What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society

by Paul Verhaeghe

  As soon as we grasp this, much of the jigsaw falls into place, and we can also see how things differ from before. Not so long ago, our culture, and thus our identity, was determined by interaction between four key areas: politics, religion, the economy, and the arts, with politics and religion competing for dominance. These days, politicians are fodder for stand-up comedians; religion prompts associations with suicide bombers or sexual abuse; and everyone is an artist. The only thing that still counts is the economy, and here the neo-liberal economic narrative has taken over. In his book De utopie van de vrije markt (The Utopia of the Free Market), philosopher Hans Achterhuis explains soberly and compellingly how these days we take that modern utopia to be real, and by doing so make it real. Having a certain view of humanity and of the world makes us behave in a certain way. We see what we expect to see, and triumphantly proclaim ‘I told you so!’

  I shall try to put into words the neo-liberal view of humanity, to sketch the mirrors that surround us:

  People are competitive beings focused on their own profit. This benefits society as a whole because competition entails everyone doing their best to come out on top. As a result, we get better and cheaper products and more efficient services within a single free market, unhampered by government intervention. This is ethically right because success or failure in that competition depends entirely on individual effort. So everyone is responsible for their own success or failure. Hence the importance of education, because we live in a rapidly evolving knowledge economy that requires highly trained individuals with flexible competencies. A single higher-education qualification is good, two is better, and lifelong learning a must. Everyone must continue to grow because competition is fierce. That’s what lies behind the current compulsion for performance interviews and constant evaluations, all steered by an invisible hand from central management.

  This is a brief summary of the grand narrative that controls our culture today and that consequently forms our identity. Culture needs to be broadly interpreted here, because this narrative has meanwhile taken over all sectors of society, from science and education to health care and the media.

  I shall not discuss the broader historic background of neo-liberalism.* Hans Achterhuis has described this very well, and Kapitalisme zonder remmen: opkomst en ondergang van het marktfundamentalisme (Capitalism without Brakes: the rise and fall of market fundamentalism) by the historian Maarten van Rossem makes the link with the current economic crisis crystal-clear. A number of important points emerge from their analyses. Throughout history, economies have always been embedded in religious, ethical, and social structures. This no longer applies in the case of neo-liberalism. On the contrary, religion, ethics, and society are subservient to ‘the market’. In that sense, neo-liberalism is no longer an economic theory, but a much broader ideology.

  [* Many readers will be surprised to learn that neo-liberalism is a progressive movement that, just like other progressive ideologies (communism, Nazism) seeks to bring about rapid change by revolutionary measures, fully aware that this will entail the (often literal) sacrifice of a generation. This is what the Chicago Boys, the group of economists trained by Milton Friedman, have effectively done in Chile. The same story can be read in what Achterhuis rightly describes as the neo-liberal bible Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. The book ends as the main character triumphantly flies over the ruined landscape: ‘“The road is closed … We are going back to the world.” He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.’]

  Achterhuis illustrates how, like any other ideology, neo-liberalism presents itself as the most correct reflection of ‘reality’. For anyone who holds science in esteem, it is painful to see how Darwin is harnessed to the cart of this argument, along with ‘reason’. The distinction between what I have referred to elsewhere as scientism and objectivism, the philosophy of the group surrounding Ayn Rand, is extremely narrow. Achterhuis also highlights an important difference between classical liberalism and neo-liberalism. The former wants a strict division between state and society, while the latter seeks to subordinate the state to the supposedly free market. Whereas liberalism reacts to the excesses of the welfare state, neo-liberalism seeks to turn society into a welfare state for banks and multinationals, lest the unthinkable should happen and the presumed self-regulation of the free market fails. By contrast, everything that pertains to private individuals — such as education, health care, and safety — is strictly a private matter, and should not be paid for out of the public purse.

  The key question in this second part of the book is the following: how have 30-or-so years of neo-liberal ideology affected our identity? And how has this system colonised the way we think, given that it goes against all our private and collective interests? For the answer to the second question we need to take a closer look at what I call the loincloth of neo-liberalism: meritocracy.

  Just desserts in the name of liberty

  Until recently, meritocracy was a fairly unknown word, unlike the underlying notion with which most of us were brought up: everyone gets what they deserve, or as you sow so shall you reap. Even the Bible has its meritocratic parable in which talents are doubled when someone works hard and develops his intellectual and physical capacity to the full (Matthew 25:14–30). Power (kratos) is merited through effort. In Western Europe this notion took shape in postwar society. Every child was to be given an optimal chance to develop. Every obstacle, whether class-, race-, or gender-related, had to be swept away. Individual capacities coupled with sustained effort became the new criteria for social success.

  This Enlightenment notion certainly triggered great social mobility. Boys for whom higher education had previously been unthinkable (unless they opted for the priesthood or the army) could now go to university for the first time. Girls had to wait a bit longer. From the 1960s, the intellectual capacity of children in Belgian primary schools was systematically tested and their parents advised as to the most suitable type of secondary education. In my case, that meant being sent to boarding school, and since talents don’t develop by themselves, I was made to study for four hours and 20 minutes a day on top of lessons.

  In itself, there is nothing wrong with meritocracy, and up to a point the same applies to the pressure to perform: context is all, and in the latter half of the previous century, the winds of change were undoubtedly beneficial. The school doors were thrown open, rapidly galvanising a static society. This educational meritocracy was introduced more or less simultaneously everywhere in Europe. Its American counterpart is older and of quite a different order. It is the myth of the young bootblack who, thanks to his own efforts, rises to become a coal magnate; of the newspaper boy who makes it to media tycoon; or, most recently, of the youth in the Silicon Valley garage who ends up head of a multinational online company. In short, it is the American Dream. This is the economic take on meritocracy, which ties in very closely with the notion of ‘negative liberty’: the individual may not be hampered by others, least of all by a paternalistic state. Americans have traditionally regarded this from a purely economic perspective — no state intervention in business — whereas the original European interpretation was predominantly political: a state should not impose ideologies on its people.

  The combination of those two notions, liberty and getting what you deserve, explains meritocracy’s universal attraction. Meanwhile, educational and economic meritocracy have merged, to the extent that intellectual achievements without economic added value are regarded as largely worthless. By way of illustration: the word ‘intellectual’ has now almost become a term of abuse, and many fail to see the irony in the title of the recent critical study If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?2

  It is precisely this merger that has brought about a turning point, culminating in what can best be described as a neo-liberal meritocracy. The significance of this turning point can be judged by its consequences. In no time, social mobility ground to a halt, the social divide became ever greater, an
d freedom made way for general paranoia. In other words, exactly the opposite of what was originally intended. There are two reasons for this. First, the notion that everyone starts off in the race of life with equal opportunities is illusory. Second, after a while, a meritocracy gives rise to a new elite, who carefully shut the door on those coming up behind them.

  In 1958, British author Michael Young foresaw this process with visionary clarity in his satirical novel The Rise of the Meritocracy. The book describes how a utopian society that rewards the most meritorious — the most intelligent and industrious — and punishes the rest, soon becomes toxic to its citizens, and ends in chaos and revolution. In this work, Young, a Labour politician and social activist, decried the evil consequences of something he saw coming in the middle of the 20th century. Ironically, nearly 50 years later another Labour politician by the name of Tony Blair urged that the United Kingdom be transformed into a meritocracy, in a move that earned him a public tongue-lashing from an elderly Young.3 The visionary nature of Young’s book is even more striking in that he shows there is nothing accidental about the transition from socialism to a meritocracy — as subsequent decades of Western European politics would prove. The road to hell is always paved with good intentions.

  Yet at first sight a combined meritocracy (economic and educational) seems very appealing and easy to sell. Equal opportunities for all, the greatest rewards for those who make the greatest effort — who could object to that? Experience shows, however, that discrepancies at the start strongly influence the final result. In the case of an educational meritocracy, such discrepancies can be partially offset by investment in primary education, though you can’t do much about the intellectual and moral baggage that children get from the home environment. In the case of an economic meritocracy, it is downright impossible to ensure equal starting opportunities. We can’t all be born into wealthy families. What’s more, the two best starting positions often coincide: a wealthy background usually goes hand in hand with a good education. All in all, we don’t have as much free choice as we think, and the philosopher Ad Verbrugge rightly observes that the idea of the ‘free’ individual who enjoys unlimited freedom of choice thanks to his or her own efforts is one of the greatest fallacies of our time.4

  Even if inequality could be minimised at the start, the impact of a neo-liberal meritocracy will ultimately be very negative. But for that to be understood, it needs to be viewed in the long term. In its initial stage, a meritocracy has an overwhelmingly positive impact, especially in a society or organisation previously dominated by tradition, nepotism, and seniority. At last, people get what they deserve; at last, they can flourish on the basis of their own efforts. This initial period is followed by an interval of stability, after which the system has exactly the opposite effect to that intended. I only understood this properly when I spotted an analogy with social Darwinism.

  Social Darwinism in an economic guise

  The meritocratic picture looks a lot less pretty when we perceive the connection with the social Darwinism of the second half of the 19th century. In chapter three, I examined this pseudo-scientific justification for colonialism. The white race was superior and had to raise the primitive races to its level: that was the White Man’s Burden. To preserve this superiority the weaker elements within one’s own group needed to be eradicated without delay. Around 1900, the medical slant given to this issue led, both in Europe and the United States, to eugenic theories and measures that the Nazis would take to previously unimaginable extremes.

  The analogy is plain to see: just like social Darwinism, a neo-liberal meritocracy is aimed at ‘survival of the fittest’, whereby the best get precedence and the rest are selectively removed. Note that social Darwinism underwent a shift from groups (the white superior race) to individuals, and ultimately even to selfish genes. Crucially, social Darwinism also discounted factors such as upbringing, social class, and, more broadly, environmental influences. Only factors determined by heredity were deemed important.5 If you replace genes with talent, the similarity is clear: it’s all down to the individual; effort and innate characteristics will allow him or her to succeed.

  This analogy exposes the weak spot in the reasoning. Social Darwinism and neo-liberal meritocracy create the impression that they favour the individual who is naturally the best. He or she would have made it anyway; we are just giving nature a helping hand to speed the ‘fittest’ up the ladder. But the reality is somewhat different. Both social Darwinists and meritocratists themselves determine who is the ‘fittest’ and, crucially, how that is to be measured. In practice, they create an increasingly narrow version of reality, while claiming that they promote ‘natural’ winners. They then preserve that ‘reality’ by systematically favouring those winners, thus keeping them on top. The fact that they remain there is advanced to prove the validity of this approach.

  The supposedly scientific belief in the natural supremacy, first of men over women, and later of the white race (Europeans) and WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) over the rest of the world, is a classic illustration of this process. It led to women and non-whites being deprived of a decent education, to say nothing of decent jobs, on the grounds that such things were beyond their capacity. The position of boss was reserved for a few white men, creating the impression that women and non-whites were incapable of leadership, too. On top of that, they could be exploited shamelessly by virtue of their supposed inferiority. Maintaining systems like this creates static societies in which the upper echelons perpetuate their own position and privileges, ensuring above all that they are kept beyond the reach of the underclass.

  These days, such racist and sexist notions are the exception rather than the rule, and we are convinced that we no longer make this mistake, among other things because we have lost interest in the underlying question of social Darwinism: who or which group is the ‘fittest’? And that’s strange, because the issue of how best to organise society is something that humans have argued and even fought over for centuries.

  Nowadays we have lost sight of this question because an answer has been forced on us, along with a new order. The earlier debate took place in a society where a reasonable balance existed between the political, religious, cultural, and economic spheres. Now, these typically human dimensions have all been made grist to a single mill: the neo-liberal market economy. This has also resolved the conundrum of what constitutes the ideal individual. The answer is the most productive man or woman — something that Young had also predicted back in 1958. A few centuries earlier, David Hume, one of the greatest Enlightenment philosophers, wrote that a society organised on the basis of merit would inevitably fall apart, and it looks as if he was right.6

  The question is how neo-liberalism leads to Hume’s ‘dissolution of society’, especially in the light of its very promising beginnings. As long as meritocracy confines itself to the brightest boy or girl in the class getting the coveted scholarship, all is well. These days, however, meritocracy has been fully embedded in a digitised, fast-paced, globalised free market, a combination that heralds the death knell to society as a community. Trading results — invariably presenting a selective picture of reality — are electronically registered, grouped, and processed, more or less without any actual thinking being involved (‘Computer says no’). Then, on the basis of ‘the figures’, decisions are made over people’s heads. And ultimately, those figures create the reality on which they are supposedly based. This is known as reification (from res, ‘thing’, and facere, ‘make’). A classic example is the way in which the slightest panic on the stock market about a multinational making a smaller profit than anticipated causes an immediate tumble in shares, making the panic self-fulfilling.

  Practices of this kind are most evident at the macro-economic level, and seem to have little connection with us as individuals. Unfortunately, this is an illusion, and a dangerous one to boot, as the shocking example of the Enron approach to personnel policy shows. In this social Darwinist model, the empl
oyee with the highest production figures gets all the bonuses, while the one with the lowest gets fired. Enron, an American multinational, introduced this practice at the end of the previous century, dubbing it the ‘Rank and Yank appraisal system’. The individual performances of its staff members were continually monitored and contrasted. On the basis of the results, one-fifth of its employees were sacked each year, but not before they had first been publicly humiliated by having their name, photo, and failure posted on the company website. It wasn’t long before total paranoia reigned and almost everyone was falsifying their figures. The widespread fraud led to a court case and the bankruptcy of the corporation.

  Despite that failure and the criminal practices associated with it, the Enron model is still in wide use. HR managers at multinationals are expected to apply the 20/70/10 rule. Twenty out of every hundred employees are the high flyers, seventy provide the critical mass, and ten should be given the boot, even if sufficient profit and growth has been achieved. Five minutes of Googling the search terms ‘Rank and Yank’ and ‘20/70/10 rule’ throws up hundreds of hits of company documents praising this approach, invariably referring to Spencer’s ‘survival of the fittest’ and Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’.