I suppose the title is a tad clickbait in a way. It’s not as though I’m out here making excuses for child predators or something. But in my time of analyzing the broader context of capitalism and its mechanisms, I have come to adopt something of a systems level view of unethical behavior, which I was surely not the originator of, but it makes a kind of sense to me in the broader scope of things. It goes something like: capitalism is full of layers of indirection, to the extent that lots of people end up participating indirectly in exploitative systems that they never would have agreed to be a part of consciously. Further, lots of people are pressured into continuing this participation, even if they become aware of it, due to being dependent on the system for their basic sustenance.
This is all well and good for some levels of indirection. Like it would be strange, I think, for me to feel guilty about buying many products because some part of the process may have been processed at a place that has unethical working conditions and poor labor rights. It’s not something I have any control over and if I try to boycott, it may not even be noticed in the financial reporting of the related company as anything more than natural rise and fall of interest in the product.
But there is another side to this too, that the Epstein stuff I think has got me thinking more about and nagging at me. Which is about the architects of predation. The casualness of conspiracy in broad light, the mundanity of meetings about manipulation, and the normalizing of unethical behavior.
To use a less intense example than the Epstein stuff because it’s something I have dealt with the nonsense of in one way or another in my life a lot, and perhaps is a bit less charged to talk about, consider the state of the video game industry. This is an industry where capital really took hold and quickly moved it toward maximum exploitation. Whether it’s terrible working conditions or predatory monetization, it’s a dumpster fire of unethical behavior.
But, in wielding the systems view of a kind, there are times I look at it and emphasize my criticism toward the system instead of the individual. The problem is the investor class, the problem is the management, the problem is the institution and the organization not the individual employees, etc. But this leaves out the architects of predation, doesn’t it?
The investor class creates a pressure in a studio to create predatory monetization because the system of capitalism pressures the investors to always be growing their assets. For the studio to actually do this, they still have to go through a logistical process, whereupon they hire or train people who are willing to consciously design a system around manipulating people into acting against their own best interests for the selfish gain of the company. Discussions will be had, designs proposed, tested, and refined, and unethical behavior will be carried out in a rather mundane way.
Like the casualness of the people in Epstein’s emails, there is no reason to expect that these architects will be speaking in code and hiding in shame. The organization has explicitly asked them to do what they’re doing and is even paying them for it, and the system offers no consequences for their actions, so why should they care? Those who are too held back by a sense of guilt or shame will be filtered out and replaced with those who aren’t.
They can even give talks on predatory monetization and it doesn’t get them in trouble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4
But in spite of the mundanity and normalization of it, it doesn’t make it any less predatory. Nor do the pressures of someone taking that role change the fact that the people who do take up the mantle will be changed by the experience (probably for the worse).
There is also something to be said for the role of those who pull the levers even if they are not themselves architects of predation. Someone has to deploy the design, someone has to approve it for release, someone has to announce it and market it. These are all people who could question what they are taking part in, the mundanity of the predation, and try to go another way. Try to find some other job. Try, even if it is not easy, to not be a part of it. Unlike the more passive participant in the dynamic of exploitation who at most is choosing whether to boycott something already deployed, the lever puller is a part of its promotion and deployment. If no one pulls the lever, it does not ship. If no one markets it, it does not get seen. These are vital parts of whether the predatory system gets carried out, whether it goes from concept to being fully realized.
These are the types I wonder if I am too forgiving of. If I am too quick to sympathize because they are part of the working class, too quick to say it is the organization failing people and not the individuals. But a theoretical system without people to carry it out only exists in theory. Surely those who help make predation real share some responsibility.
I understand, and am in agreement. I was pondering this the other night, and thought of the saying, “Kill them, G-d knows his own.” And it’s the same quagmire, isn’t it? How would we set up safeguards, in the event of revolution and rebuilding, that would spare as many innocents as possible, without also risking our undoing, by trusting and integrating too many non-innocents? What is too many? Can we improve on past mistakes? How would we know, except for a rather swift undoing, I imagine. And perhaps it’s even absurd to ponder these things, because we already know who isn’t pondering them.
Edited for bad typing
Yeah I guess that comes back to the thing of a vanguard really being a vanguard, doesn’t it? As tautological as that might sound. Like having a force who can in a disciplined party manner ensure that power is not being handed off to just anyone “because they’re working class so they must be trustworthy” or something like that. That there is a degree of process to it and building people’s democracy from the ground up based on people who have proven themselves in their communities, while also going through a process of taking a closer eye at people who caused problems for others even if they have an excuse of “I was pressured into it for my job” or whatever. Are they going to take to reeducation and build socialism, or join the reaction and re-offend? Are they going to try to right their wrongs and make amends, or only make excuses for them and double down? And it is likely more effective to look to those who haven’t been the architects and the lever pullers first, as having the most potential. Either because of tenacity they have shown when faced with temptation to throw ethics out the window and/or because their material conditions mean they never got that offer and in general are closer to the ground, in terms of oppression.
I suppose in a roundabout way I’m saying what others have said before in different words. That it’s worth far more energy to recruit from the most oppressed than from people who are oppressed in one way or another but also play a closer part in making the capitalist system function. Their technical knowledge and experience could have great value, depending, but that doesn’t mean they need to be leading the vanguard.
Edit: slight wording change
And here, we are in agreement. I know mistakes will be inevitable, we’re human. But there is virtue, I think, in seeking to minimize them, without sabotaging ourselves.