But when the proto-neoliberal Ludwig von Mises wrote to Ayn Rand, who herself dismissed the majority of the human race as mediocre at best and “second handers” at worst, he made no bones about it. Most people were “inferior” and owed any and all improvements in their lot to the “effort of men who are better than you.” Drawing on a vast array of contemporary examples, from self-help literature and marketing jargon to political speeches and governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vallelly coins several terms—including “the futilitarian condition,” “homo futilitus,” and “semio-futility”—to demonstrate that in the neoliberal decades, the practice of utility maximization traps us in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. Futilitarianism is published in November as part of the PERC series with Goldsmiths Press. PERC Director Will Davies will facilitate an online discussion about the book with the author Neil Vallelly and the following speakers If maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility--by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves--we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximization and the common good. Futilitarianism is a neologism that comprises an argument. In the historical development of utilitarianism and capitalism, Vallelly argues, the principle of utility maximization became entwined with capital accumulation. With the emergence of neoliberal capitalism, however, the logic of utility flipped into one of futility. From the onset of neoliberalism to its contemporary mutations, Vallelly suggests, "existential futility is the logical outcome of the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism" (51).

Neil Vallelly is a political and social theorist based at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His research has appeared in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, Angelaki, and Poetics Today, and magazines, including New Internationalist and ROAR. In 2022, he will take up a two-year Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Otago, working on a history of capitalism and migrant detention. An Italian translation of Futilitarianism will be published in March 2022. The utilitarian fantasy of a world of utility-maximizers, rationally pursuing the accumulation of money and contributing to a secure and healthy common good, has predictably not materialized. Instead, especially with the neoliberal mutation of capitalism, a society of atomistic individuals has emerged, who view utility maximization as a competitive endeavor, one that attempts to alleviate any responsibility towards the common good. The practice of utility maximization, far from pushing us towards a more egalitarian society, has ultimately trapped us in a destructive relationship with capital. The Futilitarian Condition Wendy Brown, author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West My recent book Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness, which is published as part of the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) Series with Goldsmiths Press, is an attempt to articulate a particular form of existential entrapment within contemporary capitalism. I call this entrapment “the futilitarian condition,” which emerges when individuals are forced to maximise utility—which, under neoliberalism, effectively requires enhancing the myriad conditions to accumulate human capital—but in doing so, this leads to the worsening of our collective social and economic conditions. Through developing the concept “futilitarianism,” I aim to lay the theoretical foundations to both understand this entrapment and to imagine ways of thinking and organising that can help us overcome the futilitarian condition.What Vallelly achieves here is a remarkable new theoretical insight into why… utilitarianism under neoliberal capitalism must mutate into futilitarianism. A thoroughly welcome, timely and profound intervention.” Few, these days, hold utilitarianism in high regard, as it relies on the calculation of utility and reduces the richness of life into pleasure and pain. As an ethical framework, it advocates the course of action determined by what decision maximizes ‘utility’, i.e., pleasure, happiness, or wellbeing for the most people. Jeremy Bentham coined the theory in 1789 and John Stuart Mill then built upon it, and in its day utilitarianism was a revolutionary turn in moral philosophy. Challenging the religion-based codes of ethics of the day, utilitarianism was rational, radical, and refreshing to the late Enlightenment thinkers it inspired. Vallelly, N. (2019). (Non-)belief in things: Affect theory and a new literary materialism. In S. Ahern (Ed.), Affect theory and literary critical practice: A feel for the text. (pp. 45-63). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-97268-8_3 Vallelly, N. (2021). Rejecting the existential futility of neoliberal life. ROAR Magazine, (November 2). Retrieved from https://roarmag.org

This is an excerpt of Neil Vallely’s “ Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness.” Out now from Goldsmiths Press. Since then, for all his insistence on its rationalistic simplicity, many have complained about deep tensions in Bentham’s position. Was he making a psychological claim about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain simply being fundamental human motivations, a moral claim about how they should be the fundamental human motivations, or both? But Bentham was convinced of the power of his argument, and claimed that the best moral and political system would be one dedicated to achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, as determined through a kind of felicific calculus. Neil Vallelly is a Researcher at Economic and Social Research Aotearoa (ESRA) and a Research Associate at the Centre for Global Migrations, University of Otago, New Zealand. His writing has appeared in such journals as Rethinking Marxism, Angelaki, and Poetics Today, and magazines including New Internationalistand ROAR. PERCSeries Vallelly, N. (2019). From the margins of the neoliberal university: Notes toward nomadic literary studies. Poetics Today, 40(1), 59-79. doi: 10.1215/03335372-7259887 The proceeds from your monthly pledge will go directly towards sustaining ROAR as an independent publication and building our collective power as a movement.

Neil Vallelly is a political and social theorist based at the University of Otago, and his research has appeared in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, Angelaki, and Poetics Today, and magazines, including New Internationalist and ROAR. He is also a researcher for the think tank Economic and Social Research Aotearoa (ESRA). In 2022, he will take up a two-year Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Otago, working on a history of neoliberalism and migrant detention. His book Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness is published by Goldsmiths Press (UK) and tells the story of how the relationship between utility and the common good has been transformed in the last four decades. Futilitarianism will be released in Aotearoa in early February. Vallelly, N. (2022, February). Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the production of uselessness. Plastic Pills: Philosophy & Critical Theory podcast. Retrieved from https://open.spotify.com/episode/4LVclNzlsdfLH6hCyhIlrV We constantly publish web content and release thematic issues several times per year. The exact amount depends on how much support we receive from our readers. The more people sign up as patrons, the more resources we will have to commission content and pay a copy-editor to prepare everything for publication. What we are witnessing is an important inter-generational divide between the old and the young, the baby-boomers and the millennials. The nay-sayers, dissenters and anti-capitalists across the globe are increasingly emerging from the younger generations, the very ones who were born into neoliberalism and have known nothing else.

While these thinkers may differ on how utility should be maximized, and who reaps the rewards of this process, few have disagreed that the maximization of utility is in and of itself a good thing. After all, where would human society be without utility? Dr Neil Vallelly has been awarded the Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow (from 2022). His book, Futilitarianism - Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness, will be available from February.

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Vallelly, N. (2021, November). Neoliberalism and the production of uselessness: An interview with Neil Vallelly. A World to Win Podcast, from Tribune and Grace Blakeley. Retrieved from https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/58-neoliberalism-and-the-production-of-uselessness-an-interview-with-neil-vallelly Vallelly, N. (2022). We need the great revolutions to open the path to freedom [Review of the book Revolution: An intellectual history]. Jacobin, (07.16.2022). Retrieved from https://jacobin.com/2022/07/enzo-traverso-revolution-intellectual-history-book-review Under such logic, the most moral society is the one in which individuals pursue the accumulation of money, under the ethical dictate that not only will this lead to individual happiness but also greater collective well-being. The perceived symbiosis between utility maximization and the accumulation of wealth has been a dominant mantra of capitalist societies, where political power routinely ensures that utility is defined as money, and where a utilitarian ethics is continually invoked as justification for the exploitations and inequalities involved in the accumulation of capital. In late 2021, Neil was awarded a two-year Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on a project on the historical relationship between neoliberalism and migrant incarceration in Aotearoa and beyond. He is also developing several collaborative research projects on topics relating to social reproduction and essential work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the history of migration policy in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the cultural politics of suicide in public.

If maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility--by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves--we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness(MIT Press, 2021), social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximization and the common good. MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology. PERC seeks to refresh political economy, in the original sense of the term, as a pluralist and critical approach to the study of capitalism. In doing so it challenges the sense of economics as a discipline, separate from the other social sciences, aiming instead to combine economic knowledge with various other disciplinary approaches. This is a response to recent critiques of orthodox economics, as immune to interdisciplinarity and cut off from historical and political events. At the same time, the authority of economic experts and the relationship between academic research and the public (including, but not only, public policy-makers) are constant concerns running through PERC’s work. Patreon will charge your card monthly for the amount you pledged. You can cancel this pledge anytime. Vallelly, N. (2021, November). The futilitarian condition. This is Hell! Podcast. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/this-is-hell/tih20211130Vallelly, N. (2019). The relationality of disappearance. Angelaki, 24(3), 38-52. doi: 10.1080/0969725X.2019.1620450 To develop the theory of futilitarianism, and its relationship to neoliberalism, I use the first part of the book to situate neoliberalism within the intellectual history of utilitarianism. I examine Jeremy Bentham’s writings on political economy, and, in particular, his association of money with the principle of utility. In an essay from the 1770s, “The Philosophy of Economic Science,” Bentham wrote that “the thermometer is the instrument for measuring the heat of weather, the Barometer the instrument for measuring the pressure of the Air… Money is the instrument for measuring the quantity of pleasure and pain.” This association of money with utility runs throughout Benthamite utilitarianism, leading Will Davies to conclude in his book The Happiness Industry (2015), that “by putting out there the idea that money might have some privileged relationship to our inner experience, Bentham set the stage for the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century.”