Managerialist bureaucracy works as intended by weakening labour and worker autonomy

Evidence

It would be naïve to imagine that this “permanent undercurrent of debilitating anxiety” is an accidental side-effect of the imposition of these self-surveillance mechanisms, which manifestly fail to achieve their official objectives. None other than Philip Blond has argued that “the market solution generates a huge and costly bureaucracy of accountants, examiners, inspectors, assessors and auditors, all concerned with assuring quality and asserting control that hinder innovation and experiment and lock in high cost”. This acknowledgement is welcome, but it is important to reject the idea that the apparent “failures” of managerialism are “honest mistakes” of a system which sincerely aims for greater efficiency. Managerialist initiatives served very well their real if covert aims, which were to further weaken the power of labour and undermine worker autonomy as part of a project to restore wealth and power to the hyper-privileged. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1493

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a system’s official failures (costly audit bureaucracy that hinders its stated efficiency aims) are actually its covert successes (weakening labour) is paradigm-shifting for reading institutions — resists one-sentence summary.
• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School figure of instrumental reason serving domination beneath an efficiency mask, and 1984/We-style double-think where official failure is functional success. — connects to: Automation’s shrinking of manual labor weakens the political opposition’s power — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 203; The incentives sustaining managerial roles vastly exceed those compensating dangerous labor; New bureaucracy makes workers their own permanent auditors — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 103 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Post-Fordist management expanded bureaucracy by making workers their own auditors #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1491
• Algorithmic management strips workers of any human authority to contest discipline #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 119
• Depoliticized labor markets discipline workers through the threat of unemployment and lower wages #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 796
• Factory councils embodied a counterhegemonic worker epistemology threatening capitalist order #complicates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 539
• Defunding public services structurally forces wage-dependence and demobilizes workers #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145