None for the money

Some interesting research on consumer behaviour published in the Sloan Review, taking as its starting point the case of Arla foods amba, a Danish food firm which [watched] their annual sales virtually vanish in the Middle East as a result of the “cartoon controversy”. The research concludes that high profile boycotts have only small long term effects, whereas boycotts arising from other societal pressures may have repercussions over the long term; the timescale for Arla’s recovery is being spoken of in terms years, rather than months.

Could these long term boycotts start to have an effect on the economy in general? The New Statesman paints a bleak picture of consumer need and rising debt, speaking of the way in which the casual, but constant, shopper can tell themselves that their actions have only benign, or even positive, consequences. Nevertheless, pressure not to consume seems to be rising, as evinced by articles such as that in the Statesman and an increasingly credible environmental lobby. Could this shift – in media, if not in any other perceptions – gain enough momentum to constitute the kind of moral boycott currently affecting Arla foods across a range of consumer goods?

A Tale of Two Princes

It is fair to say that Machiavelli – or to be more specific, the quality of being Machiavellian – has an ambivalent reputation in society today. This is largely based on his work The Prince, a short treatise on the way those who wield power who should behave. However, this book was written in a time of exile, rather than from a position of power. Niccolo Machiavelli had been exiled, having enjoyed power in Florentine society before the overthrow of the regime for which he had worked. He wrote to a friend of his misery in the countryside, and the joy he found in going to his library in the evening and reading his books; I make bold to speak to [the ancients] and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity reply to me. Although his treatise on The Prince was intended to restore him to favour with the new regime of the Medici family, he was never to return to Florence.

Both Machiavelli’s work, and his situation when he wrote it, are especially relevant to two politicians on either side of the Atlantic; Dick Cheney whose influence, the New York Times reports, is on the wane and Gordon Brown who is commonly expected to become British Prime Minister within a year.

On the surface of the situation, Cheney appears to be the more Machiavellian of the two. His statement that “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it” resonates with Machiavelli’s statement that a ruler should have no other objective… nor occupy himself with anything else except war and its methods and practices. His belief that such measures as the camp at Guantánamo Bay are necessary to maintain power would seem to accord with the belief that the ‘prince’ must act immorally where the situation calls for it.

Yet Cheney’s slide out of influence seems more reminiscent of Machiavelli’s personal struggles; his wry statement that “I give him the best advice I can. He doesn’t always agree. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t” seems to speak of a man who is not secure in his position from day to day. The New York Times indicates that Cheney’s power began to wane following the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib. This exemplifies one of the central tenets of The Prince; that cruel deeds are committed badly (and in a way that will cause the prince to lose power) when they begin as few, and then increase in number; when the ruler decides he can inflict cruelty as and when he chooses.

By contrast, Brown has generally been considered poor at public relations, or at least as cutting an unprepossessing figure. Frequent jokes are made about his meanness, and he is even more frequently accused of waiting for Tony Blair to resign power. Unlike Cheney, however, Brown could well be following the advice of The Prince to his advantage. His reputed meanness could work to his advantage as he will not have to rob his subjects; he will be able to defend himself; he will avoid being poor and despised and will not be forced to become rapacious. Indeed, meanness is one of those vices that enable him to rule. The job of Chancellor of the Exchequer in a parliamentary democracy is a very different role from that of the prince of an early modern city state, but the same arguments for frugality could still be used in either case.

However, his caginess about his policies may count against him. If it will always be better to intervene in favour of one side and fight strongly, Brown must start fighting strongly – or showing indications that he will do so – if he wishes to be considered as a potential strong leader.

Brown has the potential, therefore, to be a Machiavellian in the better sense of the word; a statesman who can use both his weaknesses and any given situation to his advantage. Cheney, by contrast, seems to have fallen foul of Machiavellianism in the popular sense of the word; assuming that the ends justify the means without considering either the morality of the situation or the best way of acheiving those ends. For this he seems to be suffering the fate which befell Machiavelli himself.

Daily Dissidence

One of the most interesting aspects of citizen media recently has been the reaction of totalitarian states – specifically China – to the way the citizens of that country are using the internet. Google and other companies have been widely criticised for agreeing to the demands made on them by the Chinese state with regard to the treatment of dissidents, and the internet as a tool for revolution is still being explored.

Equally interesting, however, are the self-created ’stars’ of the internet – the people who create pages, videos or sites that, for one reason or another, become popular to an extent far greater than their creators could have expected. The state clearly cannot crack down on these people for dissidence, but is nevertheless unhappy with the fame they enjoy. The Economist links the state’s concern to the idea of voting; that ‘grassroots celebrities’ will lead to a desire for a politics that equally comes from the grassroots.

There is another aspect to this addressed by Susan Sontag in her essay The Image World in On Photography. In this essay she looks at contemporary Chinese criticism of Antonioni’s film Chung Kuo. The state’s issues with this film seemed to be centered on the fact that it showed things that were not fit to be photographed; peeling paint and children running out of the school gates rather than modern machinery and children working hard in the factory schools. It was not the act itself (children run out of school gates every day) but the image of the act that was the issue. In Sontag’s words, Photographs are supposed to display what has already been described.

This appears to be the Chinese problem with citizen media now; these ‘grassroots celebrities’ are not showing a ‘true’ image of themselves or their societies, but a skewed and a frivolous one. What is being shown is not the hardworking students the “Back Dormitory Boys” may well be, but the quotidian silliness that goes alongside hard work. Curiously, Sontag concludes at the end of The Image World that she sees a more limited future in [Chinese] society for the camera as a means of surveillance. In fact, the opposite seems to have happened. This surveillance of the everyday has not only become popular, but popular enough to become a concern to a state obsessed with image management.

All Too Human

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, could be thought of as the middle section of an it’s all your fault sci-fi trilogy, between George Orwell’s 1984 and Philip K Dick’s The Man In The High Castle. They all share the same quiet despair, and the same acceptance of an inevitable fate; but they also, ultimately, put the blame for that fate firmly on the reader’s own failings. The ruling states (or their representations) are faceless and amoral, but we are forced to look at our own amorality; the characters cause each other pain, purposely or otherwise, simply by reacting as perhaps we would.

This something that seems to be lacking from culture at present; the ability to empathise without agreeing, to ask the reader to consider their own instinctive reactions to difficult situations. In 1984, Winston Smith sells out the woman he loves because he is scared of rats; in Fahrenheit 451 society’s crime seems to be nothing more sinister than liking fun. The Man In The High Castle’s conclusion – “America won the war” – could be considered to be the characters discovering they themselves are fictional, but could also be read as a plea for the reader to consider their own reactions to the culture around them. The characters accept the fascistic state in which they live, and their interest in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (the novel within the novel) does not actually change anything about the way they live.

This kind of self examination is important; it in considering our motivations that we find a way of acting. Much of the current criticism of governance (however justified), and specifically of the Bush / Blair relationship, has been relentlessly smug. And yet this can be seen as influenced by understandable weaknesses – an unconsidered desire for safety and security, perhaps.

Satire is a powerful tool, and causing those in power to seem ridiculous is a valuable tool in undermining confidence in spin – it has a vital part to play in any society. However, considering our own fears, and the way we react to those, is also an important way of effecting change. Fears and weaknesses are difficult to think about, and rarely talked about, because they are so easily mocked. But knowing what is mockable about ourselves is just as potent as an agent of change.

Narziss Und Goldman

Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War have, for some time now, been hailed as useful texts for managers or those who would manage. Less popular – or more likely, less easy to market, given its 700 page bulk rather than pamphlet-like slenderness – has been Montesquieu’s The Spirit Of The Laws. This work, published in France in 1748, expounds upon what governs the making of laws in the four kinds of state; the democratic republic, the aristocratic republic, the monarchy and the despotism. However, the way in which Montesquieu delineates the running of the eighteen century state can be just as useful a model the running of a business in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Goldman Sachs’ time under John Weinberg can be typified as an aristocratic republic, which revealed itself most clearly in what essentially amounted to an imposition of sumptuary laws upon his staff. Salaries were paid into the bank’s capital accounts, and staff had to request that the money be released; whatever was actually being earned, spending was controlled and, by extension, austerity encouraged. This was a fundamental tenet of Montesquieu’s view of the aristocratic republic. He used aristocratic not in the sense that the word would now be understood, of hereditary privilege – in The Spirit Of The Laws, the word is used to mean ‘chosen by merit’. Those who are chosen by their merit to have power (as we can assume those high up in Goldman Sachs would be) should not have luxury added to this power as this would cause unrest amongst those who had not been chosen. Instead, greater power should also mean greater restrictions on the type of lifestyle lived.

In Montesquieu’s monarchy, by contrast, luxury was necessary to lift the level of all those within the state. Moving away from the financial industry, bosses of companies such as Microsoft and Google could be seen to be practising monarchic governance of their companies. At Microsoft, the layout of the office serves the needs of the employees regardless of the expense – whilst the office design has changed, for a time each employee had a door they can shut when they do not wish to be disturbed. At Google every employee is encouraged to work on their own ideas. Both of these things could be considered luxuries at software companies where rigid deadlines and a need to cut costs mean that employees in the industry rarely enjoy such privacy or creativity. However, both of these things are a result of an upper management which, famously made up of people who can afford to live in personal luxury, is prepared to spend money on its employees to afford them the privileges of privacy and creativity; as Montesquieu advised, to maintain the happiness of the populace by allowing them to benefit from the working practises of those far above them in rank.

Recently, however, there appears to be an emerging trend towards what Montesquieu might have recognised as despotism. Pay packages for those in the higher echelons of companies are on the increase. So, The Economist believes, is narcissism in bosses, measured by metrics such as prominence in company press releases and the ratios of the boss’s cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm’s second-highest paid executive. Also included in this list is use of the first person singular in interview, an indicator which could indicate a desire to concentrate power and to dictate from the top. Narcissism, especially, seems to point the way to an increased role for the Vizier – supposedly the closest and most trusted advisor, in fact the base flatterer that Montesquieu believed to be the hallmark of despotic rule. Whilst those in positions of power, in states and in industry, have ever surrounded themselves with people they find agreeable, the current (seemingly increasing) disregard for other’s opinions seems to lead directly to the rise of the sycophant and a self-serving exercise of power. It is the famous truism of The Sprit Of The Laws that the republic ends in luxury and the monarchy in poverty; narcissistic bosses would do well to note that the despotism ends in revolution.