Capital absorbed workers’ own desire to escape Fordist routine, trapping the left

Evidence

The horrors of these new working patterns are clear, but it is imperative that the left renounces one of its most dangerous addictions, its nostalgia for Fordism. As Christian pointed out, the disintegration of stable working patterns was in part driven by the desires of workers — it was they who, quite rightly, did not wish to work in the same factory for forty years. In many ways, the left has never recovered from being wrong-footed by Kapital’s mobilisation and metabolisation of the desire for emancipation from the Fordist routine. Especially in the UK, the traditional representatives of the working class — union and labour leaders — found Fordism rather too congenial; its stability of antagonism gave them a guaranteed role. But this meant that it was easy for the advocates of post-Fordist Kapital to present themselves as the opponents of the status quo, bravely resisting an inertial organised labour “pointlessly” invested in fruitless ideological antagonism which served the ends of union leaders and politicians, but did little to advance the hopes of the class they purportedly represented. And so the stage was set for the neoliberal “end of history”, the “postideological” ideological justification for rampant supply-side economics. Antagonism is not now located externally, in the face-off between class blocs, but internally, in the psychology of the worker, who, qua worker, is interested in old-style class conflict, but, as someone with a pension fund, is also interested in maximising their investment. There is no longer an identifiable external enemy. The consequence is that, as Christian put it in a memorable image, post-Fordist workers, are like the Old Testament Jews after they left the “house of slavery”: liberated from a bondage to which they have no wish to return but also abandoned, stranded in the desert, confused about the way forward. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1405

Categorization

• XREF: This inverts the standard left-nostalgia framing of post-Fordism — resonates with the ‘small acts of decorum toward corpses’ reading interest and with analyses of how capital co-opts desire (e.g. Boltanski & Chiapello). — connects to: The Left seeks liberation of labor rather than liberation from labor. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 114; Capital co-opted workers’ own desire for liberation from Fordist routine — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 74; The left must abandon Fordist nostalgia while still embracing release from repetitive labor — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1585 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Capital absorbed the left’s own liberation desires against it #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 74
• Capitalism co-opted workers’ own desire for emancipation from the Fordist factory #corroborates (0.93)
• Neoliberalism succeeded by capturing workers’ desire to escape Fordist strictures #expands (0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1504
• Union protections gave workers control over time that capital previously dictated #contradicts (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 309