CAPITALISM AND LEGITIMATION
These critiques have recently been reconceptualized as central to the transformation of capitalism. In a major recent work, Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello register and analyze the emergence of The New Spirit ofCapitalism (2005), thus building on and updating the classic work of Max Weber. While accepting Weber’s basic framework regarding the “spirit” of capitalism, they introduce two important modifications, rendering it historical and critical. The historical dimension they introduce refers to the transformations of capitalism. Concurrent with the transformations in the operation of capitalism, its spirit changes as well. Following the framework of Régulation School theory, they detect a radical break in the spirit of capitalism between Fordism and post-Fordism. The Fordist spirit was characterized by a long-term commitment between employers and employees and by the sense of building a career path within the business organization. Businesses and corporations were clearly demarcated and distinguished from one another and from the generalized market; organizations were hierarchized and centralized; workers were expected to become highly skilled in specific tasks at which they would become increasingly proficient.
In contrast, the new spirit of capitalism that emerges with post-Fordism is based on notions of flexibility, networks, and connectionism. It entails short-term and temporal relationships between employers and employees. The locus of production becomes the network rather than autonomous companies; the axis of production becomes the ad hoc project, and work involves not specialization but the ability to multitask (see also Bauman 2001; Sennet 2000, 2006).
In addition to historicizing Weber’s notion of “spirit,” Boltanski and Chiapello also offer a more radicalized reading of Weber, giving it a critical edge. With his study on capitalism, Weber has taught us that capitalism entails not only the material necessities of a particular mode of production but also the idyllic features of a spirit that makes capitalism reasonable from the points of view of individual actors (Weber 1958). Between the social structure of capitalism and the agency of actors lies the realm of meaning. The spirit of capitalism endows meaning (at first, performing one’s “Divine Calling” to the best of one’s ability in order to gain prescience about salvation and, later, rationality) to action (the endless accumulation of capital). The spirit of capitalism provides the motivation for actors to participate in the practices of capitalism and to pursue the roles assigned to them with seriousness and intent. It provides a framework within which the mundane actions involved in the reproduction of society are given (a transcendental) meaning. In turn, it also gives capitalism legitimacy and stability. The spirit of capitalism is a discourse (to use a later term) that both describes and enables capitalism.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age