The tragic struggle against destiny: genealogical analysis of the culture of entrepreneurship and social inequality

Abstract

In the last two decades, a pro-business ideology has begun to spread, emphasizing the development of skills and personal effort to establish one's own businesses or enterprises. This is seen as a response to the degradation of working conditions and wage regression across a wide spectrum of workers. This ideology, known as "entrepreneurship" or "entrepreneurship," acknowledges that wages are no longer sufficient to maintain a dignified individual or family lifestyle. Therefore, it promotes breaking away from employee status by developing basic management skills, using creativity, and, above all, undertaking work with enthusiasm and strong will, with the goal of creating "your own business" as well as benefiting society. However, economists like Stiglitz (2015), Piketty (2015), and Esquivel (2016), among others, have drawn attention to the fact that overcoming unfavorable economic conditions, generated by the inherent inequality of 21st-century capitalism, requires more than just enthusiasm and willpower. This article analyzes the ideology of entrepreneurship from a genealogical perspective, as well as from philosophical anthropology, demonstrating its continuity with the entire discourse of the bourgeois as a hero and the entrepreneur as the self-made man.