Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Organization of the Nation, in Capitalistic Conditions

From the webpage:
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I/O psychology has its roots in the late 19th century movement to study and measure human capabilities and motives. Some early psychologists, noting the practical nature of psychological research, sought to apply the findings to business problems.
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(Back to real time): Why would leading figures suddenly in the late 19th century feel the need to "study and measure" that? It is because they suddenly find themselves with people to manage.
  
It is, according to my unique understandings of capitalism, because what the word "economics" actually implies is the management of large groups of persons. In earlier periods of history, under different forms of social organization, Europeans were not faced with this. There were different forms of social organization that  did not imply this kind of large-scale population management.
     I think this is true. I am simultaneously aware that the so-called "conservative" persons of the time would not have liked to admit this. Put more strongly: they couldn't. This is a little difficult to explain here, since there are a variety of ways of seeing the light on this topic, but at any rate the "conservative" philosophical tendency - simply put - could not admit to this or be witness publicly to this. So, the interesting thing is: that's the story of economics (the study thereof). They really needed a different version of the facts, and they set out to create one. This is how, over time -- i.e. until the present enlightened age -- the science of economics was "managed." This is a conflict concerning the actual nature of capitalism vs. what persons were able to admit.

Let's observe actual capitalists. Here, I mean the producers, no not the Broadway play that was so funny, nor the film that was made, but "the owners." This includes a large number of persons with conservative views of course. And of course you see them clearly maintaining a divide between themselves and their employees. After all, this ain't socialism. My Dad was like that, though, and he was a liberal, so forget about the "conservative" thing. This is a very common attitude, though, on the part of owners, i.e. the owners of the means of production.

But: the facts are different and capitalism begins creating a social unit -- society, nation, group -- that consists not just a small class at the top, appended to which is a large, unknown herd at the bottom. That doesn't exist. What the truth is is (how you do a "double is" without invoking a Egypt. goddess is Greek to me and really quite frustrating) that a new society is being formed. While the gulf between owners and workers in the work setting is pretty much inviolable, the persons doing the work are certainly not utterly removed from the society in general. There is a social unit that is being created. But that goes against the grain of what conservatives want to see, and while they have no power to change reality, they can and do change the way we think about it (ideology). As far as the actual (or material) society, as opposed to the society's superstructure ideology, this is a new, emerging society that contains, simply, all the members of the society (now bourgeois/capitalist). That kind of social cohesion is already occurring, under capitalism itself, so, my formulation: "capitalism is social."
    No surprise then, that capitalism makes its big move at just the same time that democracy does (as Jos. A. Schumpeter pointed out long time ago).

2 comments:

  1. If you want to find out how I linked to that cool I/O webpage then go back to the self-comment on the post linked below. As for the search terms: they were from I think something like the second sentence of my original writing on that post: "...candidates or their capabilities to govern well"

    http://jacksgreatblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-pick-candidate.html

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  2. If we read a little more, this part to oconforms will with my theories of economics:
    " The Hawthorne researchers eschewed economic incentives as the driving force behind work and painted a rich picture of the informal relationships (i.e., those not specified in the organizational chart or job specifications) among workers themselves, in addition to those among workers and the managers, which was the focus of the classical view. People, in other words, came to work not for money, but for the social rewards and satisfactions inherent in human organization.
    "
    Read more: Industrial/Organizational Psychology http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Inc-Int/Industrial-Organizational-Psychology.html#ixzz1f8sNyg2b
    It says above they eschewed economic incentives. The workers referenced by the example may not have been moved by "economics incentives" but their formation of a social group is, in fact, the real story behind what we call "economics."

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