

“It is striking how often measuring systems of this kind are imposed by an anonymous head office and conceived by external taskforces and consultants who have little affinity with the work that they are told to measure. They receive a fat fee into the bargain, which only increases the frustration on the work floor. What’s more, the real professionals have to spend part of their time registering those measurements, which does nothing to improve the quality of their work.”



Originally published in D



“It is striking how often measuring systems of this kind are imposed by an anonymous head office and conceived by external taskforces and consultants who have little affinity with the work that they are told to measure. They receive a fat fee into the bargain, which only increases the frustration on the work floor. What’s more, the real professionals have to spend part of their time registering those measurements, which does nothing to improve the quality of their work.”



Originally published in Dutch back in 2012, Verhaeghe’s background is in psychodiagnostics and psychotherapy, and he applies many of those skills effectively in here. He explores the on-going consequences of Neo-liberalism, free market forces and privatisation. He takes on his subjects with a particular emphasis on the teachings of Freud, Darwin and Aristotle. We also get to hear plenty from Foucault, Bentham and Verbrugge and many others.



He goes back a few centuries, talking about the evolution of religion in the west and how many factions pulled away from the pope. He alludes to the emergence of capitalism and in particular the rise of the Dutch East India Company, which became the first multi-national with clear political powers. “The blend of religion and enterprise created an ethos of thrift and sheer hard work: the recipe for the Golden Age.”. This would largely be the case in the west up into the “latter half of the 20th Century, when, religion lost its moral authority, and the torch passed to science.”



In the “Enron Society” chapter, he speaks with frightening logic on the insidious madness and bureaucracy of meritocracy. “In no time, staff at all levels adapt their behaviour, ceasing to do things that ‘don’t count’. Everything is sacrificed to the juggernaut of measurability. Unfortunately, the unquantifiable nature of care is fast vanishing.”



He goes on to say, “Wherever quantitative yardsticks are used to measure quality, behaviour soon adapts to the system, invariably leading to a loss of diversity. This creates a problem for meritocratic policymakers: the fewer differences there are between candidates, products, or services, the harder it is to rank them. Don’t forget that in a meritocracy, the number of ‘winners’ is limited by definition.”



Verhaeghe talks about the underlying belief behind Neo-liberalism, “Rich people are rich by virtue of their own effort and dispositions. Ergo, they are strong characters and, ethically speaking, at the top of the ladder (closest to god, the maker of the ladder). Financial power is equated with moral authority. As a result, we look to bankers and captains of industry to act as leaders of society. Conversely, everyone who fails must be weak characters, if not downright parasites, with dubious norms and values. They are scum, in other words, who are too lazy or stupid to help themselves.”



He quotes Zygmunt Bauman, saying, “Never have we been so free. Never have we felt so powerless.” He expresses his fears behind the fallout from Individualism and competition, “The ultimate goal of present day education is ‘self-management’ and ‘entrepreneurship’. Young people must regard themselves as enterprises, and see knowledge and skills above all in economic terms-that is, as something they can use to increase their market value.”



He makes some really compelling points about people’s inability to see outside their paradigm and how limiting and damaging that can prove to be. He cites the case of Alan Greenspan the head of the Federal Reserve, who believed that it was impossible for the capitalist system to fail until 2007. He then mentions the genuinely shocking case of Ignaz Semmelweis. Semmelweis was a doctor in 19th Century Vienna. He was struck by the high mortality rate among the women giving birth in his hospitals. He realised that mortality increased significantly when the doctor’s had come straight from the autopsy room. As a precautionary measure he made them scrub their hands thoroughly before tending to the women and the death rate fell rapidly. Because his theory lay outside the accepted paradigm, he was fired, he became depressed and subsequently died prematurely in a mental institution.



This is a really interesting read, with some deep and penetrating insights. Verhaeghe shows us that the threat and damage posed by Neo-liberalism is not just confined to the English speaking world, or in one or two areas either. We see that as soon as it slips into the political mainstream it doesn’t take too long before it’s creeping into those sacred institutions that we once believed were immune to profit based business models, such as education, welfare and health. This is an assured and well researched piece of work that is well worth a read.

