Flexibility rhetoric seduced workers out of identifying as a class

Evidence

Another way of getting to this story is via the restructuring of capital in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the arrival of post-Fordism. That meant the increasing use of precarious conditions at work, just-in-time production, the dread word “flexibility”: we must bend to capital, no matter what capital wants; we are required to bend to it and we will bend to it. On the one hand, there was that kind of stick, but there was also at least the appearance of carrots in the Eighties: neoliberalism did not just hammer workers; it encouraged people no longer to identify as workers. Its success was in being able to seduce people out of that identification, and out of class consciousness. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1649

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Worker flexibility often functions as a euphemism for precarity — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 571; Workplace control shifted from obedience to demands for self-directed flexibility. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 166; Flexibility ideology rewards docility, but plasticity enables refusal and revolt. (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism succeeded by seducing workers out of class identification. #corroborates (0.98) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1649
• Worker flexibility often functions as a euphemism for precarity #expands (0.95) — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 571
• Flexibility ideology rewards docility, but plasticity enables refusal and revolt. #qualifies (0.85)
• Workplace control shifted from obedience to demands for self-directed flexibility. #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 166