Re: <nettime> commercial communism

[brian carroll <human {AT} electronetwork.org>]

  hi Craig,

>>  .US corporations have long seemed to have
>>   become communal organizations by way of
>>   childcare, housing, eating, healthclubs,
>>   recreation when off work with employees,
>>   etc. and the role of ideology in culture
>>   is reinforced by these same mechanisms.
>
> For a minuscule portion of the working population of the .US perhaps,
> but for the vast majority (and still growing) they get nothing of the
> sort from their paymasters.

  true, most have none of it and few have some of it,
  though i wonder if it may function as part of the
  'ideal' that drives ideology that this system does
  work at some point in some way- and possibly there
  is an element of the casino logic to it, to win big
  by landing in such jobs with the right education, etc.

  the yearly lists of 'best corporations to work for'
  judge these based on employee perks, etc. and during
  the dot-com boom in San Francisco, getting massages
  or playing ping-pong may also qualify in some way
  as to how the 'corporate campus', lifestyle even,
  may not be benign fun but a human resources gambit.
  Google retains this lifestyle and now is at the top,
  and yet it almost function as if a secret society,
  having replaced the machined IBM uniformed workforce.

  though it is not limited to international business,
  look at universities that are adding rock climbing
  walls, spas, and other cultural accouterments (at
  the price of affordable education, etc.) which may
  further serve this 'lifestyle' as a way of social,
  economic, and political control of the cultures.

  it may be related to some type of deterministic
  approach, a fixed-belief system about values, and
  with respect to the commercialist-communist axis,
  this may function as ideology: a corporate self-
  serving utopia of what the market already offers
  to consume).  it would then function as a closed
  system, based on certain assumptions that cannot
  be questioned, by most anyone involved except at
  the top/center of the hierarchies.  whereas with
  a social-capital viewpoint, it may be considered
  with a more open questioning based on a different
  evaluation/value system. in the former (CC vs. SC)
  there is one sociality, one economic, one political
  system being served as if an automated mechanism.
  in the latter, there are many options could be
  evaluated given a particular context and outcome,
  though less easy to place in similar universality
  because the ideas may still be 'open questions'
  and thus not predetermined for rightness, etc.

  just throwing some ideas out here in case there
  are any econos/others who might be able to flesh
  the ideas out further.  the main response to the
  question raised would be, then, that it may be a
  difference between the ideals that drive ideology
  (commercial communism) versus the realities that
  drive the ideas of social capitalism, and actions.
  fwiw. regards, brian


bc-microsite: http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/


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