Managerialism, Not Racism
The route of American's problems rely in the Eurocentric and cultural interest in managerialism
If you ask an average American what is the main issue with America’s problems, likely it is going to be about race, or “racism,” as “that group of people are being mistreated.” In addition, “protests” today revolve around the frivolous subjects of “sex work,” identity politics, and teacher unions. Instead of challenging the economic system head on, there is a bourgeois compromise of upper middle class values in cooperation with American neoliberal culture. Again, the average American thinks all problems relate back to racism, when in reality, racism is only a byproduct of an unnamed, greater threat to America, and that is managerialism.
“Managerialism” is described as the cultural value, belief, practice, and reliance on a group of managers to dictate the economy, culture, arts, and politics. This has nothing to do with socialism or communism, per se. Rather, managerialism is also a byproduct of neoliberalism, a capitalist economic system that relies on libertarian free will and anti-state intervention. In essence, capitalism created neoliberalism, which neoliberalism created managerialism, and then managerialism creates racism.
Managerialism is also something new of the last century. As stated by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution (in 1941), the new economic system in America would outlast traditional capitalism and invasive communism, and transform itself into a petite bourgeoisie class of managers. That is, no actual “work” is being conducted, and rather, the new “working class” is made up of citizens, known as managers, who merely control the robots, slaves, and underlings for private interest. There is nothing productive accomplished under managerialism, as managerialism is about enforcing the caricature of the capitalist landlord upon average citizens. Hence an entire generation known as the “baby boomers” created an entire value system around managerialism and the hostility towards tradition work. Everyone is know overeducated and relies on manager positions to make six figures and to live “the good life.”
What is that “good life?” It turns out only the bourgeois practice managerialism, while the petite bourgeois emulate their behavior in René Girard-esque fashion. That “good life” is more subcultural and crass than you think it is. It is because both groups, however, are white people.
White people can be defined as a group of admixture European people living in America. They have always been the hegemony of America, and continue to be, so as long as America can survive the multiple crashes of capitalism. What is unfortunate is that managerialism within whites didn’t appear until the creation of America, and America’s interest in upholding slavery and feudal aristocracy. After the American civil war, America solely focused on individual capitalism as the economic solution against the old system of feudalism. However, the Great Depression happened as the first crash of capitalism within America, and extreme economic reform was needed.
In Helen Andrews 2021 book, Boomers, she describes the baby boomers (born between 1946 to 1964) as the ultimate example of managerialism as a people. Meaning, that it is ok to attack and be against boomers, as a people, because the entire generation manifests interest in cultural managerialism. Managerialism itself can manifest itself anywhere from Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like, to the obnoxious and elderly (and white) behavior of “Karens.” Managerialism represents an economic identity, and not based in any roots of authenticity. White people themselves, being admixture without a solid group to have commitment towards, end up assimilating towards transhumanist interest, escaping the body to become mere blank slate individuals, or referees to a game nobody is playing. It is this experience of racism that is felt among nonwhites against the managerial class, and not exactly behavior of hatred. The managerial class wants to uphold a neoliberal capitalism government at the expense everyone can be managers like them, hence “white,” and eventually, become transhumanist and egalitarian free agents, just like what the managerial class has.
Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai noticed a cultural trend in India between the hegemony and the subaltern. Building upon the language of Antonio Gramsci, Appadurai saw culture working in the same way as capitalism exploits and colonizes as country. Globalization, while dressed as liberation, is actually of a form of imperialism, and creates a gaslighting style of rhetoric that Jean Baudrillard would call as a simulacrum. Where this simulacrum in question is the values of global liberalism and it’s interest in frivolous topics like “sex work,” “black lives matter,” “trans rights,” and other consumer choice topics that white people would like for their own libertarian freedom, being condescending and against the interest of the colonized, or the subaltern. These are just “the scapes” of influence, as Appadurai would like to call them, through “ethnoscapes,” “mediascapes,” “technoscapes,” and so forth.
The subaltern could also been seen as the petite bourgeoisie trying to become the managers that the hegemony is. If you look at the map of The United States of America in 2023, the logic of capitalism is presented as a picture. There is supply, and there is demand. There is cities of production, and then there is subaltern cities following orders from the higher-ups. The top ten populated cities in America show where production and orders and conducted. New York, the hegemony with over 8 million people, controls the territory in pink. Philadelphia, the subaltern with 1.5 million people, commutes back and forth towards New York supplies and relies on this migration orbit. Houston is another example as a hegemony, where 2 million live, dictate the subaltern economies of Dallas and San Antonio. And by looking at the orange area where the hegemony city of Chicago is, with a population of 2.6 million, controls all of the orange territory, through dependence and reliance. That is managerialism.
There is often theories postulated by Marxists if subaltern cities and areas could decolonize themselves from the hegemony powers. Unfortunately, it can’t happen because of the ingrain economic system of neoliberal capitalism that is the center of the American economy, ideology and culture. In order to destroy managerialism, you have to destroy capitalism and it’s Fully Automated Luxury Communist variants of managerialism. “The synthetic left” argues that egalitarianism is only accomplished through a automated managerialism, already espoused by the capitalist system. Hence the only thing the synthetic left can do is enforce a human resource department style of culture that throws people in jail because they wrote something “racist” or “sexist” online. They don’t care about overthrowing capitalism, and rather would like to accelerate managerialism, till everyone is reborn into a Jetson’s like scenario where public housing point towards the sky above the unwanted class of mutants on the ground. This is the logic of the middle class fancy Karen escaping to Lake Tahoe, just to do the Cha Cha Slide at her nephew’s expensive wedding, as race riots are burning down every city. The managerial class cannot let go of it’s SWPL culture and values until the day they die.
As Appadurai noted, culture is more than just some Overton window being pushed, but a complex array, attitudes, and desires. The cultural anthropology of René Girard, Dick Hebdige, and Benedict Anderson, help shape Appadurai’s understanding of the political economy and it’s importance that culture has upon politics. The petite bourgeoisie is not just a low-IQ phenomena, but resulted in the impact of the hegemony of desires around them.
It is my belief that that managerialism is the current problem at hand, as all politics and cultural issues suffer under this pathetic desire to create a non-productive economy based upon Zoom meetings, generating BitCoin, “pet sitting” dogs, and stay-at-home copywriting, which are all, at large, byproducts of managerialism and the attack on the meaning of work. What exactly is “work” in a capitalist society if that means doing nothing and still getting paid on salary for a supposed value? “Racism” is rather a conflict between the colonized people and the managerial elite, where the managerial elite feel guilty another group cannot enjoy the same SWPL cultural activities. This is where “rainbow capitalism” becomes apparent, and the big global interest in transhumanist, egalitarian neoliberalism as a sales pitch is enforced.
To be against capitalism not only means to go against managerialism, but as well one becomes naturally against the values of transhumanism, egalitarianism, and liberalism. In due respect, this also meanings defeating racism, because once managerialism is out of the picture, racism will vanish. Attacking managerialism means attacking the culture of Karen, SWPL naivety, and the white liberal tattle tailing of being called a “racist.” Racism is a byproduct of managerialism, and once there is no longer a managerial means of production, there will be no discussion of “racism” anymore, as everyone finds meaning through self-ownership and the urge to do good. That contribution of the “good” could be manifested through Prometheism, a “city building” tendency.
Instead of thinking that there is something wrong with America, rather, think about how America was always wrong to begin with.
To be truly against capitalism, is to be against modernity.
-pe
5/4/2023