From Bureaucratic Discipline to Self-Actualization: Using Marx and Foucault to Critique the Demand for Better Work Rather Than Less Work

• Author: Josh Shirk
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211069049
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211069049

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(9) 1827 –1847

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211069049

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Perspectives

From Bureaucratic

Discipline to Self-

Actualization: Using

Marx and Foucault to

Critique the Demand

for Better Work Rather

Than Less Work

Josh Shirk1

Abstract

This essay brings together Karl Marx’s alienation critique with Michel

Foucault’s theoretical work on technologies of power to examine the

demand for self-actualizing work. I argue that many of the themes in Marx’s

writings appear frequently in the human relations management literature

and are later incorporated by New Public Management. However, Foucault’s

work is shown to complement and extend Marx’s initial alienation analysis,

and then to highlight the reliance of human relations management on

disciplinary technologies. Lost in the demand for better work is a more

radical vision of harnessing machinery to bring about a post-work society.

Keywords

work alienation, human relations management, new public management,

Michel Foucault, fourth Industrial Revolution, post-work society

1School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA

Corresponding Author:

Josh Shirk, School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA.

Email: jtshirk@unomaha.edu

1069049AAS0010.1177/00953997211069049Administration & SocietyShirk

research-article2021

1828 Administration & Society 54(9)

For all its criticisms, the bureaucratic techniques increasingly adopted by

public and private organizations from the 19th century onward contributed to

impressive strides in labor productivity. For instance, although the labor-sav-

ing, general purpose technologies of the second Industrial Revolution (elec-

tricity and the internal combustion engine) were introduced throughout the

1870s to 1890s, it took another 20 years of complementary organization inter-

ventions of factory space and work processes before enhancements in labor

productivity were noticed (see Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014, pp. 101–103).

In fact, with bureaucratic methods, capitalism survived intense labor strife

(Sennett, 2007, p. 20) and built a vision of a “good life” (Waldo, 1984) based

on increased material wealth, health, and, important for this essay, steady,

full-time employment at a standard of forty hours a week (Hunnicutt, 2013).

While these material benefits brought by public and private bureaucracies

can be recognized, this does not preclude criticisms regarding its mechanisms

of power utilized to induce labor and what it means for human agency. Along

these lines, Foucault (1984) discussed the modern era in terms of the para-

doxical growth of individual and group capacities and the subjugated disci-

pline of bodies and processes of normalization. In my estimation, then,

Foucault poses the fundamental question of the modern era: “How can the

growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power rela-

tions?” (p. 48).

With this in mind, two critiques of bureaucracy seem pertinent. One is the

work alienation critique as developed by Marx, as it then appeared in public

organizational theory, and as it was absorbed by New Public Management

(NPM). The second is Foucault’s critique of technologies of power. Below,

these two critiques are brought together to show how the demand for better,

more creative, self-actualizing work is incorporated by NPM, but unable to

realize it at a large-scale in practice. The argument, then, leads to a call to

reignite the demand for a progressive reduction in labor time (Hunnicutt,

2013; Weeks, 2011) by harnessing the emerging digital technologies of the

fourth Industrial Revolution (Mason, 2016; Srnicek & Williams, 2015). In

doing so, what Marx (1992) called the realm of freedom is opened—a realm

where people pursue activities as ends in themselves, rather than for their

exchange value.

Mark on Alienation

In the Fordist factory and scientifically managed office bureau, pleasure is

delayed until after the workday. By contrast, the desire for creative and plea-

surable work reemerged in neoliberal times (Catlaw & Marshall, 2018). I say

reemerge because this desire is not new. Marx’s critique of capitalism was not