It's the Economy (of) Stupid: Or, Destroying the Economy to Save its Image

 

Cops in Chicago, defending private property while devaluing the brand. 

In some of the most rhetorically dense passages of Capital, passages that I have cited again and again, Marx puts forward the idea that the economy, or at least market relations produce their own image, their own spontaneous ideology. As Marx writes,

"This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all."

This image can no more be separated from the thing itself than a shadow can be removed from an object. As Fredric Jameson writes,

"...the ideology of the market is unfortunately not some supplementary ideational or representational luxury or embellishment that can be removed from the economic problem and be sent over to some cultural or superstructural morgue, to be dissected by specialists over there. It is somehow generated by the thing itself, as is objectively necessary afterimage; somehow both dimensions must be registered together, in their identity as well as their difference."

Or, as I have put it, the order and connection of ideology is the same as the order and connection of exploitation. 

All of this is a long, and perhaps theoretically dense, introduction to a problem I have been thinking about. In the first month and a half of the second Trump presidency we have seen massive cuts to the federal workforce, and further indirect cuts by the reduction of grants. All of this, largely done by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, has been presented as the cutting of waste and fraud. Of course there has been no attempt to even explain why these are waste and fraud. The fundamental assumption is that these jobs, because they are government jobs, funded by taxes rather than generating profits, must by definition be wasteful. There is not even a consideration of what the jobs are supposed to do, if the services they provide, everything from funding cancer research to monitoring the weather, might have value. Moreover, almost no one seems concerned about the ripple effect of laying off hundreds of thousands of people. Which is to say even if you could argue that they did nothing worthwhile, like Keynes' proverbial worker who digs and then refills ditches, you would have to admit that large scale unemployment is still going to have negative economic effects. These newly laid off government workers are not buying cars, appliances, or going out to eat, and that has effects on those who sell those things. They will file for unemployment, and compete with other workers for jobs. 

Cops Guarding Cybertruck

Which returns me to the theoretical point from Marx and Jameson, albeit with a twist. What we have in these cuts is to some extent the juxtaposition of the image of the economy against its reality. This image of the economy is one without the need for government programs, without the need of scientific research or regulation, without any externalities, positive or negative. It is an economy in which everything that is of value is done in the pursuit of surplus value. If people will not pay for it then it is not worth doing. Everyone works hard and everyone can get rich. 

This image of the economy has a moral dimension as well, which is also twisted. It is a morality of ressentiment. There is contempt for these government workers. Contempt for how little they supposedly work, Musk pointed out that they do not even work weekends. It is not just the hours they work but what they do, as David Graeber argued, there is often contempt for those who find some sort of purpose or meaning in their work. In short, it is a morality of negative solidarity. The underlying premise is that there is some worker out there who is not working hard enough, it is benefiting from your taxes, and, worse yet, they think they are better than you because they believe that their work is important and meaningful. Such a sentiment can even be found among the families of those who have lost their jobs as park rangers and government researchers. 

At this point it seems that what we have here is some kind of completion of inversion in which the image, the spectacle, of the economy, the idea of everyone working hard, of self-interest, and profits, is more important than the reality. That these job and funding cuts, combined with tariffs and other actions, might actually drive the economy into a recession shows to what extent reality has been replaced by its image. As a nod to Jameson it might be necessary to be more dialectical. One could argue that this preference for the image over reality is brought about by a reality that fails to live up to its image. People who work hard realize that hard work does not bring the rewards they were promised. If reality does not match its image, if working hard is not realizing the American dream then it must because something, or someone, as perverted or distorted that dream. There are no shortage of scapegoats for this failure of image to match reality, from "illegal immigrants" to government workers. Trump's talent as a politician, and the defining feature of his presidency is to mobilize the image of the economy, one in which hard work pays off and the best people become wealthy, against its current reality, a reality in which wages stagnate and inflation makes it harder to make a living.