Post-Fordist management expanded bureaucracy by making workers their own auditors

Evidence

If the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism had its psychic casualties, then post-Fordism has innovated whole new modes of stress. Instead of the elimination of bureaucratic red tape promised by neoliberal ideologues, the combination of new technology and managerialism has massively increased the administrative stress placed on workers, who are now required to be their own auditors (which by no means frees them of the attentions of external auditors of many kinds). Work, no matter how casual, now routinely entails the performance of meta-work: the completion of log books, the detailing of aims and objectives, the engagement in so-called “continuing professional development”. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1491

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to David Graeber’s bullshit-jobs thesis and to the general reading on how audit culture operates — also echoes Adorno’s account of reason reduced to self-preservation bureaucracy. — connects to: New bureaucracy makes workers their own permanent auditors — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 103; Auditing fuses public relations with bureaucracy for promotional aims — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 102; Managerialist bureaucracy works as intended by weakening labour and worker autonomy — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1493 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Workers in new bureaucracies become their own auditors under internalized surveillance #corroborates (0.95)
• Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work #expands (0.75)
• Post-Fordism internalized class antagonism into individual worker psychology #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1405