within the personal situation in the above-outlined sense. The scope of this chapter does not permit me to systematically pursue these considerations. However, I do not want to leave unmentioned that starting points about such an extension can already be found in Ichheiser’s own work. In his early text about Machiavelli, Ichheiser writes, for example, about the social norm systems: “Thus, the actual (sociological, and not somehow ‘intended’) sense of the law is not ‘justice,’ but an order intended by certain power relations, i.e., regularity of human behavior” 28 (Ichheiser, 1927, p. 303).
This phrasing almost sounds like an anticipation of a power concept of Foucauldian character (Foucault, 2005, 2007) with which theoretical assumptions about the meaning and the teleology underlying a given social formation are sub- verted; rather, it focuses on power techniques that evoke the performative “regulari- ties” in the behavior of members of society. It is precisely Foucault’s emphasis on the flexible and strategic character of power relations that would, in my opinion, offer the possibility of developing an integrated theory. Ichheiser (1927) writes that the truly fascinating sociological questions do not ask about the teleologies but rather about the dysteleology, i.e., the breaking points at which success and justifi- cation, social advancement, and morality stand in obvious contradiction to each other. Even if his critique of success is addressing these breaking points, the static above-below concept of social hierarchy and the corresponding narrow concept of critique prevent a deeper analysis of the processes of production and reproduction of the social order, as well as of the social acting of the actors constituting society.
justified to ask how the critique of success Ichheiser presented should be evaluated against the backdrop of contemporary political-economic developments.
More recently, the relationship between productivity or performance and success has been examined by several authors in the context of the debates about post- Fordist labor relations (Voß & Pongratz, 1998), subjectivization of work (Lohr &
Nickel, 2005; Moldaschl & Voß, 2003), and the structures of legitimization and appreciation connected to it (Bröckling, 2007; Honneth, 2008).
Sieghart Neckel devoted himself specifically to the relationship between the principles of success and productivity or performance under the conditions of con- temporary capitalism driven by financial markets (Neckel, 2008, 2010, 2012).
Neckel formulates the thesis that the performance principle is undergoing an ambiv- alent development within this context. On the one hand, it loses importance as a legitimate grid for economic elites: “Despite all the different sounding rhetoric, the performance principle of the business executives in the economy is in reality no longer suffered well” (Neckel, 2010, p. 7).30 Those whose economic privileges (i.e., whose success) lay beyond every proportionality in relation to society as a whole have no use for the demand of social comparison accompanying the performance principle. Concepts such as self-initiative and self-responsibility that concern the self-reference of the subject rather than its relation to other economic actors have replaced the justification over performance. This tendency on behalf of the eco- nomically successful faces a generalization of the application of the success prin- ciple as a disciplining mechanism for the losers of the economic competition. Thus, the performance principle is increasingly applied to social areas that have, up until now, been structured along criteria such as need or egalitarian distribution. Social assistance, for example, is within the context of activating labor market policies (for the Austrian case, compare Atzmüller, 2011) increasingly connected to fulfilling a specific performance on the part of the potential assistance receiver (Neckel, 2012, p. 66). It is this omnipresence of the performance principle that, in the face of its obvious inappropriateness, primarily explains society’s enormous income and wealth inequalities at a massive loss of credibility.
At the head of the social hierarchy, we therefore speak today for a reason of a new plutoc- racy, consequently of a power of wealth, which leaves all rules of the principle of achieve- ment far behind. [...]
It is therefore no wonder that today's financial market capitalism allows the performance principle—as a central benchmark for justifying social gaps—to deteriorate to such an extent that finally, in the public perception, there is only a very brittle connection between achievements and prosperity obtained. (Neckel, 2012, p. 67)31
30 Translated from the German: “Aller anderslautenden Rhetorik zum Trotz, ist das Leistungsprinzip bei den Führungskräften der Wirtschaft in Wirklichkeit nicht mehr gut gelitten.”
31 Translated from the German: “An der Spitze der sozialen Hierarchie sprechen wir daher heute nicht ohne Grund von einer neuen Plutokratie, mithin einer Reichtumsherrschaft, die alle Regeln des Leistungsprinzips weit hinter sich lässt. […]
Es ist daher kein Wunder, dass der heutige Finanzmarktkapitalismus das Leistungsprinzip als zentrale Bezugsnorm, durch die soziale Abstände gerechtfertigt werden sollen, soweit verfallen lässt, bis schließlich in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung nur noch ein höchst brüchiger Zusammenhang zwischen erbrachten Leistungen und erhaltenem Wohlstand existiert.”
Accordingly, explanations for high incomes increasingly refrain from using the term performance. Its place is taken by the blatantly recourse to market principles.
In the medial staging of success, pop-cultural prominence is celebrated as the new models of success instead of traditional top performers, implying that their value is directly assessed through their market success (e.g., numbers of downloaded new pop songs, high ticket prices, etc.) (Neckel, 2010, p. 7). Neckel (2010) concludes that “the organizational principles of the contemporary market capitalism have fully emancipated themselves from their former normative base to which the perfor- mance principle counts more than anything in the bourgeois horizon of values”
(p. 8). The dominance of the competition-based market principle likewise consti- tutes the starting point for Ulrich Bröckling’s (2007) work on the entrepreneurial self as the form of self- and value reference corresponding to unleashed capitalism and for Voß and Pongratz’ concept of the labor power entrepreneur (1998). Both concepts depart from the assumption that an essential feature of contemporary capi- talist spirit is to address social actors as entrepreneurs of their own lives. The whole conduct of life is thereby increasingly restructured according to the rules and forms of behavior of market-based competition. This induces—as Voß and Pongratz par- ticularly point out—a fundamental change in one’s behavior toward oneself and others. One’s conduct of life is understood as a self-optimization tailored toward competiveness, for which the subjects now consider themselves responsible “entre- preneurs.” The performance principle plays a subordinated role in this new self- relation as the success of utilization decides directly over the question as to whether an optimizing action was actually efficient. In the sense of marketability, the success principle fully absorbs the legitimatizing function of the performance principle.
Ichheiser’s thesis that the occurrence of success is often unmoral or goes even directly against the prevailing morals and thus must be retrospectively legitimized through the ideology of success (representing the core of the veiling thesis) seems obsolete today. In the light of these considerations about the functioning and the legitimizing base of finance-driven capitalism, success no longer must legitimize itself through performance. The market principles prevail insofar as an additional justification is no longer needed.
The critics of the performance discourse quoted here see substantial upheavals in the way capitalism operates as the starting point of the described changes in legitimizing structures of our society. The relevance (or lack thereof) of Ichheiser’s work consequently depends upon the question of which scope these upheavals actually have in the overall socio-economic structure. As outlined in the previous discussion, the investigation of social structures, which form the basis of Ichheiser’s thesis about mechanisms of success and their veiling, remains incomplete.
However, the section in Kritik des Erfolges, in which Ichheiser elaborates using the example of two shoemakers in free competition (Ichheiser, 1930a, p. 7; compare heading 2 of this chapter), suggests the empirical field to which Ichheiser relates.
The reference to the manual production context for differentiating the object and the market’s productive activities lies in the tradition in the sociology and psychol- ogy of labor influenced by Marxism (compare Volmerg, 1978). At the same time, it shows the disruption signifying the transition to post-Fordist relations of labor.
The guiding principle of entrepreneurial self-conduct primarily derived from immaterial or service activities. These activities have in common that the criteria of assessment are directly drawn from the value impression evoked in the con- sumer. This is because the content of the activity coincides broadly with its market value. While a shoemaker can practice his craftsmanship at the highest level (and will be appreciated for it) even though the shoe may never be worn (e.g., because the hours of work render the shoe too expensive), a consulting activity may pre- cisely be seen to be of high quality if it is “bought” (i.e., if someone experiences the communication with the consulting expert as pleasant, inspiring, beneficial, etc.). In the field of popular culture—to which Neckel directly refers to—the “qual- ity” of the product often has no independent role. The act of purchase alone indi- cates the value. In the face of such new guiding principles of work within society, the sensibility for the discrepancy between performance and work—central to Ichheiser—also declines. When performance is directly merged into successful conveyance, the marketability becomes the benchmark for the level of expertise and the social basis of the performance ideology disappears.
Against this backdrop, I agree with Neckel’s (2008, 2010, 2012) theory that the recourse to performance capability—in order to legitimize success—increasingly loses in importance. However, this finding can only be plausibly maintained in the sense of being a tendency, simply because significant gaps exist between the medial dominance of the aforementioned guiding principles; the real prevalence within society of the respective forms of labor. Neckel (2008, 2010, 2012) and Bröckling (2007) and also Boltanski and Chiapello (2006), similar to the above mentioned, detect the development of a new spirit of capitalism and base their argument on contemporary management literature, i.e., texts programmatically highly charged and intended to establish market trends and visions that have not yet arrived in the mainstream working world and popular culture.
In his works about the legitimizing base of the financially driven capitalism, Neckel (2008, 2010, 2012) also detects an ambivalent development that the perfor- mance principle is by no means worn-out but rather plays a central role in the neo- liberal self-optimizing discourse, particularly in the contemporary world (compare also Bröckling, 2007). The self-optimizing discourse operates in principle on the basis of a wide decoupling of success and performance. Success is seen as a contin- gent result of competition within (globally organized) markets. Social actors have to orient themselves in their conduct of life along the demands of the market without being able to expect for their initial performances an immediate positive confirma- tion. The performance ideology of the self-optimization linked to the demand for personal adjustment and alignment along the market is insofar no longer coupled to (external) success but rather to basically thought infinite work on the self.
Performance in the sense of a never completed or completable self-conduct under permanent guardianship of the omnipresent principle of competition is, in this sense, independent of the dimension of (competitive) success that constitutes a dis- continuous and contingent reward of market positions. The formula of who per- forms well will be successful is no longer useful. However, the disciplinary flipside of the formula becomes even stronger: he who does not perform (i.e., does nothing
for the market related self-optimization) has no claim to success is hold against all those who, for whatever reason, come out short in the competition. The ideological defense is thereby targeted foremost against the demonstration of the obscenity of competition itself, i.e., against the demonstration that competitive successes are often precisely not achieved where the necessary performances leading to success are visible.32 The precondition of being able to be successful is the willingness to comprehensively work on oneself, though this work is by no means a guarantee for success. However, who refuses to work on oneself, i.e., does not want to perform, does not deserve success.
Ichheiser’s basic approach to understanding success and productivity or perfor- mance as interlaced aspects of a social grid of legitimation—and to thereby compre- hend the social conditions of the action of social actors—remains topical against this backdrop. What needs to be newly defined with respect to the contemporary tendencies in the working world is the point of insertion of the performance ideol- ogy as well as the contribution of this ideology to the legitimization and immuniza- tion of inequalities in the distribution of economic (and social) successes. The above already cited sentence of Rolf Haubl (2008) “Who ever wins the competition has acted correctly” (p. 317) gains true sharpness only in the inversion. Who loses the competition has acted incorrectly (either way)!
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