ON FRICTION, CLASS CONFLICT AND PSYCHOLOGY’S OPPRESSIVE COMMAND TO ENJOY!
NB. A quick shout out to Gregk and Thomas and their podcast BLOODWORK, for helping me think through some of the themes of this essay and ultimately grapple with the fact that every ideological state apparatus is just a repressive state apparatus playing nice until it can no longer afford to. Listen to @bloodwork.show
INTRODUCTION
This is an essay about how psychology and its imperatives disguise the violence inherent in capitalist social relations by encouraging us to valorise a life without friction, how psychologists help to perpetuate this problem, the damage it causes and what we might do about it.
CW: Discussions of violence throughout.
IN WATERMELON SUGAR
If you asked me on any given day what my favourite fiction book of all time is, I’d probably say ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ by Richard Brautigan. His writing sits somewhere between prose, poetry and aphorism as it tells the story of iDEATH, a post-apocalyptic utopian commune where everything is made of watermelon sugar and the people live passively, in perfect harmony.
What sticks out to me as someone who has recently dug the book out to re-read it (as inspiration for this essay), is the lack of friction the characters experience in their day to day lives. Everything is peaceful, no one has to fight for anything, there is no suffering. Everyone lives ‘gentle lives in watermelon sugar’. It’s hard to tell whether Brautigan is celebrating or satirising hippy culture here but the vision he conjures up reminds me of the friction-free existence embodied by Western subjectivities in late-stage capitalism.
I think this is best articulated by the Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s observation that, unlike previous societal setups that were about prohibition (thou shalt not!), neoliberalism commands us to enjoy! Psychology has been a central social apparatus in ensuring the command to enjoy is incorporated into Western middle-class subjects. We must constantly be in a state of bliss - finding ourselves on holiday, falling in love, exercising, bettering ourselves in our personal lives and careers, loving life as a parent and so on.
For the first time in the history of humankind we are expected to live lives without friction, in watermelon sugar. Psychology, with its self-help books, focus on self-actualisation and practices that claim to reduce suffering to zero (mindfulness, self-care, self-compassion, growth mindset and so on), is central to the commandment to enjoy. (Note the individualising nature of psychological thinking in how many times I’ve used the word ‘self’ in this paragraph).
Only, there’s a dark-side to all this. As Zizek observes, the command to ‘enjoy’ becomes oppressive. If we do not enjoy and end up become depressed, it is nobody’s fault but our own. Constant enjoyment is a positionality that disconnects and alienates us from others in our own quest for individual self-actualisation. Furthermore, it leads to a political quietism, because ostensibly there is nothing to rebel against. When society is always telling us to ‘be ourselves’ there is no longer an object for us to target our resistance against. Indeed, resistance of any kind would lead to friction, which would result in us disobeying the overarching command of neoliberalism, to enjoy!
So too, is there a darkness at the heart of Brautigan’s novel. Prior to the establishment of iDEATH, strange, talking tigers eat the protagonists’ parents. Not far away lives the story’s antagonist, a man named inBOIL, who rejects the passivity and utopian life of the iDEATH commune and instead lives with his followers in the Forgotten Works. At the climax of the novel inBOIL and his gang return to iDEATH enacting a public suicide in front of the commune members, who watch on passively, by cutting off their fingers and bleeding to death. Even in watermelon sugar, you can try and lead a frictionless life, but friction is always lurking there in the background scraping its rusty fingers round the back of your brain. And ultimately, you can only ignore it for so long before it jumps out at you and reveals itself, the violence at the core of liberal ideology.
THE FRICTIONLESS SUBJECT
Ultimately, the kind of subject produced in a world where the one thing we are commanded to do is enjoy, is a similar kind of subject to the ones found in iDEATH. Passive, depressed, unable to act. The foremost psychological desire for the subject directed to ‘enjoy’ is that they must never experience friction.
Those of us still lucky enough to benefit from the material conditions of the post war consensus (the white-collar worker who owns their own home, the professional who is paid a good wage, the beneficiary of inherited wealth etc.) sincerely expect to live without friction, without suffering. We smoothly swipe on the screen of our devices as information rolls over our eyes in an endless scroll. If we want something, we don’t even have to experience the jarring click of a mechanical button anymore. We just touch (no friction) and then it appears. Food arrives at our door within the hour. An entire civilisation’s worth of music beamed into our ears. We want to go somewhere, and a car simply appears at our door. Whether it’s news (narrativised), fiction (formulaic), pornography (hairless, well-lit, mechanical), or each other (swipe right, swipe left) the internet auto-plays content and information to us seamlessly from one item to the next in a never-ending stream of frictionless light and sound.
It's all shite, of course. In many ways, for everyone involved. But what the platform capitalists (i.e. the owners of the big-tech platforms – Uber, Amazon, Deliveroo etc.) understand is that the frictionless subject doesn’t care about the quality of the slop they consume, just the ease with which they can consume it.
The latest frontier of all this ‘progress’ of course is generative artificial intelligence. The frictionless subject has been taught not to think. This has been going on for a long time already. There is an anti-intellectual and de-professionalising trend in almost every career going (I don’t have time to think, I’m too busy doing my job!) Many teachers no longer prepare their own lessons and are instead provided with schemes of work from senior leaders. GPs google the symptoms you report to them in front of you and refer to the same website you looked at before you set off to the clinic. The care worker is given a script they can read when working with someone from a different culture, not to be more inclusive, but so that the care worker can feel no friction when working with difference. In the trade union movement, members complain that they don't like the way the organisation is going but refuse to engage with the cognitive efforts that consciousness raising requires and the collective struggle needed to change anything.
The relational, critical and autonomous aspects of the professional middle-classes are all being reduced whilst the tedious, yet somehow gloopy…syrupy, administrative tasks proliferate. And now with the introduction of AI into our lives we get to ‘cognitively offload’ what little remained of our critical faculties. It writes our reports, it formulates our hypotheses, it outlines our interventions and we – the frictionless subject – just get to sit back and feel nothing.
The public sector worker, within the caring profession is always working-with the system, even as it now spirals out towards fascism with its oppressive and authoritarian logics targeting global majority and trans demographics in particular. We always collaborate and co-construct, never entertaining the fact that conflict might be required at any stage because that would require a forbidden frictive experience. We prioritise politeness and decorum above all other things, in ways that allow violence to proliferate just out of view, when we work alongside the police officer, or the judge or the government official.
And when we do experience friction (stress, money worries, relationship breakdown), or even the maladies of a frictionless life (depression?) we see the oppressive side of Zizek’s command to enjoy, as outlined earlier come into the fore. We blame ourselves; we shut down further; we become more anxious.
And at the dark heart of this frictionless life, we know two things. Firstly, we weren’t meant to live like this, and it is making us ill. We desire at least some friction. We sit at home on our laptops all day and desire to be amongst people, even if being amongst other people requires negotiation and compromise. We seek autonomy in our deprofessionalised and increasingly automated jobs, which have become so dull, meaningless and routinised. We dream of a pre-Spotify era where finding a record we’d been looking for was a challenge and listening to it was so much more special as a result. Video game developers are purposefully making games more obtuse, because they know humans enjoy the friction of overcoming an obstacle.
More importantly though, friction still exists in the world, it’s just very unevenly distributed. The cosseted professional classes of the UK know that, just around the corner, F-15 fighter jet components are being built which are then being used to kill children in the Middle East. On the other side of the road, there’s a council estate where the families are starving (1 in 4 children live in poverty in the UK). Homeless and drug-sick people congregate in the entranceways of crumbling and empty buildings that used to be department stores and banks. There is so much friction in the world and, as the cost-of-living crisis, ecological crisis and other social problems worsen, that friction is coming for the middle-classes too. And it won’t be a manageable friction, the type we desire. It will be pain and hardship and suffering and death.
DOCILE BODIES, PSYCHOPOLITICS AND FRICTIONLESSNESS AS A TOOL OF OPPRESSION
I want to argue here that the modern and post-modern Western societies of the 20th and 21st Century have gradually developed more and more frictionless horizons over time and that the reason for this is that it has engendered greater passivity in its populaces.
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault charts the ways in which the highly friction-filled societies of the pre-modern enacted violence on those who disobeyed in the form of capital punishment and yet this often led to resistance and uprisings and was ultimately replaced with the reduced friction of governance - surveillance, the panopticon society, the prison, the school and other forms of institution that produced ‘docile bodies’.
Byung Chul-Han argues that 21st century capitalism has gone one further in that it has got into our minds (remember the ultimate command that we must enjoy), no longer requiring any sort of friction-producing coercion from the outside in. We willingly go along with capitalist imperatives without the threat (real, or otherwise) of actual force being enacted upon us. I *want* to wear my smart watch because it tells me how much alcohol I can drink, how far and fast I should run, how long I should sleep for etc.
And this is the point at which I want to really centralise Western psychology as an oppressive tool of the state because it’s theories and practices are central to promoting this Zizekian conception of enjoyment, along with other forms of ‘oppressive optimism’ such as personal growth, grit, self-actualisation etc. Positive psychology has got into our subjectivities to the point where we willingly go along with what the ruling class want from us. Nowadays we’re not just docile bodies, but docile beings with docile minds. And it’s vital that we stay that way if capitalism is going to keep ruling over us whilst it falls to pieces, makes our lives worse and fails to offer any solutions or alternatives to the problems we face.
THE CURRENT CONJUNCTURE – VIOLENCE BECOMES VISIBLE
The truth is that violence and friction were always there. They were just hidden from view for an extended period of time under Western capitalism. As Losurdo points out so well in his history of liberalism, the safety and frictionless living we’ve come to expect in the West, is predicated on slavery, colonialism and oppression elsewhere. Often overseas. And as per the imperial boomerang (the idea that violent and oppressive exploits in the periphery eventually return to the home countries which conceived of them), more and more on our doorstep. Again, this is often out of view of those with enough privilege. The person of colour murdered by police behind closed doors. The migrant refugee brutalised in a detention centre. The child, physically restrained in a secure children’s home. But violence is becoming more visible.
Order in stable times under capitalism can afford to be liberal. As Gramsci notes, it’s hegemonic power works via the logics of coercion sure, but also consent. We consent to it partly of our own volition (I go to work willingly because in return I get a nice big flat screen TV), and partly because of the way our ideological state apparatuses (the school, the church, the media etc) normalise the way things are.
However, as liberalism breaks down (via a multitude of exogenous shocks – climate crisis, the crumbling of the American empire, the weakening of Western capitalism's ability to generate profit – and the fascistic ways governments respond to them), it is less able to offer people the things that encourage them to consent to it. And the stories it tells to convince us at the level of ideology become more and more unconvincing.
So, in their stead, we get coercive violence.
Now it’s really important to note here that I am not glorifying violence, conflict or friction. I am just stating very clearly that, whether you like it or not, they will become more and more part of our lives as time goes on. That the post war stability Western societies experienced between broadly 1945 and 2008 was an anomaly and a blip that is often mistaken for how things have always been. That even during that period violence, conflict and friction existed, only hidden out of view for many. And ultimately, if we want to reduce the levels of violence, conflict and friction experienced in our societies we need to acknowledge these facts head on, rather than continue to use psychology to help disguise the violence inherent in the system.
Social murder (i.e. the ways in which the system allows people to die through inaction or active steps) kills thousands of people in the UK each year via air pollution, injuries in poor workplace conditions, poor housing, poverty and other causes. Thousands more are dying from attacks that use weaponry built in the UK or from the secondary effects of being displaced and seeking refuge on our shoes or elsewhere. Foreign children and families are put into camps where they will languish with an uncertain future for years. Police officers violently assault children in our schools. Those unable to learn or find their own place in society end up on what is known as the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline whereby 9 out of 10 young people in custody have a special educational need and/or disability. Protesters who damage weaponry facilities are charged as terrorists. The state incites and encourages violence against global majority and trans communities leading to pogroms and murders. And none of these injustices can be mitigated against or averted unless we begin to acknowledge that the friction we have disavowed is actually central to how things work around here.
CLASS CONFLICT – BRINGING FRICTION BACK INTO THE PICTURE
I’ve been saying for years now, you can’t understand what’s going on in modern Britain without having some understanding of the most Marxist of all forms of friction – class conflict. Of course, the fact that it is vital to understanding the conjuncture means that class conflict is almost always ignored within liberal analysis. Guardian commentators like George Monbiot and Polly Toynbee, or the politics understanders who host liberal podcasts such as The News Agents and The Rest is Politics, will regularly identify problems accurately whilst refusing to grapple with the causes producing those problems, the most important in my view being class conflict. I would attribute this to liberal melancholy, which I have written about elsewhere. In short, if they acknowledged the class conflictual politics at the heart of capitalism’s logics, they would have to abandon many of their preconceptions of how society works and what we are to do about its problems. And this is just too threatening a prospect to their view of the world for them to grapple with. So, they disavow, they deny, they ignore, they ridicule.
Your average Monbiot article goes like this. The landowning class own most of the land in the UK because of the land clearances (correct). This is a bad thing because it maintains power, resources and wealth within society amongst a tiny elite who trash the commons with their grouse shooting (correct). The land should be understood as a ‘commons’, a resource we all own and have responsibility for (correct). The land should be rewilded and stewarded over with democratic oversight (correct).
Where it all falls down is how you get from where we currently are to the utopian end goal he outlines. At best Monbiot will say something along the lines of ‘the landowning class should just see sense and give it back’ but class conflict, which he will never acknowledge, is at the centre of why this will never happen. Once you start looking, you will notice that liberals are able to outline problems but never causes. Therefore, we have to take it on ourselves to outline the problems for them. So here we go!
In Marxist theory, class conflict is the idea that there are broadly two classes in society (it’s more complex than that, but for our purposes this will do fine). The bourgeoisie, who own the means of production (i.e. a way of generating money, whether it be land, a factory, rental housing, an internet platform, a stocks and shares portfolio etc) and the proletariat (i.e. the working class – those who can only generate money by working for a member of the bourgeoisie). Their relationship is one of conflict that cannot be reconciled under capitalist social relations. The bourgeoisie wants to maintain their own standing and therefore needs to create as much capital as possible so as not to go out of business in competition with others. The proletariat need food and resources to live and in doing so chip away at the bourgeoisie’s profit margin, threatening their interests. For the proletariat to have more resources, the bourgeoisie must have less and vice versa. And therefore, capitalism at its heart is a system of friction between two classes who are in conflict with each other.
This, of course, was obvious during the 60s and 70s where such dynamics were pronounced via powerful trade unions representing workers in negotiations with their bourgeoise employers, but for a long time it has been disguised and hidden from us via the mechanisms described above. The worker’s identity has been incorporated into the identity of the company they work for, and psychology has been central to this process in the ways outlined above. Yet, as the liberal institutions and systems we work within start to collapse, friction and conflict…violence, even…becomes more visible. As the working poor starve, as our public infrastructure fails. As, what Engels called ‘social murder’ proliferates and people die because of decisions made at the level of politics that benefit a tiny elite at the behest of the rest of us. And if the working classes don’t engage in frictionful conflict with the bourgeoisie to push back on their resource grabbing…soon there will be nothing left for them to eat, and the world will be on fire. This is not to glorify conflict by any means. It’s unpleasant, difficult and dangerous. It’s just to say that even if you are not interested in it, it’s interested in you.
But there is a certain hope to be found here. The liberal view of change ultimately boils down to the idea that ‘things are just how they are’ which is why at the end of every liberal analysis is a plea to be ‘pragmatic’ and accept things, rather than try to make change. The Marxian understanding of class conflict suggests that the current social relations we experience are not natural or fixed but were created by the bourgeoise and therefore can be uncreated and built anew (in a more egalitarian way) if the working class engage in class conflict and pushback on what the bourgeoise are building. However, this requires friction.
RADICAL PSYCHOLOGY – TOWARDS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF FRICTION
I will conclude by suggesting ways forward which may resonate strongly with those in the psychological and caring professions, but are also here for those who recognise in themselves a ‘frictionless subject’ and no longer wish to live in the somnambulant goop of watermelon sugar.
Firstly, if psychology is about supporting individuals to experience more positive subjectivities and manage what Freud called the ‘ordinary unhappiness’ of human experience, we must address the ways in which class conflict has resulted in a society where some live in complete luxury whilst many more experience the extra-ordinary unhappiness of oppression, poverty and violence.
This requires us to abandon many of Western Psychology’s sacred cows, designed to disguise the ways in which our system is built on class conflict. I could (and will!) write another entire essay on how liberal Western psychology does this but at the heart of it is a positive psychology that only ever encourages individuals to work within the systems they find themselves in, support others to tolerate those systems no matter how fascistic they become, and distract from addressing problems at the foundational level where they are produced.
We have to acknowledge the class conflictual nature of politics, and work collectively alongside others in both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary contexts in a process of redistribution. Wealth needs to be taxed, public and social services need to be nationalised and properly funded, good quality jobs in green industries need to be generated, our institutions need to be re-democratised so everyone can have a say, and – through all of this – the gulf between rich and poor needs to be eradicated.
But this *will require friction on every level*. From organising in workplaces to engaging in participation at the level of the trade union and party politics. Giving up time to engage in community action. Withholding labour and engaging in mutual aid so those who cannot afford it can still go out on strike. Calling out oppression where we see it, even if it impacts on our ability to ‘get ahead’. Having difficult and uncomfortable conversations. Acting out our values, knowing where our red lines are and refusing to cross them whilst working with or within liberal institutions.
It may require more than this. It almost definitely will. The extremely wealthy and powerful won’t give up what they have without a fight. And if our actions ever challenge their oppressive logics, they’ll bring the fight to us and not the other way round. But if we don’t challenge them, the continued death-drive of the social-relations they engender will spiral out and its chaotic and violent frictions will find us anyways.
Friction should be shared out fairly, across intersectional lines as part of collective movements that both understand how oppression affects different groups with differing intensities without falling into problematically paternalistic relations whereby dominant groups take it upon themselves to advocate on behalf of others. Positive affect should be found where it can, in sharing out the load and in doing so forming bonds of solidarity that go beyond the limited familial ties we usually experience within capitalist social relations.
We should accept less so others can have more, despite the friction it will generate. If giving up our comforts and commodities means that others in faraway lands or even just around the corner can live with a less brutalising friction, then we must do so.
Friction doesn’t have to only mean suffering though. Friction can also consist of enjoyment in the challenge of overcoming, of dreaming up a better world and fighting for it together, of breaking out of the changes (whether physical or psychological) that hold us back.
But the first step is to realise the trick Western psychology played on us all when it told us we could live passively, in Watermelon Sugar, whilst the capitalist class violently extracted all it could from those in the periphery before turning inwards and starting to do the same to those at the imperial core.