Text Sushi by Alf Rehn

Economy, it seems, is no laughing matter. Economy, it seems, is the real deal, serious matters, the no-frills package. Where economics is the dismal science, business studies is obviously the serious science, the research of that which is done for a reason. And the reasons for doing are, in this field, always assumed to be serious. Still, since the very beginning of organized economic activity in the Paleolithic era, most of the energy and resources expended have gone towards the frivolous – the production of toys and baubles. At the same time, management and organization studies (MOS) has, due to an unfortunate fallacy, almost exclusively studied ‘serious’ businesses (e.g. car manufacture, steel mills et cetera) mistakenly believing these to be primary economic areas, even though this can easily be contradicted. Thus, most if not all of management studies as a field is based on a view of economy that is, quite simply, wrongheaded. The validity of such management studies consequently comes into question, being rooted not in economic facts but in moralizations about economy. The role played by man’s unquenchable thirst for frivolities (such as games, fun, pleasure, joy, toys, trinkets) is perhaps even more pronounced today, in contemporary ‘post-industrial’ society, but has always played the main role in economy – note that e.g. world trade and globalization originated in the business of spices and drugs (coffee, tea, tobacco), frivolities of the first order. This will be my starting point. But a starting point for what? My contention is that the discussions undertaken regarding management and economy in a post-industrial economy is hampered by how we understand the basis of economic action, and our way to ascribe lofty reasons for it. This essay thus discusses how the frivolous and the playful, dimensions traditionally placed at the margins or even outside economic logic, exist at the very core of what economy, understood as a system of meaningful exchanges, is.

My interest, however, is most closely focused on a specific ordering of economic activity, one often referred to as managerialism. This refers to a way to look at economy that emphasizes the role of planning, control and steering, and has become a dominant perspective in its own right. Whereas economics (in any of its guises) studies the larger economic order, and consumption studies and marketing the interplay between offerings and consumption, management has become a catch-all for intentional, instrumental economic action. In my perspective, this includes the field of “organization studies”, so that the larger field can be referred to as management and organization studies – MOS. Management, as an activity, is usually comprehended as something that has at least a core of rational, functionalist logic: “In order to achieve X we must do Y”. This, however, posits that the aims of management, the end results of managerial action, are assumed to be taken-for-granted concepts, given truths a priori. This, as noted by Gustafsson*1*, constitutes the metaphysics of economic reason, where notions such as ‘utility’ and ‘necessity’ play an important part. “In order to achieve X” means that this X, whatever it may be – an annual profit, the invasion of a country, a better mousetrap – remains unquestioned, as an accepted part of the equation. And inasmuch as it is questioned, the answer is assumed to take on a similar form: “Why should we make a profit annually? Because this will enable us to serve our stakeholders.” And why should they be served? Because, because, because… There is always assumed to be a reason, an underlying logic that one can fall back on. And, at the micro-economic heart of business studies, this logic is thought to be one of utility, the fulfillment of needs, doing good.

Although business is often derided as often unethical and having morals only when it suits other purposes, there exists a specific notion about the ethical underpinnings thereof, namely that business creates results that can be critically analyzed as being more or less useful and sensible. For instance, although some have criticized the market economy for creating side effects that are harmful – uneven distribution of wealth, ecological mishaps – such criticism has still usually implicitly accepted that there is a point to economy, a meaningful creation of useful things. Similarly, the apologists of the market economy usually point to all the “good things” that capitalism has created, often through the rhetoric device of “material well-being”. Both proponents and opponents of the market economy seem to agree that an economic system should strive to doing good, even though they are divided on the subject of what this means and what can be accepted on the way towards this goal.

Although any explanation that builds on polar opposites by necessity becomes a caricature, I can perhaps utilize this to illustrate my counter-position. Pro-market thinking, which dominates MOS, commonly argue for their position by pointing out that the market economy creates valuable and useful things. Without the market economy, they say, we’d have less choice, fewer utilities, our needs would be met less adequately. To this those critical of the market economy might answer: “Yes, but do we really need all these things? We live in luxury, and destroy the planet while we’re at it.” Further, not all have those things we do, so there is a fundamental injustice to it all, when some have their needs met and some do not. We might learn to live with less, like those quaint primitives Marshall Sahlins described and who seem to have lead fairly nice lives. What is important to note, is that in this latter critique, the real point is missed. By applying a moral judgement to economy, an important analytic point is lost. Where one camp argues that the economy produces necessities, the other argues against the need for these. A third way,the way suggested here, is to acknowledge the simple fact that although the market economy produces frivolities, unnecessary items, this needn’t be a problem.

Whereas those who would to the economy afford the marvelous and quite magical capability of transforming whatever is added to its machinery into precious and supremely useful commodities, one could reasonably be far more taken with the fact that people will, at great expense, purchase and consume a wide variety of things which to an outside observer (such as the famed Azande anthropologist) would seem almost inexplicably pointless. For instance, I have the pleasure of working with a researcher who does work on the production of themepark attractions, and who has memorably referred to the prime example of such, the rollercoaster, as a “machine for the transportation of human subjects in three dimensions so that the start and end points are the same”. Her somewhat sterile wording is of course important. A rollercoaster is a pointless machine, and has no useful purpose, as it does, in fact, merely transport its passengers back to the exact point they started. This, however, belies its importance. The enjoyment people can derive from one has nothing whatsoever to do with any imagined utility inherent in its use. Were we, for instance, to hear a person claim that she goes on rollercoasters for medical reasons we would normally react with suspicion or laughter. Instead, a machine such as this has to be understood as a frivolity, something which has meaning but no simple, singular utility.

This imagined critic might state that I thereby have shown that the economy is, in fact, a mistake. Much of what it does (most, in fact) has no real use-value, in Marx’s simple sense of the word. This seems wrong, to a lot of people. The spewing forth of an endless line of products no-one needs and the majority of people cannot afford seems like the result of a machine gone haywire, and this is de facto close to how the market economy is often viewed. In such a view, an error has been commited, and the machinery meant for useful production has been perverted into creating the pointless gor profit. Such theorizing can be found in a number of schools of thought, but perhaps most poignantly within the the writings of the Frankfurt School, i.e. within “Critical Theory”. What is interesting in such a critique is the way in which the meaning of economy becomes extremely similar within the two camps one would think would disagree over this very point. Both would, implicitly, view that there exists a correct developmental path for economy, one that would bring about both quantitative and qualitative improvements in the production and distribution of useful things. Thus, the critique against contemporary market economies usually hinge on the fact this process has been twisted by consumerism. Pro-market thinking will say that the market will choose wisely (as proven by improved standards of living), and anti-market thinking will argue the opposite. Both thus imagine that wisdom and prudence is at the heart of economy, and that the definition of these notions will serve to decide the issue.

The problem might be in a notion developed by the aforementioned Karl Marx, namely that of use-value. This concept is central to his thinking, and refers, simply put, to the usefulness of any given commodity. To Marx (any many others), this is the truest form of value, the way in which different things can be compared according to their usefulness. Drilling equipment has higher use-value than a hammer, partly because the former is a more complex construction and has thus taken more work to put together. Further, such equipment can be applied to more difficult tasks, i.e. its uses are more multifaceted. A hammer is more useful than a hairpin, for much the same reasons, and a toy has so little use-value that it is usually ignored completely. What Marx then notes is how exchange-value can pervert the natural order given by the categorization implied by use-value. Sometimes, depending on a number of factors, exchange-value becomes disattached from use-value, and this has many implications. This debate still rages on, in the sense that usefulness and utility are continuously either implicitly or explicitly referred to as natural and logical ways to view the true value of things. There is, however, a simple philosophical error that is often done in talking about these things. Use-value is here viewed as an essential aspect, a quality, of a thing, even though use, as a concept, is fluid and contextual. The notion of a natural and immutable use-value is, in fact, no more stringent than the idea that every hour has a specific economic value regardless of what one does with said hour. The notion of use-value is however one that Marx explicitly wants to exclude from discussions of economy:

The commodity itself appears as unity of two aspects. It is use value, i.e., object of the satisfaction of any system whatever of human needs. This is its material side, which the most disparate epochs of production may have in common, and whose examination therefore lies beyond political economy.

It is a strange statement, and Marx goes on to state that the very notion of use-value is presupposed generally and never really engaged with in a market economy, as the commodity-form of things forces people to relate to these through other forms of knowing than the assumedly pure category of use, specifically to their abstracted value in a system of exchanges. This abstraction, the exchange-value of the commodity is completely detached from the use of the object, and it is this specific form of extreme abstraction that enables capitalist logic to dominate that which Braudel referred to as the “material life”. With this in mind, it is interesting to note how Marx refers to use-value as something to exclude from political economy on the basis that it is too general a notion. Whereas the abstraction that is the exchange-value of the commodity form is assumedly both universal and treatable, the universality of the material form of need satisfaction “of any system whatever” is seemingly by Marx viewed as an anthropological matter. The use of an object is, in this way, the rudiment that Marx leaves unanalyzed.

A thing, any thing, obviously and by logical necessity has a number of uses. Although it is not true that anything can be done by any thing, almost everything can be done by a number of things and every thing can be used for a number of uses. A mobile phone can be used to drive in a nail, even though it is less suited to this than a hammer is. A mobile phone can also, even within its core capabilities, be used in many ways. Its use-value as a way to call mom might be less than its use-value for phone-sex or vice versa, depending on how one actually, in a local context, uses a phone. For a lonely bachelor living with his parents in a rural community, the primary use of a phone, particularly one that can be easily transported to a more private surrounding, may well be for sexual entertainment. Calling mom and the ambulance are selling points, but not the main thing that gives the object use-value. The same may not hold for the identical mobile phone of his mother. It is thus difficult to say anything specific about an imagined true use of such a thing. We could instead say that things have multiple use-values, so that their value is less something within the object and more within the context they are conceived in. The use-value of an object is in such a view something that is created when an object is made meaningful. Turning away from the notion of a single, overarching notion of use, and replacing this with a view that emphazises how things are actually made meaningful and then used, value thus becomes a far less clear concept. The singular use-value of the aforementioned rollercoaster is almost impossible to deduct, since it has no real utility, no objective use. Still, as a decidedly pointless machine, it can be used in many ways – to titillate, to scare, to flirt on – that makes the use thereof meaningful. This difference in how we approach the word “use” is highly important.