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

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Drawing on a vast array of contemporary examples, from self-help literature and marketing jargon to political speeches and governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vallelly coins several terms--including the futilitarian condition, homo futilitus, and semio-futility--to demonstrate that in the neoliberal decades, the practice of utility maximization traps us in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. 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 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 this reason, utility can never be conceived exclusively as an economic or philosophical concept. Instead, utility is always representative of a certain understanding of political economy, of the relationships between forms of production, labor and trade and the mechanisms of government, power and, ultimately, capitalism. This fact is most evident in the work of Jeremy Bentham, a late 18th- and early 19th-century philosopher and social reformer. Bentham was the founder of modern utilitarianism and he could find only one credible measure for utility: money. In an essay titled “The Philosophy of Economic Science,” he wrote: “The Thermometer is the instrument for measuring the heat of the weather, the Barometer the instrument for measuring the pressure of the Air…. Money is the instrument for measuring the quantity of pain and pleasure.” 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 nihilism is certainly present in neoliberalism, the concept of futilitarianism makes room for another dimension in the meaninglessness of neoliberal life. In this dimension, meaninglessness is neither something that is passively instituted nor actively embraced, but something that emerges in people’s lives without their consent or even knowledge, whether this be in their job, education, social circumstances, economic situation or legal status. Where nihilism entails taking up a certain outlook on the world, futilitarianism is much more insidious and internalized. After all, many of us might believe we are contributing to society in a meaningful way — ask any PR consultant. 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.Vallelly, N. (2021, November). Futilitarianism. PERC Goldsmiths Podcast with Will Davies. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/user-149686671/perc-podcast-with-neil-vallelly-futilitarianism 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 Neil Vallelly offers a rich tour of what he calls the futilitarian condition brought about by neoliberalization. Systemic and ubiquitous, this condition deprives us of meaningful lives and robs the world of a future. With an elegant pen, reader-friendly philosophical thoughtfulness, and scores of examples, Vallelly explains that gnawing feeling: "isn't what I'm doing--in my job, ecological practices, ethical consumerism and more--really futile?" Becoming-common, he argues, is our only way out. Vallelly, N. (2021, November). The futilitarian condition. This is Hell! Podcast. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/this-is-hell/tih20211130

Vallelly, N. (2021, November). Neoliberalism and the production of uselessness: An interview with Neil Vallelly. A World to Win Podcast, from Tribune and Grace Blakeley. Retrieved from https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/58-neoliberalism-and-the-production-of-uselessness-an-interview-with-neil-vallelly 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.Patreon will charge your card monthly for the amount you pledged. You can cancel this pledge anytime. 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. Vallelly, N. (2021, June). Futilitarianism: What's the point? Radio New Zealand, Nights with Bryan Crump. Retrieved from https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018801044/futilitarianism-what-s-the-point 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 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 maximisation and the common good.

To develop the theory of futilitarianism, and its relationship to neoliberalism, I use the first part of the book to situate neoliberalism within the intellectual history of utilitarianism. I examine Jeremy Bentham’s writings on political economy, and, in particular, his association of money with the principle of utility. In an essay from the 1770s, “The Philosophy of Economic Science,” Bentham wrote that “the thermometer is the instrument for measuring the heat of weather, the Barometer the instrument for measuring the pressure of the Air… Money is the instrument for measuring the quantity of pleasure and pain.” This association of money with utility runs throughout Benthamite utilitarianism, leading Will Davies to conclude in his book The Happiness Industry (2015), that “by putting out there the idea that money might have some privileged relationship to our inner experience, Bentham set the stage for the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century.” 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. 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 With an elegant pen, reader-friendly philosophical thoughtfulness, and scores of examples, Vallelly explains that gnawing feeling: ‘isn’t what I’m doing—in my job, ecological practices, ethical consumerism and more—really futile?’ Becoming-common, he argues, is our only way out.” The university is not the only example of the logic of the futilitarian condition. In fact, neoliberal capitalism seems to work better when many of our actions are rendered futile, not only because we are incapable of challenging its hegemony, but also because in our desperation to maximize utility to improve our individual social and economic conditions, we simultaneously internalize the rationalities of self-sufficiency, personal responsibility and competition that dismantle social solidarities.

FAQ

Vallelly, N. (2022, February). Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the production of uselessness: An interview with Neil Vallelly. New Books in Education, New Books Network Podcast, hosted by Thomas Discenna. Retrieved from https://newbooksnetwork.com/futilitarianism

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.”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. 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. Murtola, A.-M., & Vallelly, N. (2023). Who cares for wellbeing? Corporate wellness, social reproduction and the essential worker. Organization, 30(3), 510-527. doi: 10.1177/13505084221131642