Audited work reshapes labor toward producing representations rather than outcomes

Evidence

What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself. Indeed, an anthropological study of local government in Britain argues that ‘More effort goes into ensuring that a local authority’s services are represented correctly than goes into actually improving those services’. This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism’. What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 91

What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself. Indeed, an anthropological study of local government in Britain argues that ‘More effort goes into ensuring that a local authority’s services are represented correctly than goes into actually improving those services’. This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism’. What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 91

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Market Stalinism’ defined here as prioritizing symbols over actual achievement, returning to the recurring theme that caps capitalism’s growth fetish.
• XREF: Strong parallel with Goodhart’s law (when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a measure) and with the general audit-culture critique running from Strathern’s ‘Audit Cultures’. — connects to: Stalin’s White Sea Canal prioritized symbolic publicity over actual function — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 92; Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work; Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 93 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 91

Broader Connections

• Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work #corroborates (0.93)
• Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 93
• Colonising metrics create new mentalities and incentives inside organisations, not just reporting burdens #expands (0.80) — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 19