Managerial Aesthetics, or Documenta Fifteen | Hacker News Reader

Managerial Aesthetics, or Documenta Fifteen

deepsocks.substack.com

24 pointsbshepard20 comments

Author of the piece here. One reader wondered what it was that make these aesthetics managerial. Think, perhaps, here about how Baroque artwork glorified emerging absolutist monarchy -- through aesthetically pleasing representation of both absolutist figures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de%27_Medici_cycle) but also through aesthetic pleasing representations of absolutist power -- for instance, consider the way that Las Meninas demonstrates the power of the almost unseen Philip IV. Even though the King is only a tiny figure in the painting, everything in in space of the painting looks towards him.

By analogy, managerial aesthetics produces aesthetically pleasing representations of the "subjects" of managerial power, who are, in this case, nonprofit figureheads, and also aestheticizes managerial power itself. Contemporary art turns everything into material for contemporary art in a similar way that managerialism turns everything into something to be managed.

These books might be of interest.

https://g.co/kgs/9Ksdpv Austin, Rob, Lee Devin, Artful Making, What Managers Need to Know about how Artists Work, Upper Saddle River 2003.

https://g.co/kgs/TYaoQs Bilton, Chris, Managment and Creativity. From Creative Industries to Creative Management, Malden u. a. 20006

Interesting to see this sort of reflection happening again 80 years after Burnham published The Managerial Revolution. (Something waking people up. What could it be?) Burnham outlined a lot of the same points about the new ruling class and their ideologies, which were extremely prescient but, it turns out, decades too early. WWII interrupted the trends he was observing in ways he did not forsee in 1941. But today the managerial revolution seems to be completed, without many people even noticing. We talk about a capitalist society when we live under managerialism. (Annoyingly, Burnham is wordy and fussily precise in that book, repeatedly referring to capitalism, socialism, and...managerial society. I'm glad the author corrected that to simply "managerialism".)

Bureaucracy, managerial or otherwise, is ossification of a system. Is that a problem? Only when the system itself exhibits even minor problems. With rigid bureaucracy in place, corrections to those problems become major tasks, requiring changes to the bureaucratic structures surrounding them.

Frankly, I'm more concerned with mass-marketed ideologies, with people conflating their own identities with something advertised to them. Especially post-WWII, we've rigid, often diametrically opposed, ideologies stopping societal corrections more than bureaucracy could hope to.

Both of those traits exist in capitalism and socialism. I think capitalism has the incentives (and inherent competition) in place to really refine marketing better, though. Maybe that's why it seems to be a bigger problem in a capitalist country.

Managerialism can work with both capitalist and state socialist structures. This kind of pragmatism is a great strength of the so-called "manager-fractal" - it doesn't matter, really, what the content of management is, because management is formal -- an absolutely new SHAPE of organizing human beings, one whose novelty and brutality we do not consider enough.

Burnham argues (persuasively, imho) that managerialism is a third type of social structure, and that the argument for only either capitalism OR socialism per Marx is a false dichotomy. That modernized version of that brutality you mention was demostrated for many by the past two years of management. China currently has, arguably, the most explicit and advanced form of managerialism but the West is no slouch and moving further in that direction daily (Managerialism with Western characteristics). The pandemic accelerated the trend.

Burnham's prediction shows his Marxist background: instead of thinking about social formations as alliances, he sees them inevitably as conflicts with a single dominant victor, in Marx's case the victorious class is the proletariat, in Burnhams, the "manager' --- but what actually seems to have happened is a fusion of managers and the capitalist class to create a new kind of social formation -- something we wrote about here: https://deepsocks.substack.com/p/clocking-out

Agree about Burnham's Marxist background showing throughout his analysis and predictions, and tend to find it inadequate in many respects, but he would likely reply that the so-called alliance is a temporary stage in the transition to managerialism and that the alliance is better understood as individual capitalist finding positions within the new managerial ruling class and becoming managers along the same lines as feudal lord's becoming capitalists during the previous social revolution. (Not sure if that is the meaning of your "manager-as-owner" designation.)

It seems clearer when one looks at the CCP where the capitalists are clearly subordinate to the manager class. Or in Soviet Russia where the managers eliminated the capitalists and to control over the distribution of productive wealth. (In contemporary oligarchic Russia there was a seeming inversion of the process post-USSR but I understand those positions as being subordinate to the state. Something like "serving at the pleasure of the state". And of course in Nazi Germany there was an apparent alliance of the big capitalists thinking they would have better luck controlling Hitler than the revolutionary labor movements.

I understand managerialism to be rule by those who have (or are thought to have) the skill to coordinate the productive capacities complex modern vertically and horizontally integrated economies at scale. TARP was a good example. The Global Pandemic Response is another. It is the updated, digitally enabled, realization of the dreams of Technocracy, as articulated by that early 20th century dream if globally coordinated, centrally planned, supranational managerialism.

The first few paragraphs here are astoundingly dense. It assumes that all managers are negative power social structures that rule by processes and improving processes? They can be negative, but the best managers I’ve had actually improved my work life by removing issues, finding alternatives, or by improving inefficient processes that wasted my time. The author seems to ignore any positive aspect

There are plenty of positive aspects to all oppressive systems, that's why they exist, but these positive aspects are typically overmentioned: this is a critical piece, and so that's why it focuses on the negative/oppressive aspects.

So any system, small or large, with a manager is automatically an oppressive system? You don’t provide the justification for that statement

Interesting but i wish there was more depth to it. From the article: >there remains a vital commercial subsphere in the artworld The above is offered in opposition to the para-academic side of the art world. However, that sentence does a lot of heavy lifting. There are well known issues with money laundering in the art world, tax evasion, speculation etc... Given that the commercial side of art may notbe a proper market, i am not sure that it is vital in the sense of bringing vitality to the art world.

Money laundering, tax evasion and speculation are parts of normal market life; their existence does not challenge the vitality of the commercial sphere. This vitality arises from the constant need for novelty that (this kind of) market structure introduces.

The perception is that this is a large part of what constitutes the art market.

"Certain oppressive systems - capitalism, racism, the patriarchy, ecocide"

Feels like category error to start with, at least to me. Putting racism and capitalism together is pretty strong and not as self evident as claimed. I always struggle with articles - whether thousand years old Plato or modern blogs - with sentences that start "we can all agree that..." on something I at least need a WHOLE lot of proof before I grant the premise.

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In all the critiques of managerialism though, I wonder how manager is defined. Seemingly inherently evil. So what's the alternative? The purest abstract form of anarcho communism with no process, no hierarchy, no rules, and no leadership? It feels... Academically naive. An interesting thought experiment of the "imagine perfect mass-less sphere in perfect vacuum alone in universe" sort. It's fun to ponder, but completely impractical.

If I go to Escape room with 8 of my friends, as I did last night, relationships and processes will develop before 60minutes expire. Is that managerialism and inherently evil? If not where's that massive red line that makes all managers everywhere evil?

Evil wasn't mentioned in this article, only oppression. If you don't think that the managerial system is oppressive, perhaps it isn't to you, but many people around the world find administrated life unbearable.

I think that's semantics. If oppression is not evil / undesirable / bad, then definitions for each have been diluted beyond use. And I think you agree that oppression is bad, based on your statements.

My question therefore remains - is every manager bad? Are we to burn them all? Are all rules or processes or structures inherently and always bad? Is anything but pure anarchy oppressive? Is all society horrible?

If yes, that's a fascinating, and I put forward unrealistic perspective.

If not, then I think that's the interesting part of conversation. What is a manager that a leader isn't? What makes a manager bad? What makes a system oppressive?

Otherwise it's just a meaningless "managers are bad" platitudes for cheap points.

Edit / add on

Basically I'm still stuck on first claim that managers are inherently I oppressive. I had bad managers and they were oppressive. I had good managers and they were liberating. They took care of organizing things. Just like last night - somebody seemlessly took care of timing, keeping track of numbers and puzzles, and helping us resolve confusion and communication. So rest of us could focus on fun and puzzles. They were a good manager and the opposite of oppressive. so I still need some backing before I grant or consider that premise given in such a universalist fashion.

Edit 2 - re read and come on. You put racism and capitalism and managers in same statement as members of same category. If that's not calling them evil I don't know what it is :-)

Oppression is very natural: the moral value of "nature" is quite complex, so it seems inaccurate to say that oppression equates with evil, or badness, although certainly it does in many contemporary political cultures. This is a sign of the shallowness of these political cultures, their tendency to think in polarized/binary ways. You are doing that here too, with your question about whether managers are 'always bad' -- that isn't the question, managerialism is an oppressive/violent system of rule and domination that emerged, that became dominant, and that hides itself. It hides itself because people have a hard time grasping complex historical systems. They want to moralize them, either from anti or pro positions. Such moralizing doesn't accomplish very much. Surely I am guilty of it as well, too, but seek to be aware of my own moralisms, which your comments have helped with. Thank you!

I agree that a good manager can be liberating. One piece of advice that stuck with me is that good leadership / management is about serving your team.

Another note from the author: it is interesting to me that so many of the commentators seem to think that I believe management to be evil. There are relatively obvious reasons for why readers might come to this conclusion: the start of the piece compares it to other "oppressive systems" (capitalism, racism.) Most people tend to think of oppression as evil or bad because they inhabit a slave morality - that is, a form of ethics designed to undermine the power of rulers and boost the power of the oppressed. It is very difficult not to inhabit some kind of slave morality: it's in our language.

Like all social systems, Managerialism has victims. But unlike many other social systems, we don't have a word for these victims, or the experience of being victimized. For many, only a faint memory of life outside of Managerworld remains.

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