Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (first published 1789; Dover Publications, 2007) 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

Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (Princeton University Press, 2011) The university is not the only example of the logic of the futilitarian condition. In fact, neoliberal capitalism seems to work better when many of our actions are rendered futile, not only because we are incapable of challenging its hegemony, but also because in our desperation to maximize utility to improve our individual social and economic conditions, we simultaneously internalize the rationalities of self-sufficiency, personal responsibility and competition that dismantle social solidarities.Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. 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. But utility is not something that naturally exists; it is not a neutral or objective concept. Utility is always an effect of social relationships, constructed politically, and deeply enmeshed in the power structures of a society. The question, then, is not so much “what is useful?” Rather, it is “how does something become defined as useful and who gets to judge it as such?” Money and Utility The university knows that this intellectual precariat has little choice but to maximize utility, so it can exploit their acts by paying less and less for the labor of teaching, while still maintaining the influx of students and fees. It is clear, therefore, that the practice of utility maximization on the part of this intellectual precariat might on a few occasions lead to individual well-being in the form of a permanent position, but it also entrenches the conditions that make the well-being of the vast majority of the precariat impossible. Neoliberalism Needs Futility 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.

Where classical Marxists once believed in the inexorable historical arrival of a better tomorrow, one of the most alienating features of neoliberalism is how it naturalizes history out of existence. Since there is “no alternative” to the world as it is, aesthetics becomes the endless recycling of cultural images and symbols from the past, a pastiche of postmodern nostalgia for a time where people could actually make a difference. Even language becomes increasingly incapable of bearing the gravitas of meaning we need it to, as communication is flattened by digital discourse and the rich texture of the world becomes liquidated into two hundred eighty digestible characters. Politics Against Futility 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. Ben Eggleston and Dale E. Miller (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2014)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. Vallelly’s main thesis is that under neoliberal capitalism the individual pursuit of utility is totally severed from the common good and that individual utility has morphed into a widespread futility. The way in which futility permeates neoliberal capitalism is understood as fairly novel: previous variants of capitalism were exploitative and destructive, but some residual logic of utility remained intact. Though Keynesian capitalism was centred on a collective utility, Hayek prioritized the utility maximization of the individual. For Keynes, capitalism was a Faustian bargain, a flawed system he believed would deliver future progress and that would one day liberate humanity from toil. Why Keynes’ prophecy failed to materialize, i.e., why improved technology has failed to reduce working hours, continues to be a hot topic of debate. Whilst reading Vallelly (particularly alongside the late David Graeber for an exposition of neoliberal work) may not fully solve the question in its entirety, his contribution provides a compelling intervention to the debate with his notion of futility and the claims it is entangled with. Put simply, futility arises because the pursuit of individual utility ignores the common good, and without the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, utilitarianism ultimately becomes futile since we cannot avoid the fact that none of us exist outside our relationships to others. We are inherently connected to the world and to the rest of humanity; our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of others. Instead of attempting to spread the greatest happiness to the greatest number, neoliberal capitalism seems to spread the greatest unhappiness to us all. For this reason, utility can never be conceived exclusively as an economic or philosophical concept. Instead, utility is always representative of a certain understanding of political economy, of the relationships between forms of production, labor and trade and the mechanisms of government, power and, ultimately, capitalism. This fact is most evident in the work of Jeremy Bentham, a late 18th- and early 19th-century philosopher and social reformer. Bentham was the founder of modern utilitarianism and he could find only one credible measure for utility: money. In an essay titled “The Philosophy of Economic Science,” he wrote: “The Thermometer is the instrument for measuring the heat of the weather, the Barometer the instrument for measuring the pressure of the Air…. Money is the instrument for measuring the quantity of pain and pleasure.” Futility masked as utility is the essence of neoliberalism’s transformation of everyday life. At every turn, we are encouraged as individuals to take on greater personal responsibility, to invest in ourselves wisely and to wring every last drip of utility from any opportunity. At the same time, the social and economic structures that can facilitate such individual acts of utility maximization are repeatedly dismantled and denigrated. As a result, the futilitarian condition has become the dominant human condition in the early 21st century, where individual pursuits of utility maximization are used as examples to convince us all that we do not need strong social infrastructure or better economic safeguards. Patreon will charge your card monthly for the amount you pledged. You can cancel this pledge anytime.

An extremely lucid, smart analysis of our dilemma. That life in neoliberalism is often futile and nihilistic has been obvious for a long time. That neoliberal politics is covertly pessimistic as to human survival has also been clear. What Vallelly achieves here is a remarkable new theoretical insight into why that is, and why utilitarianism under neoliberal capitalism must mutate into futilitarianism. A thoroughly welcome, timely and profound intervention. 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 makes this particular brand of aristocratic disdain so inherently nihilistic and ugly is precisely that sentiment that most people don’t lead lives that are worth much of anything. We serve as replaceable forms of human capital, put to work by the handful of exceptional individuals who actually know what we should doing with our lives, before we die and the next generation takes our place. The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for over two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits, which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition. To Vallely, capitalism has always been undergirded by the idea of utility maximization as an intellectual crutch. By linking endless capital accumulation with the purported attainment of utility, the historical and ongoing injustices of colonialism have been justified on the basis of the supposed longterm interest of the colonized people. Similarly, ever-widening inequality is justified as part and parcel of ‘human progress’, a view well-lodged in the writings of establishment thinkers like Harvard’s Steven Pinker. But whereas Keynesian capitalism advocated a more ‘majoritarian’ variant of utility, the Hayekian push towards neoliberalism put the onus on the individual, thus leading to the current futilitarian condition.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 For centuries, economists and philosophers have theorized the value of utility: how it shapes the division of labor, influences consumer choice, and contributes to conceptions of the good life or common good. Utilitarian philosophers, from Jeremy Bentham to John Stuart Mill, told us that maximizing utility — the usefulness of an object and its capacity to cause pleasure or reduce pain — was the magical ingredient to happiness. Economists, from classical to neoclassical to neoliberal, have conceived of individuals and consumers as rational “utility-maximizers,” and Karl Marx reminded us that “nothing can be a value without first being an object of utility.” 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.” The book examines and theorizes futilitarianism as an ever-deepening process of individual entrapment, which occurs both despite and because of individuals' efforts to improve their own conditions. We inhabit a system that simultaneously prescribes and prevents individual "well-being." As we pursue our individual (and often even collective) goals, we paradoxically become less happy, more anxious, more indebted, more exploitable.

MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide. The book concludes with a chapter titled “The Becoming-Common of the Futilitariat.” The goal here is imagine political organisation around the idea of futility, much in the same way that precarity has been used to organise seemingly disparate labour experiences of in the neoliberal decades. I argue that the term futility can reach even further than precarity, because even those who exist in more secure economic, social, and political situations can still be trapped in the futilitarian condition. What needs to occur, I suggest is a process of “becoming-common”—an understanding of which I adapt form the German political theorist Isabell Lorey—which, in short, entails a process of mutual recognition of the shared experience of futility. These experiences are of course not equivalent—some people experience much more extreme and violent forms of futility—but they do attest to a social relationality that can form the basis of political organisation. Deeply inspired by the similarly grim Mark Fisher (of Capitalist Realism fame), the book is often sobering and even melancholic. Indeed in some of its more scathing passages, Futilitarianism reads like the academic equivalent of a primal scream against the injustice and alienation of the futilitarian era. But this passion drives and deepens Vallelly’s analysis, and the book will no doubt be welcomed by all of us who seek a better alternative to the despair of neoliberalism in the age of COVID-19. Utilitarianism and Capitalism Wendy Brown, author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West With an elegant pen, reader-friendly philosophical thoughtfulness, and scores of examples, Vallelly explains that gnawing feeling: ‘isn’t what I’m doing—in my job, ecological practices, ethical consumerism and more—really futile?’ Becoming-common, he argues, is our only way out.”For many capitalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the solution lay not in moral or political philosophy but economic theory — which nonetheless had a quasi-utilitarian ethos. Importing the evolutionary idea of the market as a mechanism that had emerged over time to maximize utility, figures like Francis Edgeworth argued that a society where individuals competed with one another in the production and sale of goods would maximize utility over time. This is because capitalist firms would be incentivized to gratify the greatest number of human needs, while individual consumers would be free to consume whatever goods gave them the highest levels of pleasure. As Vallelly points out, the most obvious tension in Bentham’s utilitarianism is between its individualism and concern with “a form of wellbeing that extends beyond the individual. Utilitarianism, after all, intends to maximise utility for the greatest amount of people, with, theoretically, no individual’s happiness prioritized over another’s.” Put another way, if it is psychologically true that each individual is egoistically motivated by the pursuit of pleasure for herself, how do we move from there to a moral argument that she should put her desires aside if that would secure greater happiness for others? While nihilism is certainly present in neoliberalism, the concept of futilitarianism makes room for another dimension in the meaninglessness of neoliberal life. In this dimension, meaninglessness is neither something that is passively instituted nor actively embraced, but something that emerges in people’s lives without their consent or even knowledge, whether this be in their job, education, social circumstances, economic situation or legal status. Where nihilism entails taking up a certain outlook on the world, futilitarianism is much more insidious and internalized. After all, many of us might believe we are contributing to society in a meaningful way — ask any PR consultant. 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.”