Re: <nettime> Managerial capitalism?

[Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234@gmail.com>]

      The point of all good debate is to thrash out understandings,
     misunderstandings and counter-understandings, until some sharable
     form of clarity emerges.

   Brian thanks for your thoughtful response. My previous email is not
   really based on a worked out but on informed intuitions. Informed by
   the new class theory in Bogdanov and Bukharin -I didn't read what
   Trotsky wrote on the topic but am sure Burnham had read it, then I read
   Gramsci and his reading of Machiavelli and modern Machiavellians,
   especially Mosca.

   The fact that since 19th cc. this class has been in formation.
   Revolutionary leaps in science and philosophy, was the accumulation of
   'capital' of this class, called knowledge. I seriously think,
   managerial science (cybernetics+GST+operations research units [and
   Burnham's role in the re-organisation of OSS into modern CIA was not a
   coincidence] has emerged in the hands of conscious class agency of
   future 'managerialism', consisted of certain fractional divisions some
   were close to social-democratic ideas (in line with Dewey, Bertallanfy,
   Wiener, Von Neumann, Von Forester etc.), some to anarcho-capitalism
   (Misses, Hayek, Friedman, Rand etc.) and some others even envisaged a
   full-fledged alternative for the aftermath of capitalism. So, if in
   managerial capitalism managerials are subordinate to capitalists, this
   needs to be reversed.

   Fascism and Nazism may be the version of state-capitalism that came
   closest to managerialism as another (worse) system. After their defeat
   in 1945, but also subsuming many minds running away from fascism and
   Nazism (also ex-nazi and fascist scientists runaways) the really
   existing managerial revolution arrived in the 50s and 60s. In a sense,
   corporate-liberalism in the West, USSR and China, and NIEO were
   versions of 'managerial capitalisms' in variety and their competition
   dominated the world. In all these variations yet managerials
   subordinated to productive capital -filling key functions in line with
   Keynesian, socialist, and third worldists ideologies.   

   With the emergence of mass media, computer systems, behaviourism, TNCs,
   etc. we had Peter Drucker's, Henry Kissengers, Alvin Toffler's, and
   those who manage and serve to IMF, WB, OECD sort of bodies, as well as
   states and corporations. These segments of managerials, top
   managerials, had a deal with Hayek-Friedman-Coase, who aligned with the
   vision and interest of the money-capital fraction which was hibernated
   between 1920s and 70s. Formulation made of neoliberalism did eliminated
   or undermined the broader class base of managerials, in favour of a
   fusion between top managers and top money capitalist. Years when
   Rockefellar studies at LSE, and forms Club of Rome -as monarchs
   willingly turned to bourgeoisie in 17th 18th century we have now
   capitalist dynasties being raised as managerial. Also as a counter
   strategy to not to lose whole control to professional cadre of CEOs and
   top managers.       

   
   So, rise of global market, liberalisation, good governance, collapse of
   class compromise, flexibilisation, internationalisation of production,
   ICT revolution, post-modernism, so on so forth. The rise of 'Empire'
   was a thrust to unify economic, political and military power in the
   hands of this class fusion of capitalist managers and it was in expanse
   of subordination of entire global production -first to finance/money
   capital; then the production and finance got subordinated to algorithms
   and data. The control was taken over, by money-dealing a specific
   segment of the class agency of money capital, based in Wall Street and
   the City. Such class is tearing apart all consensus base and triggering
   reactionary regression, calling for corrective war that will finish all
   the wars.

   As you say, China being closest to managerial capitalism and being the
   new hegemoni is not a good sign. Since it pushes all system to that
   direction. Climate change and other earth-systemic problems strengthen
   the hand of complexity managers so on. Some segments of managerial feel
   ease in aligning with fascist option. Putin's Russia represents a
   similar form, as Tayyip's Turkey. The system dynamics pushes even EU,
   after UK to that direction. In all cases, economic political and
   military power is being totalled in limited class of people, and it
   looks like big data, silicon valley, IoT, is not there to reverse these
   tendencies but enforcing them.  

   As I said, these can be illusionary since I did not work through all
   these, instead as I said it is an informed intuition. Getting feedback
   from and debating it Brian is one of the best opportunities one might
   have to think these stuff through. So thanks for that.

   Best,   
   Orsan

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: