The Capitalist Personality

The Capitalist Personality

Author: Christopher Swader

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 041589221X

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This book reveals the ambivalent repercussions of capitalist culture on interpersonal relationships in the post-communist world. Most observers tend to blame modern corruption, narcissism, and egoism in these new market societies on their communist pasts. This comparative analysis shows how the capitalist present is also squarely responsible.


Book Synopsis The Capitalist Personality by : Christopher Swader

Download or read book The Capitalist Personality written by Christopher Swader and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals the ambivalent repercussions of capitalist culture on interpersonal relationships in the post-communist world. Most observers tend to blame modern corruption, narcissism, and egoism in these new market societies on their communist pasts. This comparative analysis shows how the capitalist present is also squarely responsible.


The Capitalist Personality

The Capitalist Personality

Author: Christopher S. Swader

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-04

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1135100675

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Modern capitalism favors values that undermine our face-to-face bonds with friends and family members. Focusing on the post-communist world, and comparing it to more "developed" societies, this book reveals the mixed effects of capitalist culture on interpersonal relationships. While most observers blame the egoism and asocial behavior found in new free-market societies on their communist pasts, this work shows how relationships are also threatened by the profit orientations and personal ambition unleashed by economic development. Successful people in societies as diverse as China, Russia, and Eastern Germany adjust to the market economy at a social cost, relaxing their morals in order to obtain success and succumbing to increased material temptations to exploit relationships for their own financial and professional gain. The capitalist personality is internally troubled as a result of this "sellout," but these qualms subside as it devalues intimate qualitative bonds with others. This book also shows that post-communists are similarly individualized as people living in Western societies. Capitalism may indeed favor values of independence, creativity, and self-expressiveness, but it also rewards self-centeredness, consumerism, and the stripping down of morality. As is the case in the West, capitalist culture fosters an internally conflicted and self-centered personality in post-communist societies.


Book Synopsis The Capitalist Personality by : Christopher S. Swader

Download or read book The Capitalist Personality written by Christopher S. Swader and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern capitalism favors values that undermine our face-to-face bonds with friends and family members. Focusing on the post-communist world, and comparing it to more "developed" societies, this book reveals the mixed effects of capitalist culture on interpersonal relationships. While most observers blame the egoism and asocial behavior found in new free-market societies on their communist pasts, this work shows how relationships are also threatened by the profit orientations and personal ambition unleashed by economic development. Successful people in societies as diverse as China, Russia, and Eastern Germany adjust to the market economy at a social cost, relaxing their morals in order to obtain success and succumbing to increased material temptations to exploit relationships for their own financial and professional gain. The capitalist personality is internally troubled as a result of this "sellout," but these qualms subside as it devalues intimate qualitative bonds with others. This book also shows that post-communists are similarly individualized as people living in Western societies. Capitalism may indeed favor values of independence, creativity, and self-expressiveness, but it also rewards self-centeredness, consumerism, and the stripping down of morality. As is the case in the West, capitalist culture fosters an internally conflicted and self-centered personality in post-communist societies.


Capitalism and Desire

Capitalism and Desire

Author: Todd McGowan

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2016-09-20

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0231542216

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Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.


Book Synopsis Capitalism and Desire by : Todd McGowan

Download or read book Capitalism and Desire written by Todd McGowan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.


The Personality Brokers

The Personality Brokers

Author: Merve Emre

Publisher: Random House Canada

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0345812220

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An unprecedented history of a personality test devised in the 1940s by a mother and daughter, both homemakers, that has achieved cult-like status and is used in today's most distinguished boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language--of extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling--has inspired online dating platforms and BuzzFeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry, struggle to account for its success--no less to validate its results. How did the Myers-Briggs test insinuate itself into our jobs, our relationships, our Internet, our lives? First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of aspiring novelists and devoted homemakers, the Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses. But it would take on a life of its own, reaching from the smoke-filled boardrooms of mid-century New York to Berkeley, California, where it was honed against some of the twentieth century's greatest creative minds. It would travel across the world to London, Zurich, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Tokyo; to elementary schools, nunneries, wellness retreats, and the closed-door corporate training sessions of today. Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents, The Personality Brokers examines nothing less than the definition of the self--our attempts to grasp, categorize, and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing, the book, like the test at its heart, considers the timeless question: What makes you you?


Book Synopsis The Personality Brokers by : Merve Emre

Download or read book The Personality Brokers written by Merve Emre and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented history of a personality test devised in the 1940s by a mother and daughter, both homemakers, that has achieved cult-like status and is used in today's most distinguished boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language--of extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling--has inspired online dating platforms and BuzzFeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry, struggle to account for its success--no less to validate its results. How did the Myers-Briggs test insinuate itself into our jobs, our relationships, our Internet, our lives? First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of aspiring novelists and devoted homemakers, the Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses. But it would take on a life of its own, reaching from the smoke-filled boardrooms of mid-century New York to Berkeley, California, where it was honed against some of the twentieth century's greatest creative minds. It would travel across the world to London, Zurich, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Tokyo; to elementary schools, nunneries, wellness retreats, and the closed-door corporate training sessions of today. Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents, The Personality Brokers examines nothing less than the definition of the self--our attempts to grasp, categorize, and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing, the book, like the test at its heart, considers the timeless question: What makes you you?


The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Author: Shoshana Zuboff

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 658

ISBN-13: 1610395700

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The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.


Book Synopsis The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by : Shoshana Zuboff

Download or read book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.


The Capitalist & The Entrepreneur

The Capitalist & The Entrepreneur

Author: Peter G. Klein

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1610165225

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Book Synopsis The Capitalist & The Entrepreneur by : Peter G. Klein

Download or read book The Capitalist & The Entrepreneur written by Peter G. Klein and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2010 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


The Psychopath Factory

The Psychopath Factory

Author: Tristam Adams

Publisher: Watkins Media Limited

Published: 2016-12-20

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1910924415

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The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy examines how the requirements, stimuli, affects and environments of work condition our empathy. In some cases, work calls for no empathy – characters who don’t blink or flinch in the face of danger nor crack under pressure. In other cases, capitalism requires empathy in spades –charming, friendly, sensitive and listening managers, customer service agents and careers. When workers are required to either ignore their empathy to-do a job, or dial it up to increase productivity, they are entering a psychopathic modality. The affective blitz of work, flickering screens, emotive content, vibrating alerts and sounding alarms erode our sensitivities whilst we are modulated with attention stimulants, social lubricants and so called anti-anxiety drugs. This is amidst a virulent and exacerbating climate of competition and frenzied quantification. Capitalism pressures us to feign empathy and leverage social relationships on one hand, whilst being cold and pragmatic on the other. We are passionate and enthusiastic whilst keeping a professional distance. Sympathy, care, compassion and altruism are important; The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy argues that itis a mistake to presuppose that empathy can achieve these. Rather than being subject to the late capitalist organization of our empathy, psychopathy could be a means of escape.


Book Synopsis The Psychopath Factory by : Tristam Adams

Download or read book The Psychopath Factory written by Tristam Adams and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy examines how the requirements, stimuli, affects and environments of work condition our empathy. In some cases, work calls for no empathy – characters who don’t blink or flinch in the face of danger nor crack under pressure. In other cases, capitalism requires empathy in spades –charming, friendly, sensitive and listening managers, customer service agents and careers. When workers are required to either ignore their empathy to-do a job, or dial it up to increase productivity, they are entering a psychopathic modality. The affective blitz of work, flickering screens, emotive content, vibrating alerts and sounding alarms erode our sensitivities whilst we are modulated with attention stimulants, social lubricants and so called anti-anxiety drugs. This is amidst a virulent and exacerbating climate of competition and frenzied quantification. Capitalism pressures us to feign empathy and leverage social relationships on one hand, whilst being cold and pragmatic on the other. We are passionate and enthusiastic whilst keeping a professional distance. Sympathy, care, compassion and altruism are important; The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy argues that itis a mistake to presuppose that empathy can achieve these. Rather than being subject to the late capitalist organization of our empathy, psychopathy could be a means of escape.


Psychology and Capitalism

Psychology and Capitalism

Author: Ron Roberts

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2015-02-27

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 1782796533

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Psychology and Capitalism is a critical and accessible account of the ideological and material role of psychology in supporting capitalist enterprise and holding individuals entirely responsible for their fate through the promotion of individualism.


Book Synopsis Psychology and Capitalism by : Ron Roberts

Download or read book Psychology and Capitalism written by Ron Roberts and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-27 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychology and Capitalism is a critical and accessible account of the ideological and material role of psychology in supporting capitalist enterprise and holding individuals entirely responsible for their fate through the promotion of individualism.


Capitalist Revolutionary

Capitalist Revolutionary

Author: Roger E. Backhouse

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-11-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0674062841

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The Great Recession of 2008 restored John Maynard Keynes to prominence. After decades when the Keynesian revolution seemed to have been forgotten, the great British theorist was suddenly everywhere. The New York Times asked, “What would Keynes have done?” The Financial Times wrote of “the undeniable shift to Keynes.” Le Monde pronounced the economic collapse Keynes’s “revenge.” Two years later, following bank bailouts and Tea Party fundamentalism, Keynesian principles once again seemed misguided or irrelevant to a public focused on ballooning budget deficits. In this readable account, Backhouse and Bateman elaborate the misinformation and caricature that have led to Keynes’s repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946. Keynes’s engagement with social and moral philosophy and his membership in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers helped to shape his manner of theorizing. Though trained as a mathematician, he designed models based on how specific kinds of people (such as investors and consumers) actually behave—an approach that runs counter to the idealized agents favored by economists at the end of the century. Keynes wanted to create a revolution in the way the world thought about economic problems, but he was more open-minded about capitalism than is commonly believed. He saw capitalism as essential to a society’s well-being but also morally flawed, and he sought a corrective for its main defect: the failure to stabilize investment. Keynes’s nuanced views, the authors suggest, offer an alternative to the polarized rhetoric often evoked by the word “capitalism” in today’s political debates.


Book Synopsis Capitalist Revolutionary by : Roger E. Backhouse

Download or read book Capitalist Revolutionary written by Roger E. Backhouse and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Recession of 2008 restored John Maynard Keynes to prominence. After decades when the Keynesian revolution seemed to have been forgotten, the great British theorist was suddenly everywhere. The New York Times asked, “What would Keynes have done?” The Financial Times wrote of “the undeniable shift to Keynes.” Le Monde pronounced the economic collapse Keynes’s “revenge.” Two years later, following bank bailouts and Tea Party fundamentalism, Keynesian principles once again seemed misguided or irrelevant to a public focused on ballooning budget deficits. In this readable account, Backhouse and Bateman elaborate the misinformation and caricature that have led to Keynes’s repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946. Keynes’s engagement with social and moral philosophy and his membership in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers helped to shape his manner of theorizing. Though trained as a mathematician, he designed models based on how specific kinds of people (such as investors and consumers) actually behave—an approach that runs counter to the idealized agents favored by economists at the end of the century. Keynes wanted to create a revolution in the way the world thought about economic problems, but he was more open-minded about capitalism than is commonly believed. He saw capitalism as essential to a society’s well-being but also morally flawed, and he sought a corrective for its main defect: the failure to stabilize investment. Keynes’s nuanced views, the authors suggest, offer an alternative to the polarized rhetoric often evoked by the word “capitalism” in today’s political debates.


Capitalist Development and Crisis Theory: Accumulation, Regulation and Spatial Restructuring

Capitalist Development and Crisis Theory: Accumulation, Regulation and Spatial Restructuring

Author: Mark Gottdeiner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1989-06-12

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1349199605

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This collection of essays looks at recent developments in the crisis theory of capitalist development and relates such theories directly to the current patterns of economic, political technological and cultural changes associated with societal restructuring in industrialized countries.


Book Synopsis Capitalist Development and Crisis Theory: Accumulation, Regulation and Spatial Restructuring by : Mark Gottdeiner

Download or read book Capitalist Development and Crisis Theory: Accumulation, Regulation and Spatial Restructuring written by Mark Gottdeiner and published by Springer. This book was released on 1989-06-12 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays looks at recent developments in the crisis theory of capitalist development and relates such theories directly to the current patterns of economic, political technological and cultural changes associated with societal restructuring in industrialized countries.