Chapter 2  
Widespread nepotism

Let us first clarify why sociology is important to take into account in order to complete Marx's observations and build a proposal for a social organization: it also starts from field observations, and in addition, it applies the scientific method, which allows its assertions to be verified by reproducing experiments, rather than limiting oneself to theoretical reasoning, the foundations of which are primarily ideological.  
In this second chapter, we will address a central aspect of 20th century sociology that helps us better understand the dynamics of organizations at the collective level. The central individual aspect will be addressed in a third chapter, and illustrated in a fourth. Finally, secondary aspects will be the subject of a fifth chapter.

Definition, origins and consequences of generalized nepotism

Nepotism is the act of favoring the social ascent of one's family members. We define 'generalized nepotism' as the existence of different concentric circles around each individual, and the individuals in these different circles are sometimes enemies, sometimes allies, depending on whether the enemies belong to a larger circle. Thus, an individual fights against other family members to secure their social position within the family, but then fights alongside other family members against other families in the community, then fights with members of their community against other communities, and finally, they fight with members of their nation against other nations. The same pattern is found among individuals who compete within a company, but together fight against competing companies, which in turn ally to assert their sectoral claims. The same applies to members of a political party who ally against other parties, only to then wage merciless internal battles for control of the party. In summary, the slogan of generalized nepotism is 'us against them'.

The document that, in our view, presents generalized nepotism best is the audiovisual reportage Caribbean Primates by Jack Silberman and Jean-Christophe Ribot, although it does not explicitly define the term. The documentary reports and illustrates the findings of scientists who observed the social behaviors of a group of rhesus macaques imported from India to Cayo Santiago island in 1938. The monkeys are not allowed to leave the island, but they are fed and have no predators. However, what the researchers observe is a social system dominated by aggression: 'While this island could be their paradise, they have made it their own hell.'  
Each individual belongs to a family, which in turn belongs to a group, and at the time of the documentary, the island has three such groups. Individuals interact peacefully, mainly through grooming, and aggressively, through threats, bites, and the like. However, the struggle for social status is almost constant at all levels. In this sense, peaceful exchanges such as grooming can be understood as alliances in preparation for future conflicts. In the dominant group, the monkey at the top of the social hierarchy is named Chester, and he is characterized by being the most active in the network of peaceful interactions. Conversely, number 3 in the hierarchy, named Tony, is the most active in the network of aggressive interactions. The end of the documentary describes Chester's fall and death, and Tony's rise to power, which proves that both their opposing strategies can lead to the top of the social hierarchy. At the conclusion, researchers wonder in what way observing these monkeys could help us design more altruistic societies, but they leave the question open.

This documentary calls for three very important observations.  
First, the collective expression of the struggle for social rank is the tendency to engage in conflicts on the basis of 'us against them.' Reciprocally, an 'us against them' conflict must first and foremost be seen as an expression of collective personal social ambitions. Therefore, there is a causal link between the two, although it can be difficult to detect due to the fact that the effect is not always direct, as for example in the case of racism.  
Second, generalized nepotism reveals a distinction between friend and enemy that is less stable and permanent than we are morally comfortable thinking. The same individuals can be friends or enemies depending on the circumstances. This raises an important philosophical question for which we have not found a scientifically established answer: in the context of friendly social relationships, what is due to genuine feelings and what is due to alliance strategies?  
Lastly, even when Chester is in power, violence dominates within his group. This shows that, contrary to what we tend to think, the misfortune of a group is not so much due to having a malicious leader as opposed to a benevolent one, but rather to the permanent struggle for social advancement that takes place within the group, regardless of the leader's characteristics.

Let us now see to what extent these findings apply to modern humans.  
It could be reassuring to believe that these findings about primates do not apply to humans, who are supposedly more civilized. Let's explore how true this is. In the report, the researchers observe two distinct modes of functioning. Normally, fights are frequent but very short. What is singular, even before Chester's fall, is that the fights suddenly become longer.  
With humans, on the other hand, we observe very few fights under normal circumstances. That said, it suffices to listen to any one of us to realize that interactions are often hypocritical, meaning that the feelings are conflictual but neutralized by social conventions which, except for young children, help to contain latent hatred or anger. This anger does not manifest itself in the form of short-term fights. However, during times of crisis, such as the two world wars of the 20th century, we observe a paroxysmal violence following the 'us against them' model, which is also expressed in intense and lasting physical confrontations. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt seeks a contextual explanation, invoking capitalism, nationalism, and antisemitism to explain the outbreak of violence that occurred during these periods.  
Our explanation is different: the instinct to fight constantly to progress in the social hierarchy exists in modern humans exactly as it does in rhesus macaques. Under normal circumstances, cultural elements allow us, through social conventions, to prevent this instinct from translating into perpetual confrontations. On the contrary, the crises we observe among modern humans, just like among primates, are of unprecedented scale because they are amplified by our technological capabilities. We must therefore reconsider the question of the origin of the problem, which is in fact the permanent search for social advancement inscribed in our genetic heritage. Indeed, while social conventions have proven effective in containing violence under normal circumstances, we observe on the one hand that they are not capable of regulating violence during periods of paroxysmal conflict, and on the other hand, history shows that these crises mainly occur during periods of 'great leader' change or under the influence of specific great leaders who promote violence. From this, a conclusion seems unavoidable: a good social system for the 21st century must also be efficient in containing violence in all circumstances.  
Like Marx, who wanted to eliminate capital to resolve the problems of capitalism, one could consider eliminating the concept of the 'great leader' to eliminate crises linked to their personality or succession. This is what we do in the second part of this book, without, however, claiming—quite the contrary—that this solves the problem in its entirety.

Let us emphasize that by focusing on the aspect of 'struggle for social rank,' we in no way intend to deny the human capacity for altruism, also contained within our genetic heritage. What we say is that it is not possible to build a satisfactory social organization without taking into account the aggressive nature of humans; in other words, Rousseauism is a dangerous illusion. Conversely, the altruistic nature of humans does not need to be taken into account during the development of a social organization because its natural and unconstrained expression is the most appropriate. Moreover, technological progress amplifies both the consequences of the uncontrolled mastery of our bellicose instincts and the potential benefits of their satisfactory control, since nature no longer imposes catastrophes such as famine. Technology gives us control—and therefore responsibility—for our destiny, and possibly even that of all the most developed forms of life, for better or for worse. Science has enabled us to tame nature.  
Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, chapter XXI: “Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You are responsible for your rose...
—I am responsible for my rose...” the little prince repeated, so as to remember.”

It is also important not to ignore the bias that leads most of us to overestimate the positive and altruistic nature of human relationships, that is to say, literally, to take our desires for realities. For example, we tend to attribute an unconditionally positive character to tolerance. However, a sentence like “Everyone can have their opinion” is in fact only the claim of the right to anti-science practice, which, as we will see in chapter 22, leads in the end to the opposite effect, namely an exacerbation of the 'us against them,' and therefore of social violence. The only effective tolerance at this level is that which accepts to abandon an idea we are attached to when it is contradicted by the facts, and we will see in the next chapter on cognitive dissonance that this is far from being the most frequent response. Then, tolerance is often nothing more than a simple strategy for optimizing generalized nepotism, that is to say, a way to make friends more easily and thus expand one's personal network. Finally, tolerance is too often an excuse for not opposing injustice or arbitrariness. In this regard, let us quote Cynthia Fleury from The End of Courage: “Adaptive strategies are inevitable and signs of maturity, but they are also, unfortunately, the surest path to the acceptance and legitimization of the unacceptable. The adaptation of some makes the bed for the abuse of others.”

Let us note once again that altruistic attitudes are rare in situations of intense struggle for social rank, whether for management positions in the workplace or for mandates in politics. In these environments, alliances are particularly insincere and fragile. We thus see that seeking to implement mechanisms aimed at limiting the struggle for social rank is a way to encourage altruistic behavior, while denying, minimizing, or even glorifying this instinct for struggle is a way of turning away from the problem, with the consequence on the one hand of ultimately minimizing effective altruistic behavior and on the other hand of favoring the emergence of toxic 'us against them' solidarity.  
To understand that altruism flourishes poorly in hostile environments, we can refer to the book If This Is a Man by Primo Levi.

Let us finally emphasize that for an alliance to be positive, it is not enough for it to be in a kind mode. What matters most is the object of this alliance, that is to say: is it serving a project built with reason and in line with the common interest? We tend to assign too much importance to the stated intention at the expense of the content, and this is easily explained: the stated intention and the non-verbal attitude of the interlocutor are decoded instantly and without effort, while following their reasoning requires a much more significant cognitive effort. Most of the time, we simply give in to convenience and assume that the form reflects the substance. Already in Antiquity, rhetoric used this weakness for the purpose of social advancement, but in the modern era, the techniques and means of rapid communication have made this bias so effective—and therefore problematic—that this imposes that the new social organization we propose must also resist altruistic presentations whose actual objectives are not altruistic.

Let us now return briefly to the question we left hanging: do our friendly social attitudes reflect genuine altruism or alliance strategies? Let us note that from childhood, what is asked of the young student at school is not to love his teacher but to respect his or her authority. In other words, the fact that this may pass through the adoption of a hypocritical attitude causes no problem. At this stage, we simply note that the foundation of education is not the development of sincere friendly attitudes but merely the containment of violence, possibly through hypocrisy. We all understand that hypocrisy consists in repressing feelings, accumulating resentment or hatred along the way, which may erupt suddenly in case of overflow. Put differently, our education system is optimized for the case where everything goes well, but in doing so, it amplifies the intensity of paroxysmal violence. Is this a reasonable optimization of our nature?  
We will see in the next chapter on cognitive dissonance that our main objective will not be to fight directly against lies in social relationships, because we have not found an efficient tool for distinguishing sincere from simulated behavior, but rather to fight against self-deception. For this, it will be enough to understand that it is above all self-deception that prevents simple dialogue from resolving disputes. We will come back to this again in the morality outlined in chapter 22.

A difficult task remains: making people aware of the major importance of what we stated above, namely that the unhappiness of a group is caused less by the malevolence of the leader than by the constant struggle for social advancement. First, let us see why this question is so difficult to understand. Quite simply, because we have all been conditioned, on one hand by the stories of our childhood, and on the other hand by the national narrative.
The stories of our childhood usually tell the confrontation between good and evil, and the story ends well, peace returns, if the good ones win. In fact, we get used to equating peace with a benevolent leader.
Regarding the national narrative, we are conditioned by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: men are born free and equal in rights, which is presented as an improvement over the Ancien Régime where birth determined one's social status. The underlying argument is that freedom is preferable to servitude. Indeed, it is much fairer, but the flip side of the coin is the intensification of the struggle for social status, since the good positions must be won rather than being assigned from the start. This is what led some reactionaries to reject the French Revolution not so much to preserve their privileges, but out of fear of the disorder resulting from this intensification of social struggles. The thinkers of the Enlightenment largely idealized the competition for social status, assuming that individuals' qualities and courage would prevail, whereas we have just seen that our instinct pushes us far more towards the game of alliances and the generalized nepotism that follows. Indeed, the objective of equal opportunity advocated at the level of national education is constantly challenged by parents, who do everything to favor their children, for example by bypassing school zoning, and in any case the alliance-based system of 'us against them' takes over at the latest when entering the world of work.
Moreover, what Marx brilliantly showed in Capital, is that once privileges are abolished, servitude can in practice continue in the form of a social class, if the social organization - the legal system in Marx's representation - does not sufficiently limit the appetites of the elites themselves organized as a class rather than as individuals with merit. 'Us against them' comes back with full force in the form of class struggle, and at the beginning of the 21st century, in the form of the people's struggle against the elites.

In conclusion, from the moment we decide that men are born free and equal in rights, it becomes necessary that the chosen social organization system succeeds in: on one hand limiting the effectiveness of the game of alliances for the conquest of social positions, under penalty of exacerbating 'us against them' and the universal violence that results; on the other hand ensuring that servitude does not reappear in the form of social classes which also generate a 'us against them' violence, which Marx named class struggle.

Generalized nepotism in the world of work

In the second part of this chapter, we will study how the objective of social advancement, and the generalized nepotism it produces collectively, is expressed in the world of work. For this purpose, we will refer to the work of C. Northcote Parkinson, and more specifically his article Parkinson's Law published in 1955 in the magazine The Economist. Parkinson notes that, during the first half of the 20th century, the number of ships in the Royal Navy decreased significantly, while the number of personnel did not decrease in the same proportion, and the number of management staff even increased significantly.
Parkinson finds the cause at two levels. On one hand, when a person is overwhelmed with work, she is generally not just assisted by a second person; she thus becomes the manager of a small department, so the management part increases. On the other hand, when a person lacks work, she tends to look for or invent new activities, generally bureaucratic ones, to maintain her position. Indeed, the management of organizations tends to increase continuously over time, gradually reducing the ratio of direct effective work to total work, therefore the productivity of the whole.
Next, like Marx, Parkinson seeks a rigorous formalism, this time in the form of a formula to predict the increase in staff over time. As in the case of Marx, it is not this formal aspect that is the most interesting, but rather the analysis of the causes of the observed problem, namely the continuous inflation of staff in the administration. In terms of methodological rigor, Parkinson presents the same requirements and the same limits as Marx: he does not content himself with observing and denouncing. He analyzes the causes, the mechanism that produces this. However, he does not offer a solution to remedy it.

Today, the effect of Parkinson's Law is denounced in books and articles devoted to 'Bullshit Jobs,' but the interpretation has become ideological, taking the form of an intention to alienate workers by capital, whereas we see only the effect of our genetic heritage expressed in a capitalist environment. The development of this point is postponed to chapter 19 devoted to global trade.

By linking Parkinson's work to the notion of generalized nepotism we have just exposed, we discover that what Parkinson observes and quantifies is the long-term effect of the struggle for social rank, in an environment where strong social conventions are sufficient to stop the direct manifestations of violence. However, the effect he observes is nothing less than the progressive asphyxiation of the organization under the weight of bureaucracy.

Parkinson's work has been disseminated too little among the general public, and especially its lack of consideration is at the origin of the greatest political mistake since the 1980s, namely ultra-liberalism.
Milton Friedman observes, like C. Northcote Parkinson, the continuous inflation of the number of civil servants during the thirty glorious years, and concludes that the problem is inherent in the notion of administration, and therefore that the solution is generalized privatization. However, Parkinson's work and then those synthesized by Meyer and Rowan that we will analyze in the next chapter allow us to understand that private companies are also subject to the progressive inflation of staff, at the same level, namely management, and for the same reasons, namely the objective of social advancement for individuals. What is supposed to protect private companies from this drift is competition. Again, Meyer and Rowan explain why this does not work. Companies standardize their practices out of necessity for credibility towards their investors, customers and employees. Moreover, once a certain size is passed, the elimination of less productive companies, called creative destruction in capitalist jargon, more or less stops because the community decides to save them to avoid the domino effect on subcontracting and other interdependencies.
On the other hand, once massive privatization is carried out, the problem already denounced by Marx of progress not being put at the service of all is amplified, especially because economic instability and job precariousness increase. Indeed, in the long term, growth is not accelerated by ultra-liberalism. The exceptional growth observed in Western countries during the 19th and 20th centuries is the result of technological progress, which itself is the result of the application of the scientific method. The economic system only plays a role insofar as a too ideological system can hinder this growth, as for example in the case of communism in the USSR. What worked best during this period was social democracy as advocated by Marx in Capital. Conversely, ultra-liberalism, that is to say a market free from any constraint, has shown that it generates overruns that are inevitably followed by collapses, whether it is the Great Depression of 1929 or the Lehman Brothers case in 2008, therefore the supposed gain does not exist in the long run. To put it eloquently, the market does not have an endogenous regulation mechanism. However, ultra-liberalism indeed amplifies the first criticism formulated by Marx against capitalism, namely the imbalance of the relationship between employer and employee, which has the effect of soaring inequalities. In the end, the net effect of ultra-liberalism is not better long-term growth, but increased inequalities.

Lean, as described in the book The Machine That Changed the World by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos, and Donna Sammons Carpenter, provides a genuine answer to the issue raised by Parkinson.
Lean is a reaction movement against Fordism. Fordism is the continuation of what Marx describes in Capital: industrialization causes a shift in the demand for labor from skilled artisans to workers performing repetitive work that can be mastered without specific training. These workers do everything the machines can't yet do, and then are replaced by machines, and literally thrown on the street. Alongside this very disadvantaged working class, a more privileged class progressively develops, of management and engineers. Marx already mentions this in Capital, in a single line. With Fordism, the duality of the destitute working class and the non-producing class becomes central, and contradicts the class struggle as envisioned by Marx. Indeed, the main objective of individuals becomes to move from the class of workers to that of management and not to overthrow the system or to struggle collectively as Marx advocated. This evolution will produce what is called 'the middle classes'. We then arrive at what Parkinson describes. This is where Lean intervenes, through the revaluation of the working class, both in terms of remuneration, training, and empowerment, with the double effect of limiting the non-productive Parkinson staff, thus ultimately better productivity, and better quality products, because those who produce them know what they are doing throughout the production chain, whereas a Fordist organization is content with external controls and often at the end of the chain. The spearhead of Lean was the Toyota organization that at the turn of the century produced the most reliable cars in the world.
But Lean does not stop at this response to Parkinson's and Marx's issues. It implies three other changes. The first is the financing of companies by banks more or less integrated into large industrial groups, thus able to work on a longer-term basis. The second is the reform of the customer / supplier (B to B) relationship, with cross-shareholdings, cross-audits, and a balance that is established as an equitable distribution of efforts and profits, where a Fordist system establishes the balance on the basis of a power relationship. The third is the reform of the producer / consumer (B to C) relationship, with the effect of greater customer loyalty who seeks less the good deal, and as a global effect greater economic stability, which in turn allows to ensure another pillar of the Lean social balance, namely lifelong employment.
This leads us to the problem raised by Lean: it is a global production organization system, which presupposes cultural elements present in Japan in the second half of the 20th century. However, its transposition to the West has been reduced to a simple optimization of production processes, hence an additional tool at the service of ultra-liberalism. More precisely, the perverse effect of this denatured application is an increased pressure on operational staff, without limiting the inflation of management staff and the associated bureaucracy, therefore a system ultimately counterproductive vis-à-vis the issues raised by Marx and Parkinson, with the net effect of a new simple increase in inequalities.

In summary, Parkinson provides the tool to understand that when the performance of the State seems no longer to match its cost of operation, the solution is not to reduce the scope of public services by privatizing and liberalizing, nor to impose austerity in a purely macroeconomic logic, but rather to reinforce the fight against the inflation of non-directly productive positions.
Moreover, this chapter has also taught us something surprising, namely that the bureaucracy of the State on one hand, and racism or nationalism on the other hand, have the same origin, which is the struggle of individuals for their social advancement which leads on one side to the proliferation of hierarchical levels, and on the other side to the intensification of behaviors of the type 'us against them'.

A last remark to better understand the importance of Parkinson's article. The motivation he puts forward to move from production to management is social prestige. He is perfectly right, and we have just seen that it is related to our genetic heritage. Put differently, most individuals intuitively appreciate their professional value as linked to the size of the pyramid of people under their orders.
The most telling illustration, because the most extreme, therefore the most shocking, is the remuneration of the bosses of big companies. In traditional industrial sectors such as the automobile, the final result of the company is much more the sum of the additional efforts and the wage restrictions voluntarily accepted by the basic employees and subcontractors than the effect of the boss's brilliant decisions. However, the boss does not find it shocking to receive a remuneration that is incredible compared to the hourly rate that corresponds. The explanation is that his evaluation is actually based on the size of the social pyramid of which he is the top, and not on an evaluation of his individual productivity. On the other side, the external observers who are not themselves at the top of a social pyramid, possibly a more modest one, could make the same evaluation, and therefore find all this normal, since they have the same genetic heritage. However, they are shocked, which shows that as we discussed in chapter 1, trust in the social organization is on the contrary linked to the evaluation of its ability to make everyone benefit from progress, that is to say largely from its ability to produce a certain social justice.
This proves that the motivation to no longer do it oneself is extremely strong, therefore fighting against Parkinson's Law is very difficult, and yet absolutely necessary to ensure social cohesion. In the next chapter, we will see how all this is translated at the level of individual psychology.

[ For a first reading, for greater clarity concerning the overall vision, you can skip directly to chapter 3. ]

A derivative theory: transactional analysis

Transactional analysis is in large part the result of the observation and classification of the effects of generalized nepotism, without going back to the origin of the phenomenon, namely generalized nepotism and more precisely the struggle for social rank.
Indeed, at the level of the three ego states, the 'parent' state can be interpreted as the protocol of revalidating the social hierarchy, exactly like the higher-ranking monkey who expects the lower-ranking one to smile, indicating its acceptance of the established hierarchy. The 'adult' state corresponds to the rational formulation, without reference to social rank. Finally, the 'child' state in response to a 'parent' state corresponds to the refusal to validate the social hierarchy.

Alternative expressions of social ambition

There are two alternative forms of expression of social ambition.
The first is membership in a group promoting an ideal. One could cite as examples the Freemasons, the Rotary Club, extreme political parties or any religious movement, while clearly specifying that this does not imply any equivalence between these different organizations. Their common point is values presented as superior to what is described as the common standard. The big problem with this form of elitism, as opposed to the artistic expression we will see just after, is twofold.
On one hand, it encourages self-deception, so it is not in line with the morality we will set in chapter 22. Indeed, the more the group wants to be elitist, the more its unity requires a form of doctrinal purity which implies allegiance to the group's values, and more widely to all the mythical beliefs associated with the nature of man, of society, of what is natural or not. Indeed, the individual has no other alternative than to end up lying to himself to conform without experiencing too much cognitive dissonance, or being finally rejected from the group, with more or less subtlety depending on the culture and the group's practices. The higher the group's cultural level, the more elaborate the discourse set up to support the mythical beliefs will be, the declared tolerance, and the refined practices, so the self-deception will be facilitated. Nevertheless, the finality and effect of the general mechanism remain the same.
On the other hand, this form of elitism naturally encourages nepotism and its consequence of 'us against them'. This is all the more problematic as the elitist, altruistic or moral dimension will be used to justify the associated violence: 'It's for the good cause!'
Religious wars are just the most violent expression of these two combined factors.
This leads us to be extremely reserved about any form of group ideal whenever the group promotes defined values, that is to say anything other than the submission to facts and to the scientific method as a way to apprehend them. Refer to chapter 22 to understand what we mean by 'scientific method'.

The second alternative form of expression of social ambition is art in a general sense.
We first define art in a general sense as any personal aesthetic construction, which includes not only the initial forms such as painting or sculpture, but also more abstract forms such as Alexandre Grothendieck's mathematical theories.
Next, we define sublimation as the expression of an instinct, that is to say a part of our heritage linked to evolution, in a transformed form that allows avoiding a number of the negative consequences linked to its direct expression.
Once these definitions are set, we can present art in a general sense as a sublimated version of social ambition.
The great interest of this sublimated form is that the individual no longer seeks support solely through the power of the group to which he belongs, but also through the power of his personal creation. We can therefore see art as one, or even the, individualistic form of social ambition. From our point of view, this makes it the most accomplished version. Indeed, the individual is no longer subject exclusively to allegiance to the group's values, which implies self-deception.
Moreover, the individualism linked to this form also avoids the vital energy being translated into generalized nepotism, 'us against them', and ultimately into permanent violence. Unfortunately, this concerns only a minority of individuals deciding to make a career in art in a general sense, or simply with art, and this does not prevent some violence related to 'the originality of my creation against that of all others'.
However, a big question concerning art in a general sense, to which we do not know the answer, remains: are all individuals endowed with significant artistic abilities in a general sense, which only await to be developed, or is it just a gift that concerns a minority?