'The Language of Capitalism Isn't Just Annoying, It's Dangerous'

An anonymous reader shares a report: When General Motors laid off more than 6,000 workers days after Thanksgiving, John Patrick Leary, the author of the new book Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, tweeted out part of GM CEO Mary Barra's statement. 'The actions we are taking today continue our transformation to be highly agile, resilient, and profitable, while giving us the flexibility to invest in the future,' she said. Leary added a line of commentary to of Barra's statement: 'Language was pronounced dead at the scene.' Why should we pay attention to the particular words used to describe, and justify, the regularly scheduled 'disruptions' of late capitalism? Published this month by Haymarket Books, Leary's Keywords explores the regime of late-capitalist language: a set of ubiquitous modern terms, drawn from the corporate world and the business press, that he argues promulgate values friendly to corporations (hierarchy, competitiveness, the unquestioning embrace of new technologies) over those friendly to human beings (democracy, solidarity, and scrutiny of new technologies' impact on people and the planet).

These words narrow our conceptual horizons -- they 'manacle our imagination,' Leary writes -- making it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our economy and society. We are encouraged by powerful 'thought leaders' and corporate executives to accept it as the language of common sense or 'normal reality.' When we understand and deploy such language to describe our own lives, we're seen as good workers; when we fail to do so, we're implicitly threatened with economic obsolescence. After all, if you're not conversant in 'innovation' or 'collaboration,' how can you expect to thrive in this brave new economy? Calling our current economic system 'late capitalism' suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies, what we're living through is just the next iteration of an old system of global capitalism. In other words, he writes, 'cheer up: things have always been terrible!' What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our 'belief in the omnipotence of technology' and in experts. He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.

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