In their lengthy book The New Spirit of Capitalism, French sociologist Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello attempt to explain why the concept of social class has declined both in intellectual life and as a characteristic of social organization in French society. According to Boltanski and Chiapello, the 68ers' ideology of "autonomy" and its corollary, the "flexiblity" of labor, succeeded in transforming the nature of authority in the workplace, with many unintended consequences for the working class.

The New Spirit of Capitalism
by Luc Boltanski & Eve Chiapello
published by Verso (September 24, 2007)
Ppbk., 656 pgs.
ISBN-10: 1844671658
ISBN-13: 978-1844671656 

I. The Decline of Social Class in France and the "Old" Spirit of Capitalism

In their lengthy book The New Spirit of Capitalism, the French sociologist Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello attempt to explain why the concept of social class has declined both in intellectual life and as a characteristic of social organization in French society. Boltanski and Chiapello find this decline paradoxical. Superficially, given that distinctions between rich and poor are increasing, one might think that class and class-based politics would be even more relevant today.

Instead, Boltanski and Chiapello note that the political parties that formerly spoke for class interests are in decline or disarray or both. The French Communist Party (PCF), for instance, after World War II, could consistently claim to represent over twenty-five percent of France's voting population — an enormous amount in a multiparty democracy. Through its control of France's major unions, the PCF dominated French politics until the eighties. As late as 1969 its vote totals continued to exceed twenty percent. By 1981, however, the PCF's vote totals barely reached fifteen percent and in 1984 the figure had fallen to ten percent. In 2002 the PCF received under five percent of the total vote.

As the PCF's political strength declined, so did the use of the concept of class in French intellectual life. The sociologist Pierre Rosanvallon argues that France today, like the United States, has become a classless society. The term no longer applies, he argues, to modern European (and American) society. And while academics and politicians still speak frequently about "liberation," in recent years this has had little to do with the old socialist ideal of "liberating the working classes."

Boltanski and Chiapello argue that despite the decline of class, "capital" is still working its social evil of dividing those who possess it from those who do not.  However, the general social indifference to this is caused by a shift in what they call the "spirit of capitalism" (or, as they call it, capitalism's "ideological justification").  After the social and cultural upheavals of the late 1960s, the political ideal of "individual autonomy" came to replace the old left-wing ideal of "job security for the working class." Individual autonomy appealed to the ultra-Left's ideals of sexual freedom and aesthetic "self creation." A strange alliance with the political Right now became possible. French conservatives embraced individual autonomy as part of the legacy of individualism. The result was that, outflanked by both ultra-Left and Right, the old "social" Left all but disappeared.

Boltanski and Chiapello initially adopt the old Marxist premise that all accumulation of surplus value capital is accompanied by an ideology which serves as its justification. This "belief system" serves to justify social distinctions based upon unequal distribution of capital. It also, however, explains why social life takes on the particular forms it does. The "new spirit of capitalism," Boltanski and Chiapello argue, is the ideological justification for a new form of capitalism which emerged in the 1960s.

1. Weber, Marx and the Old Spirit of Capitalism

The first "spirit of capitalism" was described by Max Weber in his famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The justification for accumulating surplus value and reinvesting it in one's business, Weber argued, could be found in sixteenth century Calvinism. Labor is toil, Calvin had said, and it was sinful man's fate to be unable to escape from the drudgery of work and the humiliation of serving a master. However, through daily submission to our fateful travail, the glimmer of freedom is sometimes visible. Stoic perseverance at what Luther called one's "calling" (Beruf or "job"), the mastery of the limited set of skills required for its execution, enabled one to eventually create a separate "private" space for oneself and one's family. While the world of nature was one of endless toil, the space of the family was envisioned as its redemption.  From Calvin's dark vision, Weber derived a set of ethics which, he argued, served as the ideology of capitalist accumulation from Calvin's time through the 1960s: saving money, loyalty to one's job (and supervisor), and adherence to the task at hand (lest one be distracted by luxury). The effect of such ethics was the birth of a cycle of hard work, profits, and reinvestment of those profits which Weber argued was responsible for the creation of not just the modern economic ethic, but the social world.  The old Calvinists, with their fierce theology of fate and destiny, created a social reality which non-Calvinists, if they were to compete economically, had no chance of avoiding.

While Weber and Marx are often thought to represent different political visions of the world, both hold many assumptions in common. As did Calvin, both Marx and Weber understood work as something bad, authority a necessary evil, and freedom as time spent not working. The key difference between the two lies in how both envisioned freedom might be expanded. For Weber and conservatives, labor is an individual affair as is freedom. One's "freedom" thus is related to the practice of certain ethics, namely hard work, conservation of wealth and so on. For the Left and its trade union allies, freedom is particular less to the individual than to social class. It is job security — collective job security — which is the bulwark which will best ensure the poorer classes experience the hardship of labor for the least amount of time.

II. 1968 and the Birth of the New Spirit of Capitalism

Boltanski and Chiapello argue the political and cultural upheaval of "1968" led to the establishment of a new "spirit of capitalism," resulting in a new "ethic" of justification for the unequal accumulation of capital. While student activists and intellectuals in the 1960s seemed to attack capitalism and "bourgeois" society along the lines of the old Left, this was misleading. Most student activists and intellectuals generally come from middle class backgrounds and attacked capitalism for reasons quite different from that of the "old" Left. While both the "new" and "old" Left believed capitalism and bourgeois society to be evil, students and middle class activists opposed both not because of the insecurity they introduced into workers' lives, but because they believed that capitalism prevented both workers and themselves from achieving "autonomy."

While Marx (and Weber) had believed that the suffering of the worker had to do with the intrinsic nature of labor, the activists of 1968 offered a different explanation for worker's travails. The misery of the worker was rooted less in the unequal distribution of capital than the subordination of his or her creativity to the stifling demands of the bureaucracy.  Above all, the presence of hierarchy and its requisite representatives, the manager and the "boss," were objects of their attack. "Hierarchy" and the authority in the workplace (or in the family) were thus the causes of the workers' misery.

Boltanski and Chiapello distinguish the 68ers' attacks on authority from the traditional left critiques of society. The old Left had taken middle class society as the object of its criticism. Hence Boltanski and Chiapello refer to its criticism as the "social critique." By contrast, they refer to the 68ers' criticisms of society, with their emphasis on attacking any sign of authority, as the "artistic critique." The artistic critique emphasized less the ideals of social justice than those of individual autonomy and its corollary, "Bohemian self creation."  Rooted in 19^th century Parisian artistic life, the "artistic critique" often targeted the values and hierarchy associated with the "bourgeois family" (which it regarded as "totalitarian"), as much as it did the state.

The left-wing individualism of the 68ers led paradoxically to a broad convergence of their political objectives with those of the Right. In opposing trade unions the ultra-left believed itself to be attacking "hierarchy." The bosses and managers of unions were imagined to infringe on the individual worker's autonomy, just as they did in the workplace. The Right, which opposed unions in the name of free enterprise and individualism, found itself in complete agreement. Both groups routinely referred to the hierarchy of the unions and the PCF as "totalitarian" — and given the French Communist party's dogged support of Stalinist Russia, it proved an easy target. The political and cultural effect of this odd political convergence was to undermine the social critique and the result was that the traditional division between capital and labor, employer and employee, far from being abolished, was increasingly concealed.

1. Neo-Management, Leadership and the New Worker after 1968

The "artistic" critique was not wholly unsuccessful in "recreating" the workplace as a space without hierarchy. The bulk of Boltanski's and Chiapello's research is taken from management literature written between the 1960s and the 1990s chronicling how this transformation took place. The earlier literature marks the first efforts of management to accommodate the "new spirit of capitalism." The latter marks the triumph of the "new spirit of capitalism."

Management literature in the 1960's focused on how to motivate workers while not falling afoul of the anti-authoritarian "spirit" of the times. While profit remained the overarching goal, decision-making was to be decentralized and managers were to be given a degree of autonomy in decision-making. Management was now to be done by "objectives," which would apply to managers, bosses and workers alike. The concept of the "objective" was conceived to rid the workplace from the idea that the company's goals were somehow the personal whim of the boss.

By the 1990's, the objectives of management had changed even further. While profit continued to remain the principal objective of the company, now the management objective was to abolish any semblance of hierarchy. "Seniority" was devalued as being a form of hierarchy. Workers were now increasingly organized into "teams" and the "boss" was said to be the customer, not an authority figure standing above the group. Even the notion of "planning" came under attack. Planning presupposed an elite group standing apart from "true reality." "Creative spontaneity" and "the ability to react" came to be preferred qualities to "text book smarts."

The old work environment of "merit and competence" was replaced, in the management manuals of the 1990's, by a work environment that was "to be like the home." The old "rationality" associated with the manager "planning" and "ordering" his subordinates around was widely dismissed for its "hierarchy" and implicit authoritarianism. "The work world as a place of reason [is] to be replaced by feelings of emotion and creativity," said one manual. The new goal underlying production is to "relax institutional mechanisms" and to emphasize "personal relations of trust" between management and employees.

Boltanski and Chiapello use the term neo-management to describe the new "workplace without hierarchy." The "team" (the term itself is an attempt to insist that there are no longer bosses and workers) of the 1990's cannot be conceptualized in the same way that workers were imagined to be part of a wider social class. Instead, Boltanski and Chiapello argue that both "team" and "leader" are best understood as part of a "network." There still is a manager, but his or her skills and function are quite different from the "leader" or "boss" of previous decades. The manager of the 1990's is a person with "vision," someone who asserts himself on the basis of his "charisma." The new manager refuses, above all, the "signs of power" (or hierarchy). He leads his "team" on a "project," which Boltanski defines as "the occasion and reason for . . . connections" between people. The project, replacing the old concept of profession, is the reason for the "temporary assembling of a disparate group of people." Underlying all of this, is the opportunity to "create value."

2. The New Leader

Neo-management requires a new style of leader. To succeed in a world of networks and projects requires "self presentation," which is a different ability from the "well qualified" leader of the 1960's. Boltanski draws an eerily familiar image of today's "boss." The new leader or "great man" is above all a "flexible man," which gives him the mobility necessary to move from one project and network to another. The new leader is "attentive to others." He must be able to "alter his self presentation." He is "tolerant and respects difference." He is "liberated from passions and values." He is willing to "sacrifice his personality" for the success of the project. The "great man" is not critical of others — "except when it comes to defending tolerance and difference (which are what enable mobility and the success of projects)." The "connexionist world" of the nineties which is comprised of "networks" is the antithesis of the old work world. The new capitalism is hostile to "preexistent posts in an organizational structure."

While hierarchy continues to exist, it is brought about less by the old distinction between owners of capital and those they employ than by the exploitation of asymmetries in information. Today, the "leader" is able to advance himself by being included in important networks.  The leader makes himself valuable by bringing these "network connections" into his "team" and taking advantage of their knowledge. By concealing these connections, however, he is able to potentially neutralize rivals — all without invoking directly any hierarchy. In the end, "success" for the "leader" consists in "creating a happening" and "putting his name to it." This is generally a matter of charisma, however, not of traditional skills. Boltanski and Chiapello conclude The New Spirit of Capitalism by offering an outline of some sort of system by which "connections" between "managers" and those that enable them to perpetuate their roles might be monitored. After all, in the "connectionist" world of today, it is contacts which enable success, not the old virtues associated with hard work, saving and the "old spirit of capitalism."

3. The New Worker

The new "new-management" literature insists on a new style of worker to go with the "new leader" and to participate in the project. This worker has not so much mastered particular skills as he has molded his personality to the new work environment. His superiority comes from his "versatility, job flexibility and [his] ability to adopt to new duties." Today, those employees who are the most desirable "are not those who have technical skills, so to speak. They are those who have the ability to relate to people and the capacity to communicate."  An ethic of "mobility" has replaced the old ideal of stability.

The new spirit of capitalism is to be found in the new "flexible ethics" that now pervade the workplace. The old values of stability, conservation and the ideals of home and family were once thought to be the bedrock of Western civilization. Traditionally, a successful career was based upon the mastery of a limited group of skills which enabled one to have a stable occupation and, over time, a set of established qualifications. Freedom" and "authenticity" played little role in one's job. They were the hallmarks of private or family life.  Duty to one's boss and the drudgery of one's job ideally resulted in the reciprocal loyalty of one's firm. Saving money, which enabled security and the possibility of future "freedom" in private or family life, was part of the ethic of the old capitalism.

Today, it is the person who embodies the old ethic and resists flexibility who is the person not to be trusted. Tolerance is the new ethic behind accumulation. Now "the project" breaks down the barriers between home and job. The "team player," the flexible worker, is the one who incorporates his vacation time and his private life into the needs of the company. The 68ers succeeded in rechristening (or at least giving the illusion to) work as freedom. Without the (obvious) presence of hierarchy, could not the workplace come to be seen as a space of autonomy and hence creativity? To continue to put one's family and one's "private" time ahead of work is to be inflexible. Freedom is to be conceived outside the family, not within it.

III. The End of Work and the Working Class: The "Casualization" of Labor

While management was busy adjusting profit-making to the new, post-1968 "anti-authoritarian" spirit, structural changes in the labor market further enabled the "new spirit" of capitalism. The 1970s marked the decline in large companies of the 1950s and their replacement by small and medium-sized firms. Part of this surge in "downsizing," Boltanski and Chiapello point out, was that small firms were able to avoid labor laws requiring workers be paid full benefits.  However, downsizing also took place to accommodate the new "spirit of autonomy" which had attempted to free the worker from the "monotony" of "Fordism" and Taylorism." The post-1968 period marked the "casualization" of labor, (typified, perhaps, in the polo shirts worn by Microsoft employees). However its effect was in fact the opposite. Employers, through the weakening of union control, were able to take greater advantage over labor by exploiting the concepts of autonomy and flexibility.

1. "Temp" and "Part Time" Jobs

The "casualization of labor" in the 1970's enabled the rapid growth of "part time" and "temp" jobs. "Temp" jobs made it possible for employers to easily react to shifts in manufacturer's orders: if demand crashed, it was easy to fire "temporary" workers. Subcontracting made it possible to pay employees only the time they actually worked and to subtract from paid time all slack periods, training time and breaks that used to be included in the definition of the fair working day. Moreover, given that "part time" and "temp" jobs had little or no security, workers in these positions might be subjected to intense pressure as they were prepared for more stable employment.

By the 1980's, Boltanski argues that the successful "casualization of labor" had resulted in the "working class" being split in half. On one side there was a "stable, qualified workforce" which "enjoyed a relatively high wage level and unionized representation." This represented the legacy (albeit rapidly disappearing) of the old unionized Left. On the other hand there was "an unstable, minimally qualified, underpaid and weakly protected labor force in small firms, dispensing subsidiary service." This was the — perhaps unintended — legacy of the new ideology of "autonomy" and its corollary, the "flexiblity" of labor. And for those tasks which could not be cheaply executed within the vocabulary of the "new liberalism," they could be outsourced to foreign countries where the absence of labor regulations permitted the old, domineering forms of the work environment to remain intact.

2. The Invention of the Citizen and the Denial of Social Class

While "temp" and "part time" positions were breaking up the working class, the very idea of a working class as a political and theoretical tool was being conceptually unraveled. At the time of the French Revolution, French republicans had abolished the monarchy's "society of orders," (the nobility, the middle class and the lower classes) establishing in its stead a new society based upon the individual French citizen (and not social class). The Revolution had done so, in part, to dismantle the workers' guilds, which represented a proto-form of collective labor organization. The guilds, in the eyes of the Revolutionaries, represented a sort of hierarchy — something the Revolutionaries sought to abolish.

By the end of the 19^th century, however, the French government had moved away from the Revolutionary ideal of a "a society of citizens" and enshrined the idea of hierarchy once again. It did so by defining politically the difference between "wage earners and non-wage earners," recognizing politically "the working class" as distinct from the "owners of capital." Between 1930 and 1950 the so called "Parodi agreements" elaborated these distinctions still further. Workers were now divided according to skill and classified as workers, employees, technicians, supervisors and cadres. These categories became the basis for calculating wages.

After 1968, both the ultra-Left and Right joined together in attacking the Parodi agreements. The Right had traditionally opposed "collective bargaining," (and unions in general) seeing it as undermining the principle of "individual merit." Now the 68ers found common cause. The ultra-Left (correctly) saw the Parodi agreements as making it difficult for individual workers to secure individual pay increases. Hence it argued that the Parodi agreements worked to "impede autonomy and creativity" of individual workers. The result effectively eviscerated thirty years of working class achievement: While previously benefits had been acquired collectively, this was no longer to be the case. Employers were now free to reward "autonomous and creative workers" at their whim — and ignore the rest.

The Left went further. It accused "capitalism" of "embourgeoising the working classes" by subjecting them to standardized tests as part of the hiring process. Rather than test workers on a narrow set of skills, the 68ers argued that in job applications "other" aspects of the worker should be taken into account. The result was that while standardized tests were abolished, the hiring process now became subjective and unreliable. Previously it had been publically established which skills were essential for employment. Other aspects of the worker's life and personality were not considered — or more importantly, subject to the employer's scrutiny. Now, arbitrary standards were introduced enabling employers to enact their own criteria to exclude some workers and hire others.  The "public" definition of what it meant to be a worker no longer existed.

IV. The New Spirit of Capitalism, or concealing power in the modern world

Boltanski and Chiapello go to great lengths to affirm that the 68ers' ideals of autonomy helped them secure sexual freedom and escape control from "family values." They also clearly explain how the 68ers' ultimately middle class values insidiously undermined the job security and livelihood of the average French worker. This is all the more striking because it was precisely these workers in whose names the 68ers put forward their own political agenda.

The radical attack on "hierarchy" in the workplace indeed succeeded in transforming the nature of authority. However, it did not change the reality of authority. In today's workplace, Boltanski and Chiapello argue, managerial types (the old "bosses") are less obvious because "they have increasingly assumed the qualities of artists." However, by recasting the "boss as artist" the tension and difference between those who prosper (the manager/artist) and those who don't has hardly been lessened. Instead it has resulted in an intensification of demands on labor. While the old trade union Left had attempted to slow production, the new ideology of "autonomy" has actually fueled the need for even greater production (and consumption). The generation of 1968 now occupy positions of political and cultural authority and, in their own quest for "autonomy," have fueled a massive demand for "commodities that express [the individual's] personality." This has especially been the case for commodities labeled "transgressive." While the 68ers saw these goods as enabling "liberation" from "bourgeois" morality (No Budweiser!), the result was, at the structural level, a vast expansion of capitalism. This new "ruse of capital" aimed at creating for individual consumers the illusion of autonomy through the purchase of commodities. In the end, the 68ers' ethic of autonomy was, like that of the bourgeoisie before them, largely a different form of consumption.

Conclusion

Boltanski's and Chiapello's contribution has not been to merely redefine the old class-based "oppressor-oppressed" paradigm. They offer new insight into how power operates in the workplace and within contemporary society. Success and leadership no longer depend on traditional values such as "character" and "hard work." They depend on the grossest conformism and the utter subordination of the self or personality to the whims of what is nothing more than fashion. This is probably what lies behind the current rage for "tolerance" which has little to do with actual tolerance and much to do with permitting public or social legitimacy to novel types of lifestyles. Since networking depends on connections and connections have little to do with traditional skills, novelty replaces the traditional notion of ability. And since the family remains the principal point of resistance to a pure connectionist society, novelty usually has to do with violating its norms.  A recent TV show entitled "Secret Lives of Women" ignores the vast majority of women who read, watch TV on a Friday night or attend to family life. Instead it features women who are interested in exotic sexual practices, are "happy" prostitutes and otherwise transgress what remains of "social (ie. familial) norms." The show's purpose is to make a "connection" (and thus sell advertising) with viewers interested in observing women (whether the women are really such or not) transgress popular values.

Boltanski's and Chiapello's connectionist world might be understood using the psychological theory of the Russian philosopher Alexander Kojève. Kojève argued that the psychological struggle for mastery lay at the bottom of the larger class struggle. Individuals, he argued, valued not so much capital or commodities, but recognition from their fellow human beings. The human desire for recognition thus distinguishes human desire from animal desire. While animals might fight to death over food or some other item essential for their biological survival, humans fight over symbolic objects such as flags or signs of ethnic and social identity. These signs, from a biological point of view, are arbitrary. There is no more necessary reason to associate an homosexual with "fashionable attire" than there is a bearded man with violence. Nevertheless beards and fashion may become indispensable signs in the struggle between a person or group of people seeking to extort recognition from anther.

Kojève's vision enables one to think of signs not as necessary indicators of a particular individual type. Instead, he permits one to think of signs as what renders the struggle between individuals visible. The symbol of the cross may be used violently to exclude others. "Evil" signs may be used (relatively) harmlessly. Kojeve permits an analysis of the signs of Boltanski's and Chiapello's "connectionist world" from the perspective of the struggle for mastery. The rhetorical ploys of "autonomy" and even "sexual liberation" can be seen in the broader context of their own roles in the 68ers' struggle for an oh-so-middle-class hegemony. Kojève argues that one should never simply take a sign at face value. He says that the critical thinker should rather focus on how the sign is used. As Boltanski and Chiapello convincingly prove, the signs of autonomy and liberation have become a style which, for all its hyperbolic moralism,  conceals the violence inherent in the appropriation of capital.

Literary Individualism after 1968

In his best selling novel, The Elementary Particles (Les particules élémentaires), French author Michel Houellebecq chronicles the experiences of middle class half-brothers Bruno and Michel. Michel, a scientist, believes that all existence may reduced to "elementary particles," or elemental forces which exist independent of any social reality. Bruno, putting his brother's theories into practice, spends all his time masturbating or pursuing what amount to vicarious forms of l'auto-erotisme such as yoga, "spiritual" retreats and other hippie diversions. While Michel the scientist believes that sex is merely the name we give for the reproduction of organic matter, Bruno, the misanthrope, pursues "the last remaining myth of western civilization: that sex is something to do . . . something expedient, a diversion."

In the novel's central chapter, Michel offers a broad explanation for the obsession with sex — especially in the media — that has seized American and European societies since the 1960s. The birth of materialism and modern science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Michel argues, gave birth to the culture of rationalism and individualism. At its root was a darker materialistic philosophy that heightened the sense of individualism: the individual, aware that death was an absolute severing of himself from his community, highlighted his utter isolation. And yet this lonely individualism oddly gave rise to the belief in the individual's unlimited freedom, a sort of unlimited egotism.

Unlimited egotism leads to potentially endless — and lethal — rivalry, and quelling conflict was the purpose of the European welfare state. "Social democracy" reduced economic rivalry by mandating the redistribution of wealth. The sexual revolution reduced sexual rivalry by separating the act of desire from procreation: the "pill" and contraceptives had rendered love "free" and non-exclusive.

And yet desire continues to exist, Michel argues, "not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation." While most eastern philosophies such as Hinduism and Taoism recognize desire as the source of conflict and suffering and attempt to control it, modern European and American societies have done the opposite. In modern "sex and advertising" society, "desire is marshaled and blown up out of all proportion." "For society to function, for competition to continue, people have to want more and more, until desire fills their lives and finally devours them." In the end, "desire merges with violence, not because either are bad, but because both fulfill a more elementary task, that of individual distinction."

In Houellebecq's dark vision, the disintegration of social class both in the workplace and in political discourse has given birth to a society of hyper individualism. However, the effect has not been to eliminate "group" or "class" coercion. Social class traditionally has been a way by which groups advance their own interests. But it has also been a way by which they protect themselves from the pressures (especially from competition) of social and political life. The breakdown of social class has resulted in a hyper competition between individuals that now extends beyond their jobs and into their personal life. This is the "New Spirit of Capitalism."

Bruno, in Houellebecq's novel, has decided that everything associated with 1960s hippie culture is a way in which people distinguish themselves from one another. Bruno believes them to be hypocrites because they don't acknowledge the sexual component concealed under their desire for distinction. In his own isolated perversity, Bruno revels in his own form of distinction, the "authenticity" of his own desire. He is, in the end, a moralist.  Bruno fails to realize, like the 68ers he lampoons, that it is not sex (or "autonomy") which is the diversion, but the social signs by which it is represented. And these, no more (or less) than fashion, are also points of communication in the network of the social world. It is the 68ers' denial of sociability that, paradoxically, links them to Bruno and the French political Right. Their intoxication with themselves is that of the caged man who insists, convulsively, that the bars surrounding him are merely what ensure his security. Weber's final words on those who distinguished themselves in the first "spirit of capitalism," apply even more so to those of the second. And so the last word continues to belong to him:

Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.

The New Spirit of Capitalism is available on Amazon.com.