The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers (41 page)

As Stravinsky suggested, the prestige of the conductor is, at least in part, another case of markets triumphing over art, hardly an unknown outcome.

Summing up, the power of the conductor, which seemed almost natural even to as critical a thinker as Marx, seems to be integrally connected with the whole system of Procrusteanism. Romanticism, reflecting the unleashing of bourgeois individualism, played a role.

In contrast, Fleisher’s experience with the Orpheus Orchestra suggests that forms of organization ordinarily taken for granted may not be the best way of organizing society. Just as centuries ago capitalism set free bourgeois energies that had been repressed under feudalism, a new form could be equally liberating for the masses of people presently trapped in their Procrustean beds.

A Window to the Future

Just as musical Procrusteanism cut into the creative powers of musicians, class lines restricted participation in the creativity of symphonic music. An experiment in Venezuela suggests the degree to which breaking down such barriers can contribute to the pool of creativity.

In 1975, when Venezuela had only two symphony orchestras, José Antonio Abreu founded the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela to give poor, disadvantaged youth an opportunity to become acquainted with symphonic music—the same genre that such people were supposed to be incapable of appreciating. By the time that one of these children, Gustavo Dudamel, became twenty-six, the
New York Times
described him as the most-talked-about young musician in the world. Sir Simon Rattle, the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has called him “the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across.” At a time when recording companies are cutting back on orchestral releases, Dudamel has received a coveted contract with Deutsche Grammophon and has released two CDs of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies. Already a frequent presence in European halls, he began his most extended appearance in the United States in 2010, performing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston—and, for the first time, in New York, with the New York Philharmonic and, at Carnegie Hall, with his own Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

Dudamel is still a conductor, but a different kind of conductor. Igor Lanz, the executive director of the private foundation that administers the now government-financed program, explained, “They learn that the most important thing is to work together in one common aim.” This ethic seems to come across to Dudamel’s colleagues. One of his fellow musicians explained how he breaks with the traditional mold of the Procrustean conductor:

“We used to believe that a conductor is an old, introverted guy,” says Rafael Payares, who plays French horn in the orchestra and is one of Dudamel’s closest friends. “But this is the same Gustavo you used to see playing the violin or throwing parties. He’s still the same—crazy.”
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Dudamel made his reputation outside of Venezuela at the first Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in 2004. Ironically, Mahler’s symphonies were at the forefront of the Romantic movement that produced complex symphonies that seemed to demand a domineering conductor.

Dudamel’s achievements raise a question central to this book: how many poor children languishing in slums around the world might be potential symphony conductors, scientists, doctors, or inventors? The Venezuelan experiment suggests that people should begin to consider the answer to that question.

Freedom in a Procrustean State

If the only alternatives are a Procrustean state or a willy-nilly world of everybody “doing their own thing,” then Isaiah Berlin and the more extreme Procrusteans may have a legitimate point. If, however, people have the potential to cooperate without harsh authority, then Berlin’s work is misleading.

For example, many communities have symphony orchestras made up of volunteers. Their music would not be very enjoyable if all the musicians were free to play whatever they wanted regardless of anyone else. Not only do such musicians agree to play the same score, but they also generally work under the direction of a conductor—often a volunteer, who helps to coordinate their performances. As in the case of Venezuela, the conductor often also serves as a teacher, since many of the performers are still learning their craft.

Everybody in the orchestra shares the same goal of creating an enjoyable musical experience for both the audience and the musicians. When the orchestra musicians become sufficiently skilled, they might even do without the conductor. Procrustes certainly has no place at such an event.

Similarly, some communities have volunteer fire departments, which protect the straitened timbers of buildings. These volunteers do quite well, even though the logic of the market would lead “rational”
people to conclude that they have no incentive to participate—better to wait for others to take their place.

Some hard-minded Procrusteans might admit that such activities might be possible under exceptional circumstances. After all, the core of Procrustean philosophy is the belief that selfishness and egotism are hard-wired into human brains and that without strong discipline the law of the jungle will prevail. Of course, proof or disproof of opinions about human nature is impossible.

The Procrusteans go further by imagining a fantasy world in which everybody prospers by following the law of the market. Even ignoring the damage done to workers, the evidence that the market operates efficiently is questionable. Most of these inefficiencies pass unnoticed until a large number of them come together in the form of a strong recession or even depression. Franklin Roosevelt illustrated this delayed recognition of the defects of the market in his Second Inaugural Address, when he said, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”
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I explored the questionable efficiency of markets elsewhere, especially in
The Natural Instability of Markets
(1999).

Regardless of whether markets work well or not, contemporary market society has gone well beyond the ideas of Adam Smith, whose
Theory of Moral Sentiments
emphasized that market society would only function well if people exercised a degree of moral restraint. Smith proposed that people would behave that way in order to protect their reputation.

A person’s reputation may be important in a small community, where people have to repeatedly interact with one another. In contrast, in a global economy where people are mobile, the concept of community means less. Failed CEOs can earn multimillion-dollar bonuses. Less “successful” people can repeatedly reinvent themselves, leaving their previous reputations behind. Disgraced corporations can adopt a new name, with the expectation that the public will soon forget their past misdeeds. As a result, protecting one’s good name means far less than Smith once imagined.

Here we come to the central irony of the “Crooked Timber” perspective. When the Procrusteans worry about the need for discipline,
their concerns are not consistent across class lines. Yes, ordinary people must be held in check, but the rich and powerful must be free to do what they please. Burdensome regulation will imperil the economy.

When financial scandals occur, we hear that only a few bad apples were involved. Why in the world should anybody believe that only a few bad apples exist within the upper reaches of society, while the rest of the population, which did not cause the problem, requires strict discipline?

Under the bright glare of the scandals, superficial regulations will be put in place, but only for a short period. A barrage of propaganda will eventually assure the public that such regulation is counterproductive. The war cry of “jobs, jobs, jobs” will come into play—unless the regulations are loosened, jobs are certain to be lost.

In his presidential address to the American Economic Association, recent Nobel Prize–winner Daniel McFadden warned against this perverted market fundamentalism: “Romantics of the economic right would carry the concepts of self-interested consumers and free markets even further, embracing a withering of authority and a nirvana of … self-reliance.”
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Of course, the authority that would wither away is the authority of the state to interfere with business. The Procrustean state would remain intact to protect the authority of those with capital.

Just What Is Work?

To understand the potential for transforming the economy, consider a simple example that does not require much of a stretch of the imagination. Just think of the enormous contrast between farm work for wages and gardening as a hobby. Farm work is considered to be so abhorrent in the United States that we regularly hear that only foreign-born workers are willing to perform it. Supposedly, upstanding citizens of the United States would never subject themselves to the life of a farm worker for poverty wages.

While farm labor may be among the hardest, most dangerous work in our society, many people regard gardening as a pleasant diversion.
While the United Farm Workers Union represents mostly downtrodden workers, a good number of wealthy people are proud affiliates of their blue-blood garden clubs. Over and above the time they spend in their gardens, many gardeners enthusiastically devote considerable leisure time to conversing or reading in order to become better gardeners. In addition, many gardeners also willingly spend substantial sums for equipment and supplies to use in their gardens.

What, then, is the underlying difference between farm work and gardening? Farm work typically entails hard physical labor, but many gardeners also exert themselves in their gardens. The difference lies in the context of gardening. Gardeners, unlike farm workers, freely choose to be gardeners. During the time they work in their gardens, they want to be gardening. Nobody tells them what to do. Gardeners are producing for themselves rather than for someone else who will benefit from their work.

As the psychologist John Neulinger says: “Everyone knows the difference between doing something because one has to and doing something because one wants to.”
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We should also keep in mind that society respects gardeners. Our newspapers regularly print features of interest to gardeners. Some even have special sections to appeal to their affluent gardening readers. All the while, the lives of farm workers pass virtually unnoticed. In our society, farm work is never “respectable” work; well-to-do families would not approve of their children becoming farm workers.

Of course, gardeners are not entirely free to follow their whims. The rhythms of the seasons and the sudden shifts in the weather dictate some of what the gardeners do, but gardeners generally accept these demands beforehand.

The pleasures of gardening are not some recent discovery. For example, Adam Smith attempted to justify the low earning of farm workers. According to Smith, farm work is so enjoyable that too many people rush to take up such work, pushing wages down. He wrote:

Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable
amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime.
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Gardening is not the only manual work that can be appealing. Some wealthy executives restore old cars, run vineyards, or make fine furniture. Recently, the
Wall Street Journal
published a story about executives who “find inner peace in carpentry.” One of these people declared that there’s nothing like the deep rumble of a $2,700 Powermatic table saw.
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If we paid farm workers as well as those who labor on Wall Street and accorded them the sort of dignity that college professors enjoy, parents might still try to steer their children away from farm work because of the frequent exposure to potentially lethal toxins. But then, if society esteemed farm workers, their employers would not and could not spray them with impunity.

One cannot turn farm workers into gardeners or CEOs into carpenters overnight. Some work is inherently unpleasant. The method of creating a decent society will not be found in a book.

The importance of this discussion is to illustrate the destructive influence of social hierarchies, whether or not they are the formal product of a capitalist system of production. The process of organizing a good society will require much struggle, even after the creation of a socialist republic.

Madmen in Authority

As suggested earlier, the key to the Procrustean trap is not the threat of physical force but rather the inability to imagine anything outside of the constrained present circumstances. The willingness to take seriously Margaret Thatcher’s preposterous claim—“There is no alternative”—perfectly sums up this state of mind.

A writer for
Bloomberg.com
reminisced about Thatcher’s Procrustean destructive success:

Of course, it’s possible to change a society and to drag it into the global economic monoculture. Mrs. Thatcher showed how: Break up collectives and make people feel a little bit more alone in the world. Cut a few holes in the social safety net. Raise the status of money-making, and lower the status of every other activity. Stop giving knighthoods to artists and start giving them to department-store moguls. Stop listening to intellectuals and start listening to entrepreneurs and financiers.

Stick to the plan long enough and the people who are good at making money acquire huge sums and, along with them, power. In time, they become the culture’s dominant voice. And they love you for it.
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Thatcher’s scheme actually worked. Her acolytes were so convinced that the mere utterance of Thatcher’s acronym TINA seemed sufficient to cut off any debate with skeptics. In the process, the long-term prospects of the British economy suffered, while great wealth flowed to a minority. I am reminded of the comment of an early British leader about the victories of the invading Roman army: “They create a desolation, they call it peace.”
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