The Culture of New Capitalism

I recently read the book Culture of New Capitalism, in which Richard Sennett surveys the differences between an “old” industrial and bureaucratic capitalism and a “new” form of capitalism that is more global and mutable. By exploring the historical processes of both types of capitalism, he places each within contexts of both institutional changes, power changes, and cultural changes. Sennett’s main theories of the culture of “new” capitalism is how, now, our culture’s ideal worker is one who is flexible and able to manage their time in the short-term to toll with the changes; is a talented person of many traits, giving them higher potential rather than merit for their past achievements; and is someone who is able to “surrender” the past by letting go of failures or even old processes, and only looks forward.

He places each of these traits in opposition to culture traits of the “old” capitalism, focusing mainly on bureaucracy. For instance, bureaucracy brought with it rational, disciplined, and stable structures for work. A worker could, therefore, plan for the long-term by knowing very clear and set steps of how to gain wealth: go to college, get an entry-level job, work efficiently and accordingly to the rules, and climb the company ladder through promotions. However, now short-term feature of the new capitalism does not guarantee a given path to wealth, or even job security. Older generations of professionals now experience a “specter of uselessness” as they have to adjust to the new knowledge and technology and compete with younger 20-something-year-olds.

Sennett’s main argument is that even though these new methods seem to liberate workers from the “iron cage” of bureaucracy, these changes have not set people free. Further, the new cultural ideal of the new institutions actually damage many of the people who inhabit them.  A quote I feel embodies this is:

“…a different, more passive mentality. Americans of the middling sort…have tended to accept structural changes with resignation,  as though the loss of security at work and in schools run like businesses are inevitable: you can do little about such basic shifts, even if they hurt you” - page 10

                  In Sennett’s voice, this new form of capitalism has radically broken down the stable and disciplined institutions of bureaucracy, casting people adrift into an uncertain, short-term and ever-changing system, and culture, of work ethics. Rather than setting people free from the strict guidelines of bureaucracy, it seems this “new” capitalism, as he describes it, has gone too far in that it no longer guides and supports the majority of workers in America, especially those who were raised through “old” capitalism. This quote also resonates with me because Sennett specifically calls out Americans as the population who are now passive, rather than aggressive businessmen, who seem to have lost their power and agency. In other classes, I have read Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat,” in which he explains how the technology and telecommunications revolution has essentially evened-out the playing field for other “less-developed” countries, such as China and India. Now, that their populations have access to the digital world, they have been able to greatly take advantage of globalization of capital and businesses, and have seen a rapid increase in growth and productivity. In this essay he, also, calls out Americans, and urges America to wake up and work harder; to keep up with the other nations that have started to surpass us in technology and telecommunications, and thus in the World economy. I guess my point to bringing up this quote is to spectate on who is receiving the adverse effects of the new capitalist system. And further to look at this as an almost ironic situation since America has been the epicenter of a highly productive capitalist economy and also spread, and even forced, capitalism as a model for other countries and the World economic system. Yet now, as capitalism is changing in both the institutions and culture surrounding workers, Americans are “cast adrift.”

Here's a video on a young American who I feel embodies the culture of  new capitalism: