$25.00 £l4-99 Introduction all' a century ago, in the L96oS-that fabled era of free sex and free access to drugs serious young radicals took aim at institu tions, in particular big corporations and big government, whose size, complexity, and rigidity seemed to h«ld individuals in an iron grip. The Port Huron Statement, a founding document of the New Left in 1962, Was equally hard on stale socialism and multinational ^orations; both regimes seemed bureaucratic prisons. History has partly granted the Cramers of the Port lluron Statement their wish. The socialist rule of hve-year plans, of centralized economic control, is gone. So ls the capitalist corporation that provided employees INTRODUCTION jobs for life, that supplied the same products and ser vices year after year. So also welfare institutions Li - e health care and education have become less fixed in form and smaller in scale. The goal for rulers today, for radicals fifty years ago, is to take apart rigid bu reaucracy. Yet history has granted the New Left its wish 1» a perverse form. The insurgents of my youth believe that by dismantling institutions they could produce communities: face-to-face relations of trust and so 1 darity, relations constantly negotiated and renewed, < communal realm in which people became sensitive to one another's needs. This certainly has not happened. The fragmenting of big institutions has left many people's lives in a fragmented state: the places they work more resembling train stations than villages, as family life is disoriented by the demands of work. M1" gration is the icon of the global age, moving on rather than settling in. Taking institutions apart has not produced more community. If you are nostalgically minded—and what sensitive soul isn't?—you would find this state of affairs just one more reason for regret, Yet the past half century has been a time of unprecedented wealth creation, in intr0ducti0n Asia and Latin America as well as in the global North, a generation of new wealth deeply tied to the dismantling of fixed government and corporate bureaucracies. So too has the technological revolution in the last generation flourished most in those institutions which are the least centrally controlled. Certainly such growth comes at a high price: ever greater economic inequality as well as social instability. Still, it would be irrational to believe that this economic explosion should never have happened. i ;rtt,,rp 1 mean Here is where culture enters the pictuie. "culture" m its anthropological rather than artistic sense. What values and practices can hold people together as the institutions m which they live fragment. MY generation suffered from a want of imagination in answering this question, in advancing the virtue s^alhscale community. Community is not the only W*y to glue together a culture; most obviously, stranger • • ,i+nrp even though ts m a city inhabit a common culture, tW ....... one another. But the problem oi a they do not know one am- tter of size, supportive culture is more than a ta ^ prosper Only a certain kind of * ^ enrial conditio1 m unstable, fragmentary so ,,.,UengeS- Uress three chauc B nian or woman has to aaui - - i n t no n u crr i o n The first concerns time: how to manage short from term relationships, and oneself, while migrating task to task, job to job, place to place. If institutions longer provide a long-term frame, the individual may have to improvise his or her life narrative, or even without any sustained sense o f self. The second challenge concerns talent: how to de velop new skills, how to mine potential abilities, as ality's demands shift. Practically, m the modern ecoO omy, the shelf life of many skills is short- in technology and the sciences, as in advanced forms of manufactui ing, workers now need to retrain on average every eignl' The to twelve years. Talent is also a matter of culture, emerging social order militates against the ideal o* craftsmanship, that is, learning to do just one thul& really well; such commitment can often prove econom ically destructive. In place of craftsmanship, models culture advances an idea of meritocracy which cele-brates potential ability rather than past achievement. The third challenge follows from this, it concern5 surrender; that is, how to let go of the past, The head oi a dynamic company recently asserted that no one owus their place in her organization, that past service in Par" ticular earns no employee a guaranteed place. B°W [ntk0ducti0n could one respond to that assertion positively? A peculiar trait of personality is needed to do so, one winch discounts the experiences a human being has already had. This trait of personality resembles more the consumer ever avid for new things, discarding old if perfectly serviceable goods, rather than the owner who Jealousy guards what he or she already possesses. What 1 want to show is how society goes about searching for this ideal man or woman. And I'll step beyond the scholar's remit in judging that searc 1. ^If oriented to the short term, focused on potential ^ility, willing to abandon past experience is—to put a kindly faee on the matter—an unusual sort of human being. Most people are not like this; they need a sustaining life narrative, they take pride in being goo at something specific, and they value the experiences theyVe lived through. The cultural ideal required m new institutions thus damages many of the people who ,. „ about the kmd of 1 need to tell the reader something ^ ^ ^ ^ ^search experience I've had which t n T r o D u c rr 1 0 n judgment. The New 1 pft ■ • was my owr • ^ of big bureaucracy iri^lntl^J^lr! thVate 19608 1 began interVi6W" Werp m , g S lamilles in Boston, people who rCmos% second-or thnrl • the city. fTV cnircl-generation immigrants to thern is 77 t J°nathan C°bb and I wrote about oppressed K u ^ °/Cte^ Far from being I Pressed by bureaueraev th in sol in ■ ' e were people anchored 1 s working-class w ^akesensonr ,1 ■ and women tried to use 01 their low statue ; making few H ln a c°untry supposedly ass distinctions After tins study I ur, ' while It , the subject of work for a 11 seemed that b' achieved a iv , g American capitalism had u d triumphant nlat workine-Hacc it eau and that on this plane g ciass hfe would p -J c°uld hardlv I ntlnue in its fixed grooves. ,y nave been d°wn of thp R ~ 6 mistaken. The break- riretton Wood the oil crisis of r currency agreements, after ^vesting W(,llf l9J3' meant llational constraints on 5 weakened; hi tl fig"red themselv- ' Um Corporations recon- tele of investors--^0 * bternational elien' Pr0flts b share PneesVeSt°rS ^ intent °* short-term 'deniIs- -lobs be^^ ,han °n lon^rrn profits in div~ Degan similarlv a. 1 y dnd quickly to cross bar- ,n troth! ction ders. So did consumption and communications. By the 1990s, thanks to microprocessing advances m electronics, the old dream/nightmare of automation began to become a reality in both manual and bureaucratic labor: at last it would be cheaper to invest in machines than to pay people to work. So 1 returned to interviewing workers, though not now manual laborers but more middle-class workers ^bo were at the epicenter of the global boom in hightech industries, m financial services, and in the media. (This is the subject of my book The Corroswn ofChar-otter) Mere I had the chance to see the cultural ideal of new capitalism at its most robust, the boom sug-gating that this new man/woman would get rich by linking short term, developing his or Her potential, ^ regretting nothing. What 1 found instead were a WSe group of middle-class individuals who (eh that taeir lives were cast adrift. At the end of the 1990s the boom began to go bust> as ls normally the case in any business cycle. the economy sobered up, however, it became A* global growth spurt had left an enduring trace °n ^-business institutions, particularly institutions °f welfare state This stamp is as much cultural as Str^tural Th ' ne values of v OXne a reference ■ neW economy have be~ about dependence h°W &overnment thirjks dnd Pensions 0r a • ^ f~matlagement in health care Catl0n ^tern pJJT *** the *** of skills the edu-fare" Provides. Sm^ m ' as the Anier' * grown up "on wel- m°deI formed f0r has ^ the new cultural the h„ • me a vivir) housing proj . 1VuI contrast to the culture of hood rm ■ ln Chicago i (1 h* stamn i*, i § Where 1 SP^ my child- an^ge of 7 the object nf 6e °Jlnequali Jca of my book As.y/watf . . IVe ^ught to avoid " riZUlg what IV* , 01 m thls book simply surnma-T Writteri K f neglected the rol . In my earlier wr] tirl£s' °my' ^re [ try> sumption in the new econ- sumption dirnj6/' *° address how uew forms of C0nsequences whic^! ********* and the political thaU b past a. 1 °1W IVe had to think harder y lri work I 0o} . :i**ion of power and au- 10 l<** forward, to b has prompted me manshtp »' mental a, T*"** *e sPirit °f -afts" f M°St «* ^1, IVe V , 38 manUal lab«. * the search I've * the Wricanness World's eco* l97°s' America dorrn- PeoP1(' around norny. and h, ,i d the globe Wer the l99°s> even lf e "ivolved in the process, ■ 8 [ n t ro d u CT i 0 n 1 . the institutional changes winch the United States led the ^ America» researchers produced a new kind of economy. mter- i. + thpv can subsui-u thus easily imagine that y ■ ^ This changeably the words A^^Q^ae r()ad to fantasy is no longer possible. ^ of the United growth is quite different from ^ £.uro- r i -The economy u States, and more powertui. , Is0 in i , , hat of America ana pean Union is larger than uw - ^ ^ rriember some respects more efficient, even ■ i ' r Auiiierica. states, again without mimicking ^ tenaed to Foreign readers of my recent y ^ ^ ^ American view them as providing reasons to r0UoW at >laces would iUl way of working which other p rprtainly ^ Vivt 1 intend.Kjl their peril. This is not quite wn< ■ boundaries; i lack national ouu structural changes I describe u installce, is ll0t the decline of lifetime employment, oi d„ is What is "culture an American phenomenon, vvi d the i • vi \mericans unue the particular ways i n wnicn i , tf nver material me. changes which have come ovci aggressive , \mericansa & A stereotype holds that stereotype Lies a competitors in business. Beneath 1 ricanS of the afferent, more passive mentality. ' d cade have 1 l the pasi middling sort I've interviewed t ignation, as i i ririo*e witn i o tended to accept structural ciiai g - 9 $25-(>o £14.99 1 nt koduction tho*gh the loss of se , like husiiu^ seiogy, global fmance, and Ilrrris with tl Payees. [VW, e thousand or more em- R pG°Ple in North \ • Europe do not work f America and Western of economy has ^ SU°h ^ sma11 sli°e numbers. Thf^ '* -U turaI influence far beyond its uese new insrh ■ n-iulation of Dori! tlons snggest the new for- nal skill - l^mula of lns) ■ . and abilities; the combined Consumption- c,», y shaPes ^ culture of Pollti<*, particularly , ' ior tu™ influences e(% inferring the cur8reSSiVePOlitiCS'J am nnabash-PMt of society i,,,,'," UjrC °f *e wh«'<- bo„, a SI,,all Kl °f caP«aliSra hav ' aVatMS °f a P«''nc>'lar their w;'.y » the wav If rrSUadCd S° mm,y PeoPle tha,; the future ",e jostles of the, Ver'Sm" °f theso threeaPltaliSm argue that their e subjects 'Work t.i vurK, talent, consump- i n t r o i) li ct i 0 n 1 tion—adds up to more freedom m modern society, a fluid freedom, a "liquid modernity" in the apt phrase of the philosopher Zygrnunt Bauman.1 My quarrel with them is not whether their version of the new is real; institutions, skills, and consumption patterns have indeed changed. My argument is that these changes have not set people free. 15 CHAPTER FOUxx Social Capitalism i Our Time rere were many foolish things about the New eft of my youth, fifty years ago, but in one Vn, tne movement was prescient beyond its ars; the Pon m Pl. ,. L 1 luron Statement foresaw how state so- c c°uld die from within. Socialism would suffo-r er tne Weight of bureaucracy. Capitalism would ' ana remain the problem. As P , Ve s°Ught to show in these pages, big bureau- f^ f blna as well as oppress, l^his has long been ° arnnes; Max Weber witnessed how in his time Jrrilc and civil society institutions mimicked the Structure of armies, in pursuit of social inclusion °Dec*ience to authority The secret of this milita- 0cial capitalism in oub time Peopleform^ * j- tlme—tJme structured so thai the institution Th * QmTative and sociaJ relations withm litnv could be f 6 PnCe individuals Paid for organized ^as hot], n," ^ 0ttl °r ,ndividuaJrty; the "iron cage7 prison arifj u gt ^ an« borne. Pire after lnr * ^ aS Xt devel<>ped in the Soviet em- , ya3> took on • -i. aJ^ost g]^ I military-capitalist legacy proflts and marked °Ught ^ CapitaIist enem? jn ene/r,y, the em • S ratiler than in bureaucracy. Like its ^"^^ureaucr^ solidarity and subordina- 0f s°cialisill jt GCarne a/so ^e home and the prison ln lV6°* atXlr0niC ,hat Lch tQOk m°th becauSe thi/ ^''^^^-^talist-sociaiist behe- U2nph' the factoriL^ a de°ade °f b«reaucratic tri-COrr,irigasproduct.eS 0i the S°viet empire finally be-the ^eSt LookirC eCOno^icaIJy as their brothers in fWe,,tleth eentu,^ **** fet «y years of the Chlne' vi°Wtand ClJrPeai °f the militar^ ma" ^ha*t, howeverVd°MrUCtlVe °n ^battlefield, tri-\ J° Afr,eri^ar, Dr. ' 7 '' * factory and the office. When n"l,,ilry-indu ,'• Wlght Ewenhower spoke of d("y than » , ' hls 'mage applied lanufacture of weapons. 180 • social cKvn*hlS +Vi woul The New 1 .eft hoped the ^ perVersel* W within because it was ^tthat^;^ fo temporary history has begun have.^ n,tm ways radicals of «* bas ce, fee past three decades, burea q{ global in the advanced economy g. Tb» « technology, media, and ^ b . spurt of growth may have *^ .$ Q„t an^^ *Wr quality of-.nsutut.cn. ^ are _ e new institutions, = new institutions, as „ra\ized p°Wfc5 Waller nor more democrat.fr0tn au ,i o0werspnt0 dimmed been reconf.gu^P< loyalty, ^ The institutions inspire only ^ c01„mu»ds' ^ participation and aI1d high 1^ rf Weed low levels of ^ ^ed ^iety about uselessne^eartoftbisSoc.a -motional time lies a ^ ,., 1^ uation; the cutting edge ^ time ufe human relations. This same ^ plan W di80riented individuals . ^disciph^ course strategically ana ^ ^^d gr. d by of the old work ethic bas itives ThUisahstofnegaUV- 0fse« > uanees are m these -institutional c&anfc 181 S 0 C I A T, C A PIT A LIS M I N O II R 'ľ I M E might allow individuals to flourish as institutional life becomes more shallow. These qualities are repudiation ot dependency development of one's potential ability. capacity to transcend possessiveness. These qualities take us outside the realm of production, into the institutions of the welfare state, education, and consumption Ie cutting edge of reform at work, as I have wanted ° U,Klerllne> 's narrow; most people continue to labor under conditions Weber would well have understood. Ut the extension of the new values is broad. The positives invoked by the new order promise l0 consuirunate e Pr0,eCt °f meritocracy and to provide the model for progressive reform. rhe remedy proposed by the New Left for the Prison oi bigness was cultural. Emotional declaration, made far** tr» r to tace, ln small groups, would spawn a more humane onW. ti. i ■• j utr, the lessons of intimacy would be app^d ° Sľ""':V M 9 Wh()l(!- °f course tins scale is a young per-sons natural < tural territory, and of course it cannot last; as adulthood unfold* thi ur»ioIds, one's subjectivity becomes, U any m& more puzzling An{{ what fche n^ Left m.ght "ave learned fm»r, d • ' lom "ismarck, or from military service, is that strong sorial .• son , , ^ Ual L,es ca" Sourish under quite impersonal conditions. • í 82 ers of my you* had Yet I don't think the drea ^ to a cultural the wrong idea in holding up ma*^* ^ detected, I standard. As the reader may P°ss1^ ^ nflWnd path was one of those youthful dreaB1^n>, u meant to lead <>f the adult's "sentimental ^UC^oW ^ ufe aS it is to ever greater resignation about drearns. Eth- actually conducted can accoro kept nie 01 1 their wor^ . nography about workers aim especially1" *at path. The people I've interv* to0 Little past decade, are too worried an ^ ^ aegis 0 signed to then own uncertain la ^ ^ ^ emo-*ange. What they need most - ^ whethe> Uonal anchor; they need ^ changes in work, privilege- an They need, in short, a culture- ^ by assessing I would like to conclude three critical values—*1*1 c " ai anchor, unship—that might ci Narrative ric in theh time nd erratic111 ;uttme-edee institutions, short ar ' ^ **»*- 1p of a sense oi time carries, deprive people 01 t events u et simply Kent. Which means ra°SL fr 185 s ° c 1 a l c api ta lis m j n o u r t i m e connect, experience accumulates. In the past decade I've been impressed by three innovative attempts to create this sense of narrative connection at work. Jhe first consists of efforts in Britain and the United States to fashion "parallel institutions" which seek to afford workers with the continuity arid sustain-ability missing in short-term, flexible organizations. These efforts focus on rethinking the nature of labor unions. The idea is to make the labor union serve as a °f employment agency, booking jobs; the union bUyS I)ensi°ris and health care for its members; most important, it provides the community missing in the workplace, organizing creches, discussions, and social events. Secretaries in Boston and communications work- m Bntam have tried to establish such parallel institutions. hi so doing, they are challenging as new-fashioned employers sclerotic, traditional unions. The conservative union focused on a particular industry or craft and thus was n^i . i Poorly equipped to keep contact with workers who h u • nrw 6 lo JumP from one kind of labor to another; by e Like the TJ ' 0rllraSt, a more ^ward-looking union Voun* mted AUL° Worke« in America now enrolls y°ung university \ecUiy. y lecturers in its ranks. Traditional 184 so ci a i, capitalism in oub time Unions put their energies mostly into wages and mate-rial conditions; the Boston secretarial union concentrates on the communal needs of women and single Parents. Service and seniority were the hallmarks of the old social capitalism, and conservative unions fol-low that time guide. The parallel union seeks to make 3 narrative thread of experience, as m its employment *Se»cy activities, for people who are not yet gray-haired. The seeond way of threading experience together 0V« tune lies m job sharing. Here the Dutch have been P^neers. The Netherlands has as much as the United St*te* suffered from outsourcing and the disappearance °f labor into the developing world. The Dutch response ^ been to design a system in which available work is divided up « halves or thirds. The job network system fu«her contains a good deal of open entry, so that a per t t;mr> iob as market S°1 can labor at more; than one part-time ) ^ ^^ editions permit. The Dutch, by temperament t e have found mueli '"«st self-lacerating of Europeans, have ^ ^ wmng with the way job sharing operates, but t e pnn i tins scheme has ciPle is accepted, and when practiced, tms - Provided employers with a tool useful -"onomv society with a tool for social inclusion. SOCIAL CAPITALISM IN OUR TIME Job sharing offers a special kind of narrative frame. A Person is continually in work, long-term. This avoids *e ^-switch anxiety of short-term contracts—»oW ?m en^ged, now I'm redundant. The self-respect from being in work is maintained, even if one works only pa* °f tHe Week or Part of the day. Job sharing has the further advantage of permuting people to sort out family W relations, particularly child care, on a reasonable and predictable basis. 16 third way of shaping time under new conditions can enable people to plan long-term. This policy egan as an idea which, glimmering a decade ago in G rmnds °f a few radical academics, is now making its Way into the real world. v n ^ radical vewrion, pushed by Glaus Qfle and van Fariij, Wac . u, . , . , h as a basic income" scheme which would replace the welhm i , . Iare bureaucracies of northern Europe D7 a simpler SVci , ■ poor alike the I ^ everW *ch and ^spend as theTT ^ inC°me SUPPort L() sPend °X be able m u 6 ^ ldua] Wa*ts. All individuals would Ae to bl'.y education t . the open market- f care? and pensions on disappear sm, ' er» Unempl0yrnent benefits would income needed to minimum annual ° SuPPort themselves. Taxes support c Vvfp quality, Wei ot me H „meits everyone at a minimum leve ^ erld your ^c°rn Nanny State disappears-, if YoU **** . his basic fr*** everyone gets ears. your problem. Moreover, eve y disapl ,t-means-te^ *> +hereal whether they need it or not, into in f nrovidtog Pe°P , re The rad world, the proxmse of P1 to the for- long-term personal * ^ ^ of ical proposal for basic income ^ yotlX1g ad» ^ ^ a of basic capital, that is, gW*S e a b*>»* ■ on p^TG • a Bru°e cash to use on education, ^ a,,- nest egg for hard times. (he _ erman has been pivotai ^ ^ip fiUea by a peared in Britain le^°* e pot h*> Jalld. people this way, though ^^esby^^j veahty-somewhat abstemious, Sc°0adre* a q{ up. , ,Viese eft"1 c0nseq«eI rned Ml three of tb ^apted c° p,ogranim^1 insecurity is not just an seCur»ty insecurUY ratne1' , ri hat i&' , does not happen f° ' feilldred « turriiug to • These ^ with°ut , caP^allSt to happen. The ^ * le. ^ vail agamst that 1 . ^ 0U f time ^M rigidities ox organization- . 187 R°G ' A I. i. A l> l TA I. I s M I N OlJ r T I M K TJ f> e P°hcies turn on a cultural pivot, which con- nS narrative itself. If the well-made plot has gone out J()1» m fiction, it is a rarity in ordinary life; life histories arp 1 i ^ " c setaorn shapely. In ethnography, wo are indeed °ncerned with how coherent are the stories people us than with the effort of our subjects to make their *perience cohere. This is not a one-shot effort. Fre-' n% a subject will retell and reorganize an event, / Ullri)(-S takuig apart a seemingly logical story into °nnected bits, in order to see what lies beneath the surface L i i tectmicaJ lingo, this is "narrative agency, ' the 1 01 'Ir,'vtdy engaging and interpreting experience. n the new institutions, people can frequently succumb to feeling +i . ■ u 1U6 tney have no narrative agency; that is, that they lapi i J ' K Uli- power to interpret what is happening U) them. We\„> c c , • ■ c ve seen one concrete reason for this; in stitutioris, when intermediate layers of bureau- as . ° stripped away, information can remain intact I- ' S< s h*om center to periphery, with relatively mile rriocJul- quentj 'Xioti. People subject to this process fre- COmplain that they have, as Albert. Hirseh-1 put its * no voie(. within the institution. -r° are tl culturally ,n 6 eXperirnents which £ive People, ( agency in interpreting (heir experi 188 • SO01 M c;\\MTM-*SlN • ..pjitS ence in time, long-term. ^s P° 1 aCtices theV \tural P are small in scale, but as cu largely suggestive. ^ usefulness ftlatte Se^U] mean s to s contributing something which *P*ucie^ 1 People. As the scope of uselessness has Pe°ple Cou, 6 P°htical economy, it might seem that atJ04s Coiripensate through the more informal rrilddle a^ Uvit society. A supposedly over-the-hill, Stari°e, firicj 0xnPuter programmer might, for in- 0%*ui>a^ Seful activity in a community or church r JCmon rpL • n°bert p " Is an approach which follows from volUn triam's writings on social capital, in which c . y Participation js the crux. While volunteering CaiHly a USefiU Worthy act, this approach risks reducing for useful appear in More consequent values workers,tbe sec two realms: among paid pu 1 ^ tloInestic labor. ond among people doing ulll ated hi an inU1NU A few years ago 1 pubUc service workers, i, out^rlUS P project which song'11 J 89 0C J A L CApj TA LISM IN 0 U K T I ME unnmg the gamut from street cleaners to surgeons in the PUblic health service,1 For a generation—like their ericara counterparts—they had been under attack, th " lr mStltUtions derided as inefficient, themselves demeaned as people who couldn't make it in the world of private enterprise. Many of the people we spoke to were * S° Se critical; they knew from within how rigid and ^-averse these public bureaucratic pyramids were. espite the criticism they stayed in public service. °Ur question was, why? t fel110 rne to interview immigrants who change JafanS W rUtl-down Public hospitals; they could have real6 ™ k**™* Private ciirilCS- ^ \ GSe SPltal Pendants stayed was a matter of ■ atm The purpose of the National Health Service-health care for all_ r f , eJlclts the respect of most Britons; tor these immigrants th ■ ■ ■ . . K aru&> tne institution gave them a posi- e' rtmional place in *** -4 is perhanc «.1 cioWi^' , - P most elusive word in the so- g^ts lexicon. Whi!^ ■ c for snobberv i t often used as a synonym You have st.* has t0 do wi th legitimacy. c status when in ' upon you. Bem tutl011s confer legitimacy USG Ul falls whhm this framework; 190 social capitalism tn oub time m°re than doing good privately, it is a way of being Publicly recognized. Another line of interviews turned up the same sentiment among noncommissioned officers in the army, who stayed rather than work easier hours as private security personnel. Interviewers in yet another Wch of the project talked to people higher up the °ivil service. Though they received more verbally elaborate responses to the question "Why do you stay?" still the verbal meat boiled down to the same bone: more ^cognition for one's work in the public than in the Private realm. Of course there are slackers, particularly »1 British transport services. Even there we found a good deal of peer pressure exerted on the lazy or timeserving; their frustrated colleagues put a high premium i - donate of status. And while on professionalism, another cognate Wrtmp Office could conditions in the Inland Revenue or Ilome *m drink these institutions drive any man or woman to dririK, lr matter to the public, and so purpose makes the work matter r meaningful to the workers. r;„P is of course a worthy act. Here, Voluntary service is ox -c status on those who do useful though, the State confers statu. , • i-Vip state acquires authority. As we ve work. In so doing, the stare i If)! in for 0CIAL CAPITALI8M IN OMR TIME Jssues of Q , 10 cuttln& edge walk away from authority anr? / handle. And for ■ eg"ltlrnacy—issues they can't Politics would ■ 18 S0Clal reaSOn' a truJv progressive as an em nl ' ^ VIGW' Seek t0 strengthen the State /xlpioyer, rath w°rk to DnW er thai1 ^ive-off public service J 1Vdte c°mpanies. Unce we think s°urce of foPos«ively about the State as a Jegitimate us«fi 1 could deal with +u ' act^ity? progressive politics V1LU those DPnnl amilies, mothers Pperformm^ useful labor a^eu parents. Jn &1" childre*, adults caring for them. The putn ^ VlGW' ZOVGmment should pay 10 c|o love's drud er " thatpe°^Je "volunteering" Claj capital. The er ePrGSent the ultimate test of so-e^Uate domestic uslf01] ^ ^ ^ °f thmiarj£ JS to may be Wing but I " ^ illtr^m. Care work **** - * an i * itSeIf ^ no public recog-W°meri who d0 u g;ft' and many of the men and adUlt of their ^ W topped out of the ^^^J*^^ ^re ^ ^ I6"8 - —ous S:;^ W^ °f * -s ^ C°^-dtober]efltbydnv.. 192 social capitalism in our time ng a wedge betwecni paid and unpaid care work. Today, the expansion of old age combined with the desires many women to have careers outside the house has ^Upted that old balance. Both these changes have °pene^ up new opportunities for immigrant labor to d° Care work. Against these trends, however, is the need °f b°th the elderly and the young to be taken care of, e^otionally as well as practically, m ways only family ambers can provide. A truly progressive politics Sh^uld make that possible, 1 believe, for men as well as for women. I f only reformers could accept that usefulness is a Public good, they could engage with the anxtety and fear of uselessness spawned by ^ «><»* ****** ~* f tuv. the reasons 1 pre tor« of the modem economy ^ .hn rult of meritocracy is sented in the second chapter, toe cun ^vriloriiiir new ways unlikely to salve these anxieties; exploru • I ac useful has to be more infer people to be recognized as ir ,r •, more than a utilitarian ex-elusive. Usefulness itself is more ,. i uration which matters most change. It is a symbolic declaiauoi e ■ _ -t as it can to even the lowest when the polity confers m ^ mep ices and as it does not to Worker in the public sc people m the domestic sphere. n our time Craftsmanship The third value which could countervai < B culture of the new capitalism is craftsm ^ t0 resents the most radical challenge but is t e imagine in terms of policy. ^e Craftsmanship broadly understood means t All human sire to do something well for its own saK. - 1 . • -thing we beings want the satisfaction of doing some -k in eCl~ and want to believe in what they do. Yet at woi > d can not ucation, in politics the new order does not an ■ rriobne satisfy this desire. The new work world is too Ice t o for the desire to do something well for its own 0f years root into a person's experience over the course . or decades. The educational system which trains p60 for mobile work favors facility at the expense oi ging deep. The political reformer, imitating the cutting » like edge culture in private institutions, behaves more a consumer ever in search of the new than like a era man proud and possessive of what he has made. Craftsmanship challenges the idealized self sup' posed by new work, educational, and political institutions. This is a self adept at change, a master of process. At its origins, psychologists like Abraham MasloW <#L- social cap i t a l i s m in our t j m e crated this ideal of self as responsive, open to experience, capable of growth, a self of potential powers. This idealized self indeed has real obvious strengths, and the craftsman's realm is in certain ways smaller and more guarded. Worrying about getting something %ht mobilizes obsessive elements of the self; getting ^mething right can then lead to a kind of ungenerous ' ft Possessiveness. Competition is no stranger to cr s-^anship, and good craftsmen, be they computer programmers, musicians, or carpenters, can be highly 11 tyrant of those who are incompetent or simply not as good. , . , _ ordinal virtue For all this, craftsmanship has a c< ^ hissing in the new culture's idealized worker, stu e , ■ It's not simply that the °r citizen. It is commitment, Its n be committed to obsessed, competitive craftsman m y i hat he or she believes doing something well, bu t mm ^ ^ ^ '» its objective value. A person can ■ , Kinxr how well something is done "** Md in deSCnbmg an objective standard out only if be or she believes ^ side his or her own *^ ^ right, even rewards from other, ^ ^ ^ rf though it may get y kind of disinterested craftsmanship. And only OCI A I. G A PITALISM IN OU K 'j't M E commitment—or so I believe—can lift people up emotionally; otherwise, they succumb in the struggle to survive. We've seen why commitment is m increasingly scarce supply in the new capitalism, in terms of institutional loyalty. The sentiment would be irrational how can you commit to an institution which is not committed to you? Commitment is equally difficult in the new culture's recipe for talent. Mental mobility eschews getting deeply involved; ability is focused on operational technique, as in the SAT, an exercise in problem solving rather than problem finding. Which means that a person becomes disengaged with the reality beyond his or her own control. Commitment poses a more profound question about the self-as process. Commitment entails closure, forgoing possibilities for the sake of concentrating on one thing. You might miss out. The emerging culture puts enormous pressure on individuals not to miss out. Instead of closure, the culture counsels surrender-cuttmg ties in order to be free, particularly the ties bred in time. What . have sough,. ,.o eXplore m these IS thus a paradox: a new order of power gained 196 . , ,mre Since people can an-an ever more superficial cui • ^ something chor themselves in life only by XXf&% iciallty at ' vmuh of SIlPL well for its own sake, the t/riun y fraglle. litics seems to work, in schools, and in Poiltl ' ^feebled culture it gainst this em Perhaps, indeed, revolt agai . fresb. page* will constitute our next 197