Futilitarianism: On Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness (Goldsmiths Press / PERC Papers)

Product Information

The book concludes with a chapter titled “The Becoming-Common of the Futilitariat.” The goal here is imagine political organisation around the idea of futility, much in the same way that precarity has been used to organise seemingly disparate labour experiences of in the neoliberal decades. I argue that the term futility can reach even further than precarity, because even those who exist in more secure economic, social, and political situations can still be trapped in the futilitarian condition. What needs to occur, I suggest is a process of “becoming-common”—an understanding of which I adapt form the German political theorist Isabell Lorey—which, in short, entails a process of mutual recognition of the shared experience of futility. These experiences are of course not equivalent—some people experience much more extreme and violent forms of futility—but they do attest to a social relationality that can form the basis of political organisation. The example of the contemporary university can help contextualize the concept of the futilitarian condition. The university is now dependent on a vast army of casual and adjunct teaching staff, mostly postgraduate students or post-PhD gig workers, without whom the university would collapse. Yet these staff are routinely treated with contempt by university hierarchies, and exploited on short-term contracts that rarely cover the entirety of the hours they actually work. While these thinkers may differ on how utility should be maximized, and who reaps the rewards of this process, few have disagreed that the maximization of utility is in and of itself a good thing. After all, where would human society be without utility?

The proceeds from your monthly pledge will go directly towards sustaining ROAR as an independent publication and building our collective power as a movement. Few, these days, hold utilitarianism in high regard, as it relies on the calculation of utility and reduces the richness of life into pleasure and pain. As an ethical framework, it advocates the course of action determined by what decision maximizes ‘utility’, i.e., pleasure, happiness, or wellbeing for the most people. Jeremy Bentham coined the theory in 1789 and John Stuart Mill then built upon it, and in its day utilitarianism was a revolutionary turn in moral philosophy. Challenging the religion-based codes of ethics of the day, utilitarianism was rational, radical, and refreshing to the late Enlightenment thinkers it inspired. For many capitalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the solution lay not in moral or political philosophy but economic theory — which nonetheless had a quasi-utilitarian ethos. Importing the evolutionary idea of the market as a mechanism that had emerged over time to maximize utility, figures like Francis Edgeworth argued that a society where individuals competed with one another in the production and sale of goods would maximize utility over time. This is because capitalist firms would be incentivized to gratify the greatest number of human needs, while individual consumers would be free to consume whatever goods gave them the highest levels of pleasure. The book examines and theorizes futilitarianism as an ever-deepening process of individual entrapment, which occurs both despite and because of individuals' efforts to improve their own conditions. We inhabit a system that simultaneously prescribes and prevents individual "well-being." As we pursue our individual (and often even collective) goals, we paradoxically become less happy, more anxious, more indebted, more exploitable. Neil Vallelly is a Researcher at Economic and Social Research Aotearoa (ESRA) and a Research Associate at the Centre for Global Migrations, University of Otago, New Zealand. His writing has appeared in such journals as Rethinking Marxism, Angelaki, and Poetics Today, and magazines including New Internationalistand ROAR. PERCSeriesWe constantly publish web content and release thematic issues several times per year. The exact amount depends on how much support we receive from our readers. The more people sign up as patrons, the more resources we will have to commission content and pay a copy-editor to prepare everything for publication. Futilitarianism is instead a form of entrapment in the pursuit of meaningfulness, where we are forced to repeat a series of daily behaviors that ensnare us deeper into the pure logic of competition and individualism that negates any development of common bonds and collective welfare. Vallelly’s main thesis is that under neoliberal capitalism the individual pursuit of utility is totally severed from the common good and that individual utility has morphed into a widespread futility. The way in which futility permeates neoliberal capitalism is understood as fairly novel: previous variants of capitalism were exploitative and destructive, but some residual logic of utility remained intact. Though Keynesian capitalism was centred on a collective utility, Hayek prioritized the utility maximization of the individual. For Keynes, capitalism was a Faustian bargain, a flawed system he believed would deliver future progress and that would one day liberate humanity from toil. Why Keynes’ prophecy failed to materialize, i.e., why improved technology has failed to reduce working hours, continues to be a hot topic of debate. Whilst reading Vallelly (particularly alongside the late David Graeber for an exposition of neoliberal work) may not fully solve the question in its entirety, his contribution provides a compelling intervention to the debate with his notion of futility and the claims it is entangled with. Put simply, futility arises because the pursuit of individual utility ignores the common good, and without the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, utilitarianism ultimately becomes futile since we cannot avoid the fact that none of us exist outside our relationships to others. We are inherently connected to the world and to the rest of humanity; our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of others. Instead of attempting to spread the greatest happiness to the greatest number, neoliberal capitalism seems to spread the greatest unhappiness to us all. Deeply inspired by the similarly grim Mark Fisher (of Capitalist Realism fame), the book is often sobering and even melancholic. Indeed in some of its more scathing passages, Futilitarianism reads like the academic equivalent of a primal scream against the injustice and alienation of the futilitarian era. But this passion drives and deepens Vallelly’s analysis, and the book will no doubt be welcomed by all of us who seek a better alternative to the despair of neoliberalism in the age of COVID-19. Utilitarianism and Capitalism If maximising utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximise our utility—by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves—we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism: neoliberalism and the production of uselessness, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly (University of Otago) tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility and the common good. The book at once maps the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, develops an original framework for understanding neoliberalism, and recounts the lived experience of uselessness in the early twenty-first century. In doing so, it shows that countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential to building an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future.

MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide. Despite the appeal of this synthesis of utilitarianism and capitalism, it was never uncontroversial. In the twentieth century, Vallelly observes, there was a climatic struggle between socially minded utilitarians, mostly inspired by J. M. Keynes, and the increasingly strident neoliberal economists. For a while, the socially minded utilitarians were successful, and largely justified the creation of extensive welfare states on the grounds that a more even distribution of goods and services would make people happier and prevent needless suffering. Neil Vallelly’s superb new book Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness is a polemic against the emptiness of the neoliberal era. It examines both its ideological roots, history, and political culture. What we are witnessing is an important inter-generational divide between the old and the young, the baby-boomers and the millennials. The nay-sayers, dissenters and anti-capitalists across the globe are increasingly emerging from the younger generations, the very ones who were born into neoliberalism and have known nothing else.A proposal for countering the futility of neoliberal existence to build an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future. There is a clear sense in which neoliberalism constitutes a continuation of this utilitarian tradition, for instance by retaining an emphasis on utility maximization. But Vallelly rightly points out that neoliberal theory and practice stripped utilitarianism of whatever social conscience it had, and refocused its energies entirely on remaking the individual into a form of social capital totally beholden to market forces and increasingly denied even a minimally responsive state for protection. PERC seeks to refresh political economy, in the original sense of the term, as a pluralist and critical approach to the study of capitalism. In doing so it challenges the sense of economics as a discipline, separate from the other social sciences, aiming instead to combine economic knowledge with various other disciplinary approaches. This is a response to recent critiques of orthodox economics, as immune to interdisciplinarity and cut off from historical and political events. At the same time, the authority of economic experts and the relationship between academic research and the public (including, but not only, public policy-makers) are constant concerns running through PERC’s work.

As Vallelly points out, the most obvious tension in Bentham’s utilitarianism is between its individualism and concern with “a form of wellbeing that extends beyond the individual. Utilitarianism, after all, intends to maximise utility for the greatest amount of people, with, theoretically, no individual’s happiness prioritized over another’s.” Put another way, if it is psychologically true that each individual is egoistically motivated by the pursuit of pleasure for herself, how do we move from there to a moral argument that she should put her desires aside if that would secure greater happiness for others? Futilitarianism is one of those strong books which excels in outlining a birds-eye view of society and the world we inhabit. Rather than analysing neoliberalism from one limited vantage point, Vallelly draws together perspectives from different disciplines – sociological, political-economic, psychological and philosophical – to contribute a holistic account to the canon on neoliberalism. Vallelly concludes that the way to overcome futility is through a ‘becoming-common of the futilitariat’ (173). If we recognize that we are all subject to futility, though to unequal degrees, then we can begin to imagine a world in which utility is reclaimed by the people and for the common good. Without imagining a world aiming towards the common good, we will hitherto be trapped in the futilitarian condition. Futility is not just a natural consequence of neoliberal capitalism. The futility that pervades contemporary society is also implanted by politicians and media elites who promote the idea that little, if anything, can be done to aim towards the common good, a notion examined by Vallely in the fifth chapter. Austerity has no sound economic basis. It extends recession by further contracting the economy. But with some media spin, the blame for financial crises can be shifted onto those least responsible who suffer the consequences of austerity the most, claiming it is ‘the only fair response’ (152). Through utilitarian tools such as cost-benefit analysis neoliberals can attempt to use the cheapest means to keep a system just about functioning. This financialization of public services cuts hospitals, care work, welfare and education to the bare bone, leaving it unable to cope when a crisis like Covid-19 hits. Even during the pandemic, the costs to the economy are weighed up against the benefit of saving human lives. To Vallely, capitalism has always been undergirded by the idea of utility maximization as an intellectual crutch. By linking endless capital accumulation with the purported attainment of utility, the historical and ongoing injustices of colonialism have been justified on the basis of the supposed longterm interest of the colonized people. Similarly, ever-widening inequality is justified as part and parcel of ‘human progress’, a view well-lodged in the writings of establishment thinkers like Harvard’s Steven Pinker. But whereas Keynesian capitalism advocated a more ‘majoritarian’ variant of utility, the Hayekian push towards neoliberalism put the onus on the individual, thus leading to the current futilitarian condition. What Vallelly achieves here is a remarkable new theoretical insight into why… utilitarianism under neoliberal capitalism must mutate into futilitarianism. A thoroughly welcome, timely and profound intervention.”Bentham began his intellectual career with a scathing denunciation of English common law, which he saw as irredeemably traditionalist and littered with irrational prejudices. While in hindsight progressives should actually agree with many of his criticisms, Bentham already displayed a worrying tendency to boil things down to a very basic set of moral and psychological principles, that struggled to account for historical and human complexities. This was best reflected in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation when Bentham proclaimed, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.” Wendy Brown, author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West If maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility--by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves--we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximization and the common good. Futilitarianism is published in November as part of the PERC series with Goldsmiths Press. PERC Director Will Davies will facilitate an online discussion about the book with the author Neil Vallelly and the following speakers

The rest of the book explores how the logic of futilitarianism and the futilitarian condition manifest themselves in everyday life in the twenty-first century by focusing on several examples of the ways individuals are encouraged, or even forced, to maximise utility. Chapters examine the relationship between human capital theory and the rise of self-branding as a form of utility maximisation; the rhetoric of personal responsibility and the escalation of both precarity and, to quote the late David Graeber, “bullshit jobs”; the relationship between social media, language production, and anxiety; the depoliticising effects of futilitarianism, especially for the Left; and, finally, the crisis of utilitarian thinking in the grim reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, where cost-benefit calculations had to contend directly with quantifying acceptable numbers of deaths. Neoliberal capitalism feeds on our futility, and at the same time, as a normative governing reason — in the Foucauldian sense of “the conduct of conduct” — neoliberalism pushes us to behave as if our individual acts of utility maximization will secure our well-being, and even at times affect substantive social change. By always translating the social through the lens of the individual, neoliberalism reduces questions of social justice and transformation to little more than forms of marketization and consumer choice. Neoliberal reason manifests itself in a series of futile social and political endeavors, from self-marketing to ethical consumerism, which often see themselves as radical alternatives to the status quo but in practice only reinforce it. Futilitarianism is not Nihilism Neil Vallely’s “Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness,” is out now from Goldsmiths Press. The Hayekian anti-Benthamite vision won the long game in the twentieth century. I argue in the book that neoliberal economists and philosophers, and subsequent neoliberal politicians, were able to imagine and then construct a society which maintained utility maximisation on an individual level as a socially-accepted goal, but completely detached this activity from ideas of the common good or the greatest happiness principle. And thus, futilitarianism was born, where the practice of utility maximisation actively dismantles the common good.My recent book Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness, which is published as part of the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) Series with Goldsmiths Press, is an attempt to articulate a particular form of existential entrapment within contemporary capitalism. I call this entrapment “the futilitarian condition,” which emerges when individuals are forced to maximise utility—which, under neoliberalism, effectively requires enhancing the myriad conditions to accumulate human capital—but in doing so, this leads to the worsening of our collective social and economic conditions. Through developing the concept “futilitarianism,” I aim to lay the theoretical foundations to both understand this entrapment and to imagine ways of thinking and organising that can help us overcome the futilitarian condition. This original and compelling tour de force is essential reading for anyone who thinks that there must be more to life than this.” MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.