Capital needs workers dejected enough to work but not despairing enough to rebel

Evidence

It wants us to be dejected: not so catatonically depressed that we can’t work, but not so confident and secure that we will refuse to do bullshit jobs. (What is this it that wants us to miserable? Why, the real management of the Overlook Hotel of course. Our misery is like nectar to it…) Capital needs people desperate, scrambling on the edge (watch Tory MPs laugh at starving families!), it needs people scrimping and saving and crossing off lists, it needs people to be grateful for any work, no matter how poorly paid, no matter how insecure, struggle after struggle, year after year… — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1829

Categorization

• XREF: Overlook Hotel invocation ties dejection to the ch34 reading of The Shining — paternal/monopoly power operating through death and mortification — and to the earlier claim that chronic depression’s felt realism mirrors capitalist realism. — connects to: Capital confers power over workers only when workers lack land alternatives — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 254; Fear of unemployment disciplines workers into subordination to capital. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 250; Moral crises among elites do not destabilize workers already disciplined by necessity — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1111 (+2 more)
• SEED: The optimum-workforce affect-band — between catatonia and confidence — is a sharp diagnostic lens for any organization or policy: its stated wellbeing goals are a lie about where it wants employee affect to sit.

Broader Connections

• Waged labour obedience rests on workers having no exit option #expands (0.90)
• Fear of unemployment disciplines workers into subordination to capital. #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 250
• Capital confers power over workers only when workers lack land alternatives #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 254
• Moral crises among elites do not destabilize workers already disciplined by necessity #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1111