of welfare policy and huge expansion of the proportion of people in prison, especially in the USA, but also in Western European states.

How do we resist the state and corporate Britain as authoritarian enforcers of Compulsory Individualism?

Within the notion of ‘homo-economics’, an innate human drive towards self-advancement and competition, viewing themselves as a collection of economic units is assumed. Humans are selfish, humans are rational (in a cold, calculating sense) but this can be channelled to positive outcomes. Well, so say the defenders of neoliberalism.

However, the research on millennial generation perfectionism, reveals that this form of ‘governmentality’ is recent, changes across time and is very much learned behaviour.

Furthermore, reflections on the current practices of the Department of Work and Pensions, Department of Justice and Home Office seem to reveal that forms of control that are apparently automatic and self-directed, need to be enforced through 'tough love’ approaches including sanctions, incarceration and immigration detention from the bad-daddy, centaur state.

While the state and corporations ask that human subjectivity transforms into this self-driven calculator of personal investment return, this is totally without any regard for ideas like social justice or fairness. This is revealed by Diprose’s discussion on corporeal generosity. An openness and giving to others which is fundamental to life and community, is seen as a rational calculation of exchange by defenders of this neoliberal reasoning;

'Without wishing to dismiss the value of generosity so understood, the emphasis on utility within contemporary social relations tends to reduce the gift to a calculable commodity (money or goods) and generosity to the logic of an exchange economy (“I will give you this in exchange for that”). The effect of this reduction is that, in the absence of agreement on how to measure the extent of the giver’s means, the nature of the recipient’s circumstances and the giver’s motives, what seems generous to some, may, paradoxically, be parsimonious to others.’ (pg2.)

This also assumes that there is a person, pre-formed and apart from giving, who contemplates generosity but is not formed by it and surrounded by it. Generosity is an individual virtue but not a requirement for all social life;

'If generosity is not reducible to justice and, indeed,... if generosity would only flourish in a polity not intent on achieving social and economic equity, then why might it matter? Answering this question requires moving away from the model of generosity under- stood simply as an individual character trait that inclines one to give to others as a result of choice guided by deliberation. The problem with this understanding of generosity is that it assumes that the individual is already constituted, prior to the act of giving, as a reflexive, self-present self separate from others. (p4)’

I am totally convinced that part of pushing back the neoliberal age’s extreme capitalism is taking accounts like Diprose’s seriously. This reminds us that certain people in society have more power and resources, not because of ‘personal human capital cultivation’, but partially from generosity from others, across history that has been forgotten. It also reminds us that there is no self apart from the community, so any hero worship of Billionaires simultaneously involves the forgetting of the circumstances and social relations that surrounded and formed them and allowed achievement within capitalism.

An openness to others and generosity is one of the best things about humanity, but when it is denied, ignored or forgotten by a system that enforces extreme individualism, we create conditions which can only further abuse, social injustice and alienation. I hope that future endeavours of the left cannot only resist capital and its coconspirator in the centaur state, but also imagine an alternative way to be and relate to each other.

Easter Prayer (optional)

May our radical actions foster bonds of mutual trust and solidarity.

May we resist indoctrination and coercion into the neoliberal, individualistic mode of being

May we have unlimited eye rolls and sassy responses to those who give kudos or condemnation of others as worthy or unworthy 'human capital'

May we smash the corporate mindset and any foot of the centaur state which targets (the spirits of) the vulnerable or their means of survival

Shit I read about this

Citizens Advice Service. 2018. Check if you’ve been given the right sanction- https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/universal-credit/sanctions/check-sanction/ {accessed 1st of April, 2018).

Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2017, December 28). Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta- Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul00001

Diprose, Rosalyn. 2002. Corporeal Generosity, On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. New York:State of New York Press

Lloyd, S., Schmidt, U., Khondoker, M. and Tchanturia, K., 2015. Can psychological interventions reduce perfectionism? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy, 43(6), pp.705-731.

Read, J., 2009. A genealogy of homo-economicus: Neoliberalism and the production of subjectivity. Foucault studies, pp.25-36.

Wacquant, L. 2010. Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity. Sociological Forum, 25: 197-220

Weber, Max. 1905. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Unwin Hyman: London