Self-Actualization in the Capitalist Work Place: A Case Study in Appropriation

Capitalism, defined as unlimited capital accumulation, is and remains a contested system. In its search for growth and expansion, it succeeds in encapsulating and capitalizing on ever more areas of life, not only in the physical world, but also in the world of ideas and concepts. Variously called appropriation, incorporation, or co-optation, it refers to how expressions of protest, revolution, and dissent are domesticated and deradicalized so as to conform to the purpose of the corporation. In this paper, I discuss the appropriation of the concept of self-actualization, as developed by Abraham Maslow. Holding out the promise of a decentralized, nonhierarchical, and nonauthoritarian work place, it became central to the “human relations” school in management in the 1950s and 1960s. However, in subsequent translations by mainstream scholars, self-actualization became sanitized of its original humanist connotations. It was turned into a “pyramid,” a management tool for production and performance, and into the figure of the economic “entrepreneur of the self,” totally contravening Maslow’s original intentions with self-actualization at work.