The Ideology of Competition

NewWork Opinion

NewWork Opinion

Why Europe loves competition at the moment
This is the century during which that great, rich river of the West, fed for millennia by its principal tributaries, was re-directed through alien territory.

Western Civilization--all that was ancient Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and more--became contaminated as it flowed through vast desolate regions controlled by the Nazis, Stalin, Brezhnev, Ceausescu, and others who celebrated the triumph of ideology, corruption, mindless bureaucracy, and misdirected industrial power over reason, the individual, and human fulfillment.

The 20th century has seen suffering and lost possibility on a scale unimagined by our ancestors. The modern totalitarian state--meaning a state that is total--grinds all competing social structure into a fine, homogenous particulate. It forces people to pretend that they are much more alike than they really are. It crushes supportive relationships among people, isolates individuals, and, then, crushes individuality as well. The European totalitarian societies of both the right and the left also brought the stunning power of modern technology to bear in reinforcing ideology, as well as in achieving industrial efficiency in both repression and killing.

With the recent collapse of the Soviet block, we have also seen how catastrophic many of the state-run industrial organizations of the old Warsaw Pact nations really were. In such societies, the state has a monopoly on political power, which naturally draws economic power to the center as well, until there is no fair competition of any kind. The European Communist countries exploited their people and limited their possibilities, while squandering resources and ravaging the environment, something that ideologues had insisted could only happen in capitalist economies.

Most of the industrial organizations in the old Soviet block were propped up only by brutish political power. When that was withdrawn, only empty shells remained. There was little of value to an international market economy that had already moved on, and the consequences were devastating for millions of people throughout the eastern European region. A state-run economy crushes competition, greatly reducing the flexibility and creativity required for responding to novel, changing conditions during a period of fundamental transformation. Just the thing that Europe does not need on the threshold of the new millennium.

In all, it isn't surprising that many persons, particularly contemporary Europeans, have developed an almost painful allergy to highly centralized political and economic power, as well as great faith in the value of competition in political and economic life, if not in all areas of life.

Throughout the 1990s, large numbers of people in the West have been running from centralized economies and state-run enterprise. In the United States, there has also been a strong movement away from the central government in Washington, D. C. in favor of states and localities, at the same time that many want to see as much as possible transferred to the private sector or to the individual. The modern welfare state, initiated by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880's, is being repealed, as the legitimate role of government is reduced. In particular, a growing number of persons in Europe and North America feel that Government should get out of the business of being in business.

The nationalization of heavy industries, which was fashionable in several Western European countries not so many years ago, is being rolled back. The catastrophic failure of state-run enterprise in the Communist countries gave government involvement in operations of any kind a bad name. If government shouldn't be in the steel or airline business, say, why should it run the subway system, or the highways, or the postal system, or the schools, or the prisons? Will the police force and military be for sale next?

"Privatization" has hit with a vengeance on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, there have been growing efforts to put individuals into greater competition with each other in work settings or in greater competition for their jobs. If a little competition is good, a lot must be better, it is thought. If it's good in one setting, it should be great in another. In fact, rather than having government providing services or even contracting them out to private companies, why shouldn't individuals simply take care of themselves? If they can't compete, well, that's just the real world. Herbert Spencer's 19th century social Darwinism seems to be making a comeback.

We seem to have reached a point where many persons are assuming that competition can have only benefits, never costs or risks. If this really is the case, it means that we have discovered something exceptional in genuinely historic proportions. Even the most remarkable of the 20th century's "miracle drugs" have contraindications. Life choices have benefits only if we're fortunate; they almost always have costs and risks.

Many Europeans have suffered greatly during much of the 20th century, and many more have been close observers. If people touch a hot stove, they won't want to touch another. Problem is, they may not be willing to touch a cold stove either. It is possible to over-generalize from our experience, and to overreact.

Clearly, a competitive environment can have beneficial consequences in both political and economic life. But under what conditions? What are the limits of competition? Is competition the answer to everything in both work and personal life, or can we generalize too far? Under what conditions can competition be destructive? What are the likely consequences of this currently popular ideology?

The limitations of ideologies, including this one
People live mostly in a world of social construction, which is to say that we simply get together and make it up, particularly across generations. Most of what we regard as "reality" isn't reality at all, but simply the consequence of what sociologists call the "social psychology of knowledge."

For instance, despite the West's sordid history with the concept of "race" and its impact on millions of lives, even racial distinctions are more apparent than real. Our ancestors might be forgiven for exaggerating the importance of superficial appearances, because they had no alternative but to view things from the limited perspective of daily life. However, we now know better, or, at least, we should. We now have more fundamental information. The DNA is much closer to what we really are, and, when you examine DNA, you can't tell what race a person is.

Since Copernicus, there has been a growing divergence between our best knowledge of nature, including human nature, on the one hand, and popular beliefs about nature, including human nature, on the other. This divergence has accelerated greatly during the 20th century, in part because the natural sciences as well as the social sciences have gained access to information and perspectives that are unavailable to the individual's unaided senses.

For example, there is nothing in our daily experience that would suggest that ultraviolet radiation or subatomic particles exist. In social areas, recent developments in statistics, a branch of applied mathematics, have been particularly important. The representative statistical sample offers a perspective on society not usually available to individuals in their daily lives.

In ordinary social and political life, people develop or adopt ideologies in order to simplify and make sense out of the overwhelmingly complex social reality that surrounds them. Science attempts to simplify as well, but its approach is entirely different. Science attempts to discover the real simplicity that underlies surface complexity. Often, there really is less than meets the eye. Ideology, on the other hand, tends to impose artificial simplicity on genuine complexity, thus introducing distortions. "Everything should be made as simple as possible," Albert Einstein said, "but no more so." Thomas Aquinas advised, "Beware the man of one book."

Ideologies are filters, and, if we look through a filter, we know how things will appear, no matter how they really are. With social reinforcement, minds can remain remarkably unchanged when confronted by complex, even contradictory realities, because information or ideas that don't "fit" are filtered out. Social perception can be remarkably selective, and, if one is sufficiently selective, nearly anything can be made to look good ("Hitler was good because he built nice highways.").

In politics, competing ideologies often emphasize different aspects of a reality. For instance, even the most intelligent "liberals" and the most intelligent "conservatives" tend to have a crystal clear view of parts of complex problems. The solutions they offer often relate to only part of the real problem as well. It's sometimes easy to achieve single objectives if we don't care about side-effects. As one organizational theorist observed, "In a complex dynamic system, you can't do one thing."

Of course, in political life, competing ideologies often do eventually achieve some sort of Heglian synthesis. In Western societies, "liberals" eventually won on the issue of slavery, for instance, and, for the moment, at least, it appears that "conservatives" have won on economics and the role of government in economic affairs. Never mind that words like "liberal" and "conservative" are like Rorschach ink blots. One can see in them whatever one really wants to see, and their meanings mutate with the collective "mind shifts" that are the essence of political experience.

The frantic retreat from anything even remotely resembling socialism or state involvement in economics has fueled the ideology of competition in North America as well as in Europe. In the United States, President Bill Clinton has become a "new Democrat," in many ways resembling American Republicans. In Britain, the Labour Party's Tony Blair could be mistaken for a Tory in a dim light.

After years when the British looked at the "post-war miracle" of Germany's economy and wondered "who won the war," policies set in motion by Margaret Thatcher and continued by John Major have been credited with finally making the UK's economy one of the strongest in Europe. Tony Blair isn't likely to stray very far from those policies, but it does appear that he is not willing to sell the British postal system. Even to "new Labour," privatization and competition have their limits.

Social contagions do sweep through societies now and then, disrupting familiar patterns of activity, sometimes sufficiently so as to redirect social or political life in fundamental ways. In the 1994 election in the United States, conservative Republicans won control of both houses of the American Congress for the first time in decades, in part because of the widespread belief that the Democrats' "big government" policies had been discredited. The American Left was also accused of having had a casual tolerance for the Soviet system, which finally came crashing down in failure with a finality that was obvious to everybody. The conservatives in Congress were euphoric, but, after a few months, many people began to notice that things still weren't perfect, and even some Republicans began to sober up. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no more so.

When the popular rush is on, social movements can gather momentum because of the illusion that there is strength in numbers. "Competition is the answer to everything" has become an implied mantra. However, it is in the nature of social groups to look through filters and reinforce what is seen, at least until the political winds change direction.

In reality, there is no strength in numbers, so far as perceptions are concerned. All one can determine from asking large numbers of people what they believe is what they believe, not what is true. If this were not the case, scientists wouldn't bother going to all that trouble trying to separate the "obviously true things" that are true from the "obviously true things" that are false.

Probably the all-time prize-winning popular wrong-headed idea was the belief that the sun revolves around the earth. For at least 1,500 years, even the smartest people in Western societies believed it without question, and it could not possibly be more incorrect. Also, during the Middle Ages, a widely held belief was that geese come from the barnacles on ships. This interesting conclusion is worth remembering if we become too enthusiastic for the ideology of competition simply because it's popular at the moment.

When competition doesn't help
Under what conditions can competition be expected to produce individual or social benefits, as opposed to costs or risks? Outcomes or consequences may be complex, depending on those conditions.

For instance, it may make a great deal of difference whether we're talking about organizations competing with one another or individuals. It may also make a great deal of difference what the initial conditions are or whether there is a "level playing field" or a fair and consistent set of rules governing the competition. When someone who is already strong "competes" with someone who is already weak, is it genuine competition, or is it simply exploitation or predation? Are we competing in order to achieve rewards or to avoid punishments? Under what conditions is competition irrelevant to our intended objectives, or even counterproductive?

Also, what is it that individuals or organizations are competing for? What are the criteria of success? Economic advantage? Self-esteem? Security? Is everything for which people compete really scarce? Maybe there's more than enough self-worth to go around, for instance. Maybe my frantic efforts to compete for material possessions with the thought that these will somehow add value to me as a person are pathetic and futile. Clearly, the issues aren't simple.

In some cases, competition between organizations can have a clarifying, cleansing effect, particularly when the criteria of success are clear and simple. For instance, the traditional view is that a corporation has a single fundamental objective--to maximize financial return for its stockholders within a necessarily competitive environment. The clarity and simplicity of this goal tends to give direction and purpose to the activities of everyone in the company. There should be no inefficiencies, no irrelevant activities, no squandering of resources. Many other kinds of organizations could benefit from this clarity.

For instance, I know of a tax-supported American college with thousands of students in which a highly paid professional still works up the class schedule, the assignment of classrooms, etc., by hand! This is more than 30 years after universities in the United States with tens of thousands of students began using computers to do the same thing. Moreover, the computers of the day were roughly as powerful as those found in automobile dashboards now.

I suspect that the college could not legally pay real market value for this service performed by this person in this way. That is, I suspect its real value now is less than the federal minimum wage. Still, the individual is paid many times the minimum wage for each hour he works. Here is an organization made up of highly intelligent, dedicated individuals, but the organization as a whole often behaves as though it is demented.

Any organization whose continued existence depends on efficient, effective, creative use of scarce resources simply would not do something like this, or, at least, not for long. On the surface, it cries out for the cleansing, clarifying effects of competition. In effect, it amounts to the school's painting a large target on itself that may eventually draw the attention of ideologues with their own political purposes who may come from the outside to fix obvious practical problems such as this, but also do a good deal of damage to other things in the process.

Organizations should fix such silliness themselves, if only to reduce their own vulnerability to outside political influence. But, without immediate competitive pressures, there may be little incentive for doing so. Ideologues, on the other hand, tend to offer solutions for parts of a complex problem, and there is no guarantee that they will understand how an academic community functions or what it needs to carry on its essential work. It will be far better to allow the absurdities to continue, even if they seem almost diagnosable, if this is the necessary cost of preserving the school's essentials.

Societies are filled with essential activities that lack objectives as clear and simple as maximizing investor returns in a corporation. If we insist on imposing the sort of single-minded focus that may be appropriate in a corporate setting to other areas of life, instead of promoting greater overall effectiveness, we may simply narrow our focus with the result that many essential areas of life will be neglected.

For instance, when a corporate model is imposed on education, it tends to focus attention on vocational learning at the expense of those things which are "useless but indispensable." It can encourage the absurd belief that learning is "practical" only if it affects one's immediate job situation, but not if it affects all of one's life or the overall quality of life in society.

It isn't just that "excessive" competition can be destructive, although it certainly can be. It is also that competition simply isn't relevant to some desired outcomes in society. We can waste time turning the wrong knobs. Physicians don't like for cancer patients to chase "quack remedies," not only because some of these may be harmful, but also because the patient may be distracted from seeking out genuine treatments that can really help and lose precious time.

Similarly, if we spend most of our time and attention trying to increase the overall level of competitiveness in society in the mistaken view that more competition will be a cure for everything, we will not be doing many of those things that are necessary for developing the "cultural infrastructure" that economic growth and overall affluence make possible and on which life quality depends in the long run.

Many things of value must be accomplished collectively, as a community; they cannot be accomplished competitively. Each person cannot build his or her own highway, for instance. This does not necessarily imply heavy state involvement, but it does mean that cooperation, not competition, is appropriate in some settings for some purposes. Excess emphasis on competition under these conditions simply contributes to the breakdown of community, the "atomization of society," that is already well along in some regions.

The recent obsessive emphasis on competition on both sides of the Atlantic also rests on a naive view of human motivation. Under what conditions will people be motivated to do their best in work settings, for instance? Research clearly indicates that an emphasis by management on extrinsic incentives is likely to be perceived as an effort to control or manipulate, which reduces the sense of self-determination, as well as the intrinsic motivation of workers that contributes to a high degree of work involvement and quality performance.

Despite common assumptions in business, people are motivated, not only to gain or benefit, but also to contribute. Much of the highest quality work that has ever been accomplished by human beings has been carried out for reasons other than to gain material advantage. Anyone who doubts this need only visit any major art museum or library, or attend a concert. Most of the world's greatest scholarly and artistic works were produced by gifted people, often laboring for years, while expecting no significant financial or material gain, usually none at all, and, in most cases, their expectations have been realized. If profit is the only effective motivator, we will have difficulty explaining the common behavior of large numbers of gifted, dedicated people throughout history.

Child development experts caution against excessive emphasis on competition, such as in children's athletics. Childhood is a time when people need to feel sufficiently secure to take risks, to try new things, in order to build confidence and a broad range of life competencies. Research also shows that children are less creative when tangible incentives and competition with each other are emphasized.

In the adult world, "downsizing" and corporate restructuring have increased the feelings of insecurity among many workers, while also increasing their work loads. Industrial psychologist Dr. Kenneth Taylor is skeptical that employment policies putting people into competition with each other for their jobs and fostering employee insecurity will result in long-term net productivity gains for corporations. "Everything that we know about creativity and quality performance indicates that people need to feel secure in order to do their best," he says.

An example is Abraham Maslow's famous theory of human motivation that describes a "hierarchy of needs." Maslow says that people need to take care of personal "maintenance needs" before they can concentrate on growth. If one is preoccupied with self-preservation, one will not be able to concentrate on doing one's best or being one's best. Also, we know from research that there is a curvilinear relationship between stress levels and work performance. A mild to moderate level of stress makes us sharp and alert, but high stress makes us defensive and distracted. Excess competition tends to raise stress levels to counterproductive levels.

When is a high degree of competitiveness cause and when is it consequence? When is it not a virtue, but, instead, a symptom of pathology? Researchers have identified the "Type A personality," a pattern of behavior that makes a person particularly vulnerable to developing heart disease. Among the attributes of this temperament, along with anger, impatience, and unrecognized anxiety, is a tendency to be unselectively competitive. The "Type A" person not only competes in situations where competitive behavior may be necessary for success, but also in situations where it is counterproductive, such as within family or friendship relationships.

The "Type A" person tends to interpret human relationships as what mathematicians call "zero-sum games." That is, he behaves as though he believes that there must always be a winner and a loser. Because of his anxiety and aggressiveness, he fears losing, so he competes in order to be the winner. The problem, of course, is that many of life's relationships are not zero-sum games at all. In intimate relationships, for instance, competition tends to produce no winners, only losers.

Some of the people who are most enthusiastic about maximizing competition in all areas of life like it for the same reason that dogs like those who feed them. People tend to favor doctrines that serve their personal self-interest, because it allows them to enjoy benefits without social disapproval. For many, the ideology of competition can help justify their privileges, or provide justification for the strong to prey upon the weak, while also feeling virtuous. The doctrine of "individual responsibility," whatever its strengths, can serve to keep the weak in their positions of powerlessness, and, for many who already have significant resources at their disposal, including the benefits of formal and informal support networks, this can be convenient.

According to the "fundamental attribution error" described by research in social psychology, people often underestimate the impact of situations on behavior, but they do so selectively. We tend to attribute our own successes or privileges to our own personal strengths, and the failures or suffering of others to their personal inadequacies, even their genetic endowment. Further, we tend to attribute our own difficulties or failures to unfavorable situational factors over which we have no control, rather than to our own shortcomings. Most of the world's privileged believe they deserve what they have, and also, by implication, that those who are without also deserve their limited, even debilitating circumstances.

One of the most conspicuous characteristics of the new world economy seems to be a growing gap between "haves" and "have-nots," not only across nations, but also within nations, even within communities. It seems to me that this is a problem not only of economics and politics, but also a profound moral problem that, sooner or later, will affect us all. If we support attitudes and policies that exacerbate this gap, we are contributing to conditions that will consign large numbers of our fellow human beings to lives of unfulfilled possibility. Until quite recently, we did not know the profound extent to which this can be the case.

For instance, we have known for decades that environments influence human development because of nutrition and learning. However, some of the most important research of the 20th century now demonstrates that the human brain is a dynamic system not only functionally, but also structurally, and it shapes itself in response to environmental inputs. Environments, particularly very early in life, have a direct, immediate impact on how a person's neural "circuitry" develops, and this has implications throughout the lifespan, limiting possibilities thereafter. It helps explain the devastating effects of poverty across generations.

We're all aboard the same ship, and we will sail or sink together. An exclusively competitive attitude discourages the sense of community that is necessary to sustain us all. We all have a stake in the full development and well-being of all people. An exclusive emphasis on competition in order to justify personal advantage is "penny wise and pound foolish" at the very least.

Socialist ideology, which for so many years energized millions of people throughout the European region, erred in one direction, while the ideology of competition errs in another. We are not all alike and we do not all have the same interests. An insistence on collectivism and equality dehumanizes us because it robs us of our individuality and sense of self-determination.

On the other hand, obsessive competitiveness denies community and pits us all against one another as if in a jungle, which, presumably, was the "state of nature" that, according to 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, human beings sought to escape by forming civilized societies in the first place.

The problems of the ideology of competition are the problems of ideologies generally, and it is time to move beyond them. Otherwise, as Hobbes pointed out, for an increasing number of the world's people, life will be "poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short" indeed.

Gary Johnson has had a long career in communication industries, as well as a consultant and college teacher. He has lived and worked throughout much of the world.