Re: <nettime> Corey Pein: Amway Journalism

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 11/28/2014 05:55 PM, nettime's avid reader wrote:

> The old media was a vicious and ugly beast, but at least it
> recognized the value of supporting full-time employees with
> benefits. In techworld, everyone's a permalancer...
> ... Newspapers were always
> ruthless capitalist enterprises that happened, sometimes by
> tradition but often by mistake, to produce some valuable
> journalism. But the rising tech monopolies are ruthless
> capitalist enterprises that are plainly not interested in
> journalism as that term has been understood by generations of
> Americans....

This Amway argument has a lot of truth to it, concerning the raw deal of 
the neoliberal economy. But it also resembles a lot of Jaron Lanier-type 
laments, and like all the rest of them, it contains a fatal flaw. It 
simply posits that THE OLDER SYSTEM WAS BETTER, without inquiring as to 
how it got that way. The so-called "decent jobs' that Americans and 
Western Europeans enjoyed after the last Great Depression were built on 
generations of struggle. Those struggles partially tamed the capitalist 
beast. The marginally better results that later journalists (and 
professors, doctors, public servants etc) produced for a few decades 
were not accidents. They grew out of the institutionalization of that 
generational struggle: a complex system of rights and responsibilities 
that gave relative autonomy to the practitioners of certain socially 
necessary professions. That relative autonomy was gained through both 
unionization and political action in the Thirties - essentially, through 
the struggle for social democracy and flat-out socialism. Later, a 
watered-down version of the social-democratic ideal was instituted as 
part of the new compromise that took form after the war.

The other side of that social compromise -- the capitalist side -- gave 
rise to institutions like Amway, which was founded in Michigan in 1959, 
basically as a distribution company recruiting door-to-door salesfolks 
for dodgy products like dish soap and a grotesque diet beverage called 
Nutrilite. That was the American way, right out of the heart of the good 
old Fordist system in Michigan.

Fast forward to the present. At least a decade too late, people who 
assumed they would already be in mid-career under the old postwar rules 
are discovering that they have been screwed by what you might as well 
call "the Californian ideology." Are they now going to struggle for 
everyone's rights? Do they realize that the new Great Depression is part 
of a process leading to climate chaos, mass migration, and 
national-fascist responses to civilizational decline - all of which will 
be our equivalent of WWII? Do they realize that the "capitalist beast" 
is producing all that, and not just the breakdown of their little niche? 
Or do they think that if they complain a little on their blogs and bring 
everyone to their senses, a nicer monstrosity from the past will come to 
feather their beds and upholster their new offices, so they can 
comfortably denounce an occasional corporate abuse here and there? While 
drinking a little Nutrilite, or maybe Soylent, to look good on their 
vacations?

The new media make for a lousy journalism career, that's for sure. But 
every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. Tactical media are a great 
way to revolt against capitalism, on all levels from the riots in the 
streets to sophisticated critiques of business, technology and 
government. Generations of struggle have proven this since the late 
Nineties. Those who do not realize it are actually nostalgic for the 
failed compromise that produced their present dilemma. They think the 
beast of their dreams will save them from the one they refuse to 
confront in the daylight. That's tantamount to being nostalgic for Amway 
itself - which became a global internet-based company in 2007.

OK, my fellow Internet journalists. I forgive you. But maybe it is time 
to wake up already?


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