The Banality of Modern Business — Part 1: The Machine
An anomalistic book review of László Kővári’s Critical Thinking?
„Ein leichtes Leben, eine leichte Liebe, ein leichter Tod — das war nichts für mich.“ -
Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf
Silence of the Shareholders
A young and ambitious Italian manager (1) was once invited by the owners of the American parent company for an overseas laudation: not only had he reached the best financial results of the entire group, but also obtained the largest market share deemed possible. However, stunning results often breed more expectations. In fact, the shareholders asked him to raise profits by an additional ten percent — by cutting jobs. The manager went closer to the microphone and asked the flabbergasted audience only one word: why?
The question was met with profound silence. Why should he fire the people who had made this miracle happen, putting families on the street? Is firing the proper compensation for a job well done? Was the ultimate goal of the company to enrich its thirty owners, without any regard for other stakeholders, so they could buy a larger mansion or one more yacht? The manager’s question remains unanswered, and we can rightly suspect that the reason for the silence goes beyond individual character defects. László Kővári’s book Critical Thinking? seeks to identify the source of this silence, a malaise that permeates modern business.
Extending beyond its original domain, business seeks to define the totality of human existence; it aspires to become the ultimate measure of life and death and absorbs all attempts that aim to provide it with a broader context. Corporations work like immense, impersonal machines. “Business” is an omnipresent, non-ideological ideology; or, more accurately, it has become a behavioural consensus and belief system that has been collectively and unconsciously accepted in broader society. Participants take its postulations for granted like axioms, elevating the amoral (or opportunistically moralising), mechanistic and quantitatively obsessed “business logic” to the pedestal of the measure of all measures.
Kővári does not challenge the fundamental idea of capitalism or the notion of doing business; however, argues that the remedy lies beyond the domain in question. Business and philosophy — two words that, at first, seem incompatible. Yet, we need to realise that it is not only a false dichotomy, but also that philosophy might be the source of an ultimate context that business so desperately yet in vain seeks to become; a context which we already have at our disposal.
Negotium Mensura
It seems that, in general, the actors in modern business unconsciously follow certain patterns of thought and action. According to Kővári, such meta-views (like the obsession with quantitative values, evolutionism, progressivism, scientism, and individualism) guide people’s thinking, behaviour, and language, without anyone being aware of their influence; and even if they are aware, they do consider them as unquestionable axioms.
René Guenon’s “reign of quantity” (2) seems to be the most prolific meta-view that permeates modernity, in which the unquantifiable is nonexistent and anything that does not maximise profits is worthless. Daydreaming, even though it is essential for contemplative thinking and creativity (3), becomes a mere waste of time in a world where the maxim of profit maximisation is the ultimate measure of value. Proponents of this meta-view attempt to temporarily revitalise subjects by relentlessly injecting new “ideas” into the system, providing illusory, and hence temporary, relief (the cynical phrase of “making a positive impact”, “corporate DNA”, “sustainability”, the delusional “why” by Simon Sinek, etc). Yet these pseudo-contexts are inevitably miscarried, as they are indeed ultimately subordinate to the prime principle (and prime illusion): perpetual and unconditional growth of profits.
As a consequence, modern business defies the ancient teaching of homo mensura, cutting the limbs of its subjects to fit them into cubicles (as Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote in Bed of Procrustes, referring to the mythical story of Procrustes): it is an artificial, mostly top-down, mechanistic, anti-intellectual, anti-freedom, and therefore inevitably inhumane environment. The neoliberal consensus has trashed the millennia-old concept of homo mensura, and has instead embraced negotium mensura — that the measure of everything is “affairs” diluted into mere business: purely impersonal, mechanistic, transactional, and strictly materialistic (economic or political, which overlap to a great extent) interest distilled in the dogmatic textbooks of a godless technocracy.
The Axiom of the Machine
I can already hear the indignant cries: how could an office with air conditioning, free coffee, colourful beanbags, and “intellectual” work (like browsing cash flow statements or orchestrating marketing campaigns) be inhumane? Isn’t it better than the tiresome toil of exploited serfs or factory workers of early capitalism? Isn’t it better than being shot into a mass grave after months of forced labour? Physical conditions in the workplace have radically improved since the dawn of the industrial revolution. However, the problem does not originate in the material domain; hence the pain is obscured by the shiny veneer.
Modern business demands the unconditional surrender of the authentic person. Surrender means not only giving up time and energy, but also one’s intellectual and spiritual sovereignty, trading in identity and life purpose for a ready-made corporate corporate pseudo-ideology. Essentially, the authentic person is incompatible with business in the modern sense, meaning that one has to conform with artificial and mechanistic standards — and to un-become as an authentic person.
To paraphrase a Hungarian bon mot, we seem to be “sitting on the horse facing backwards”: people are no longer the measure of organisations. Human beings have become mere inputs in an Excel sheet to maximise return on investment. Cut into artificial pieces (“roles”), they are a mere resource to feed the “economic machine” (see Ray Dalio) to achieve maximum performance. The advocates of dirigisme, the “Harvard-Soviet style” top-down optimisation (see: N. N. Taleb) believe that there is an ultimate function that describes the working of a “perfect company” or a “perfect society”. Identifying it is merely a question of the accuracy of the models and the abundance of data to be processed, and once they find a “good enough” solution, they will “benevolently” impose it upon the unenlightened. It is probably also the mechanistic view of business that has bred the insulting term “human resources”.
Tony Soprano, the mafia boss of the cult TV series The Sopranos, would look people carefully in the eye before making a profoundly personal decision on whether he should trust them, taking full responsibility for doing so. Today, managers in a multinational corporation do not even dare to make eye contact with the people they hire, let alone fire (like Kővári, I intentionally avoid using the word “leader”) — they ask “HR” to do the dirty work, as they would have a mechanic discard worn-out machine parts. On the contrary, Tony Soprano did not look away when he shot in the chest a comrade who had fallen into disgrace.
If business is a machine, then people are necessarily cogwheels (both physically and intellectually). Humans do not participate in such a system as holistic beings, as the system casts away that which is useless for the fulfilment of the agenda. Beyond our “skills”, modern business is extending its claim over our values, beliefs, and identity — in short, the domain that belongs to our authentic self, that which makes us human and more than robots. The fact that machines are gradually taking over many tasks, including white-collar activities that have been performed by humans thus far, is proof of the ab ovo mechanistic nature (and the anti-intellectuality) of these activities. If we could be replaced in the totality of our humanity, then we will indeed be replaced one day.
(1) The story was originally shared by Massimo Gramellini in an article published in the Corriere della Sera
(2) René Guenon: Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps
(3) See in (among many others) Joseph Pieper: Muße Und Kult
