Capitalism vs Fun
It seems appropriate that this next section should fall on a holiday, not only because we associate holidays with fun but also because this is part of my fun, something I can't do at work. We live in a culture that tries to engineer employee attitudes with various kinds of workplace "fun"--from the chants at the beginning of the Wal-Mart day, to employee retreats, casual Fridays and birthday celebrations. But none of these things make up for the fact that we are laboring for an abstraction that we half suspect, until we actually learn it, will be used against us.
I struggle with this contradiction as a teacher. The saving grace is that I can actually teach a tool I know, at least to the best of my abilities. But the school setting is not "fun," and most efforts to make it more "fun" are simply distractions from the reminders that we are working in a school setting. Part of why there's a sense of "no fun" hanging over every school hour is the rightful sense, on the part of students, that this institutionalized form of education is probably not the best way to learn anything, that it's a hoop to jump to get out into the real world and really learn a thing or two. Part of why there's a sense of "no fun" is that the teacher has to be delusional not to recognize the truth in that perception. Part of why there's a sense of "no fun" is that both teacher and student know the hoop jumping that's being done guarantees nothing out in a work world where the worker's labor power is being driven down to zero.
So, instead of pretending to have fun, I try to opt for realism and the best parts of humanity--compassion and respect, two things I am not paid to offer my students. But these two things actually do offer me (and I hope my students) some sense of fun in the classroom because acknowledging the ugly realities and the myths of education allows us to conspire in subversive behavior. No doubt, as Lebowitz describes below, the system will conspire to take this wiggle room out of the equation. I can already see where the potential for such honesty will diminish with the online classroom, where every comment is put down in writing.
How do you see the trends Lebowitz describes here where you work or in places where you have worked?
Lebowitz writes:
Why producing under capitalism isn’t fun
54. In other words, it’s not an accident that most of us find the workplace a place of misery—the process of capitalist production cripples us as human beings. But, why can’t workers simply struggle against this? Why can’t they turn the capitalist production process into a place consistent with human development?
55. Again, remember the logic of capital: if human development made profits for capital, it would have introduced changes that supported it. But capital isn’t interested in whether the technology chosen permits producers to grow or to find any pleasure and satisfaction in their work. Nor does it care what happens to people who are displaced when new technology and new machines are introduced. If your skills are destroyed, if your job disappears, so be it. Capital gains, you lose. Marx’s comment was that “within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productivity of labor are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker.” The logic of capital is the enemy of all-round human development.
56. So, if workers do succeed in making gains here (and elsewhere) through their struggles, capital finds ways to respond. And, it has the weapons it needs. Through its ownership of the means of production, its control of production, and its power to decide the nature and direction of investment, capital ultimately can do what it needs to do in order to increase the degree of exploitation of workers and expand the production of surplus value. While it may face opposition from workers, capital drives beyond barriers to its growth in the sphere of production. Capital rules in the sphere of production.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Deformity
Fetishizing Our Lives Away
As of today, the first paragraph under festishism in Wikipedia reads, "A fetish...is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object."
One of the fundamental deformities Marx talks about is the way we've made money (accumulated capital) into a fetish. In a sense, we see our own power as something alien to us. Lebowitz explores various aspects of this here.
Lebowitz writes:
How capitalist production deforms workers
50. Think about the situation of workers in capitalism. As we have seen, the goals and authority of capital rule the process of production. Further, workers produce products which are the property of capital. But, workers don’t recognize those products as the result of the activity of working people. On the contrary, machinery, technology, all “the general productive forces of the social brain”, appear to workers as capital and as the contribution of the capitalist. Those products, further, are turned against workers and dominate them—they become the power of capital. What has happened? Simply, Marx explained, because the worker has sold his creative power to the capitalist, that power now “establishes itself as the power of capital, as an alien power confronting him.”
I remember this older woman working at a McDonald's one day who was joking (half-joking) that the managers were setting up the security camera so that, if she were robbed, they'd get some nice film of her but nothing of her robbers. Of course, her managers were more concerned that she'd take money from the till than they were anyone was going to rob her, right? That was the point of her joke.
That camera itself is a product of the collective work of laborers just like that woman, and that product is being trained on other workers for ensuring that every penny the capitalist makes stays under the control of the capitalist.
On one hand, this idea of the worker being alienated from what her hands have made takes the form of the dangerous machine that takes workers lives in Stephen King's "The Mangler." In a more overtly political way, the anti-riot personnel carriers and weapons used to put down worker demonstrations are all products actually made by workers. On another level, this alienation of the product from the labor explains why a worker can be fined a million dollars for file sharing despite the fact that her actual contribution to wealth may be abstractly counted as millions of dollars of social labor for which she is unpaid--the amount of money she is underpaid on her job, the support services she offers for her family that allow her to work, the incalculable services she provides to her neighborhood and community on a daily basis. Capitalism turns virtually everything we do into the private property of those who cut our checks. And even if it is not threatened, capitalism will turn those products into weapons to be used against us.
51. The world of wealth, that world created by human activity, faces the worker “as an alien world dominating him.” For workers in capitalism, producing is a process of a “complete emptying-out,” “total alienation,” the “sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end.” And what is the result of this “emptying-out,” this impoverishment in the process of producing? We try to fill the vacuum of our lives with things—we are driven to consume (consumerism). How else can we do this but with money, the real alienated need that capitalism creates?
Money is a commodity that symbolizes a certain value for labor at any given time, and most of us work all the time for precious little of it. We like to have things to show for our money as well, so we collect stuff--I-Pods, Kindles, DVDs, whatever. When we have nice things, we look like, and may even feel like, we're doing all right, even though we're less than two paychecks from the street. Ironically, when Americans hear the term "private property" in relation to capitalism, they think of this list of personal property that stands as our concession prizes for not having a stake in the system. We tend to be bribed to a comfort level where we won't resist the system in large numbers, which may be the greatest genius of the capitalist system.
Other ways that capitalist production deforms people
52. But that drive to “consume, consume!” is only one way that capitalism deforms people. In Capital,Marx described the mutilation, the impoverishment, and the “crippling of body and mind” of the worker “bound hand and foot for life to a single specialized operation” which occurs in the division of labor characteristic of the capitalist process of manufacturing. Did the development of machinery rescue workers under capitalism? No, Marx stressed, it completes the “separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labor.” “In this situation, head and hand become separate and hostile,” “every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity” is lost.
There's a Springsteen song called "Youngstown," about a steelworker more or less singing to his blast furnace. He tells her he's "sinking down," but he takes pride in his work at the same time, seeing himself in the next life, working the "fiery pits of hell." I think, in many ways, it's a song about the struggle involved in the "emptying out" described above.
53. But, why does this happen? Remember that the technology and techniques of production that capital introduces are oriented to only one thing—profits. Since workers have their own goals and struggle for them, the logic of capital points to the selection of techniques that will divide workers from one another and permit easier surveillance and monitoring of their performance. The specific productive forces introduced by capital are not neutral—they do not empower workers and allow them to develop all their capabilities (mental and manual). On the contrary, “all means for the development of production,” as Marx stressed about capitalism, “distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him” and “alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process.”
I was just joking with a co-worker earlier today about how, since I've taken a job in my school that allows me to pursue more of the social justice concerns I have, I've in many ways been deprived of my personal strengths--because of the dynamics in my relationships with co-workers in the new department, because of the cultural climate of our institution that becomes more entrenched with every attempt to change it, because of the way the very creation of this job places the person trying to change the institution outside of the role in which real change can be made. It's almost funny to me to see that reflected in Lebowitz's comments about the nature of the system and its effect on our capabilities.
I think it's important, crucial to recognize that capitalism is not neutral. It is a system organized around taking the power of workers and turning it into tools to be used against them. It works because it makes a religion people refuse to question. We wind up worshiping wealth, i.e. stolen labor. This, in turn, shapes every aspect of our lives and virtually every detail of the environment in which we try to work.
That's some kind of deformity.
As of today, the first paragraph under festishism in Wikipedia reads, "A fetish...is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object."
One of the fundamental deformities Marx talks about is the way we've made money (accumulated capital) into a fetish. In a sense, we see our own power as something alien to us. Lebowitz explores various aspects of this here.
Lebowitz writes:
How capitalist production deforms workers
50. Think about the situation of workers in capitalism. As we have seen, the goals and authority of capital rule the process of production. Further, workers produce products which are the property of capital. But, workers don’t recognize those products as the result of the activity of working people. On the contrary, machinery, technology, all “the general productive forces of the social brain”, appear to workers as capital and as the contribution of the capitalist. Those products, further, are turned against workers and dominate them—they become the power of capital. What has happened? Simply, Marx explained, because the worker has sold his creative power to the capitalist, that power now “establishes itself as the power of capital, as an alien power confronting him.”
I remember this older woman working at a McDonald's one day who was joking (half-joking) that the managers were setting up the security camera so that, if she were robbed, they'd get some nice film of her but nothing of her robbers. Of course, her managers were more concerned that she'd take money from the till than they were anyone was going to rob her, right? That was the point of her joke.
That camera itself is a product of the collective work of laborers just like that woman, and that product is being trained on other workers for ensuring that every penny the capitalist makes stays under the control of the capitalist.
On one hand, this idea of the worker being alienated from what her hands have made takes the form of the dangerous machine that takes workers lives in Stephen King's "The Mangler." In a more overtly political way, the anti-riot personnel carriers and weapons used to put down worker demonstrations are all products actually made by workers. On another level, this alienation of the product from the labor explains why a worker can be fined a million dollars for file sharing despite the fact that her actual contribution to wealth may be abstractly counted as millions of dollars of social labor for which she is unpaid--the amount of money she is underpaid on her job, the support services she offers for her family that allow her to work, the incalculable services she provides to her neighborhood and community on a daily basis. Capitalism turns virtually everything we do into the private property of those who cut our checks. And even if it is not threatened, capitalism will turn those products into weapons to be used against us.
51. The world of wealth, that world created by human activity, faces the worker “as an alien world dominating him.” For workers in capitalism, producing is a process of a “complete emptying-out,” “total alienation,” the “sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end.” And what is the result of this “emptying-out,” this impoverishment in the process of producing? We try to fill the vacuum of our lives with things—we are driven to consume (consumerism). How else can we do this but with money, the real alienated need that capitalism creates?
Money is a commodity that symbolizes a certain value for labor at any given time, and most of us work all the time for precious little of it. We like to have things to show for our money as well, so we collect stuff--I-Pods, Kindles, DVDs, whatever. When we have nice things, we look like, and may even feel like, we're doing all right, even though we're less than two paychecks from the street. Ironically, when Americans hear the term "private property" in relation to capitalism, they think of this list of personal property that stands as our concession prizes for not having a stake in the system. We tend to be bribed to a comfort level where we won't resist the system in large numbers, which may be the greatest genius of the capitalist system.
Other ways that capitalist production deforms people
52. But that drive to “consume, consume!” is only one way that capitalism deforms people. In Capital,Marx described the mutilation, the impoverishment, and the “crippling of body and mind” of the worker “bound hand and foot for life to a single specialized operation” which occurs in the division of labor characteristic of the capitalist process of manufacturing. Did the development of machinery rescue workers under capitalism? No, Marx stressed, it completes the “separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labor.” “In this situation, head and hand become separate and hostile,” “every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity” is lost.
There's a Springsteen song called "Youngstown," about a steelworker more or less singing to his blast furnace. He tells her he's "sinking down," but he takes pride in his work at the same time, seeing himself in the next life, working the "fiery pits of hell." I think, in many ways, it's a song about the struggle involved in the "emptying out" described above.
53. But, why does this happen? Remember that the technology and techniques of production that capital introduces are oriented to only one thing—profits. Since workers have their own goals and struggle for them, the logic of capital points to the selection of techniques that will divide workers from one another and permit easier surveillance and monitoring of their performance. The specific productive forces introduced by capital are not neutral—they do not empower workers and allow them to develop all their capabilities (mental and manual). On the contrary, “all means for the development of production,” as Marx stressed about capitalism, “distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him” and “alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process.”
I was just joking with a co-worker earlier today about how, since I've taken a job in my school that allows me to pursue more of the social justice concerns I have, I've in many ways been deprived of my personal strengths--because of the dynamics in my relationships with co-workers in the new department, because of the cultural climate of our institution that becomes more entrenched with every attempt to change it, because of the way the very creation of this job places the person trying to change the institution outside of the role in which real change can be made. It's almost funny to me to see that reflected in Lebowitz's comments about the nature of the system and its effect on our capabilities.
I think it's important, crucial to recognize that capitalism is not neutral. It is a system organized around taking the power of workers and turning it into tools to be used against them. It works because it makes a religion people refuse to question. We wind up worshiping wealth, i.e. stolen labor. This, in turn, shapes every aspect of our lives and virtually every detail of the environment in which we try to work.
That's some kind of deformity.
Monday, June 22, 2009
While I Was Sleeping.....
We received two important posts from Isaac on the previous section of Lebowitz. He raises some important questions that I think we should address before we move forward. I'd love to hear some commentary from others who are following this blog, and I promise to get rolling at a more constant pace very soon.
Summer's been tough, but I'm finding my way.
Danny
Summer's been tough, but I'm finding my way.
Danny
Friday, June 5, 2009
Beyond A Rigged Game
Overcoming Divide and Conquer Strategies
Lebowitz writes:
The reserve army of labor
45. If productivity increases dropped from the sky, the falling cost of producing commodities could permit workers to buy more with their existing money wages; in this case, workers could be the principal beneficiaries of productivity gains. But, they don’t drop from the sky; to the extent that productivity increases are the result of changes initiated by capital, the effect is to increase the degree of separation among workers and thus to weaken workers. For example, every worker displaced by the introduction of machinery adds to the reserve army of labor; the unemployed worker competes with the employed worker. Not only does the existence of this reserve army of unemployed workers permit capital to exert discipline within the workplace but it also keeps wages within limits consistent with profitable capitalist production. Displaced workers, for example, may find jobs—but at much lower wages.
This last line is an important principle in Marx, a point he argued over and over again. In capitalist society, people believe this myth that the loss of a job is an opportunity for something else out there. And, certainly, that kind of luck can happen for individual people. But the nature of the system is that people are not going to be laid off to increase profits and then find they are, as a group, even the majority of the group, going to make more money in their new jobs. As a class of people's positions are devalued by the system, their new toeholds in the system are, in the main, going to be of less value.
I've seen this illustrated over and over again, admittedly anecdotally, in my experience. For every person I know who lost a job and found something better, I can list a dozen others who are either not fully employed or who have had to adjust to a lowered standard of living. Of course, as we've seen the loss of industry in the Rust Belt and in Southern California, in particular, we've seen lots of high dollar jobs disappear. The service industry work that has taken its place has been generally at lower wages with less security. At some point, the evidence of recent history outweighs (and validates) all the proofs Marx could muster.
46. The same thing is true when capital moves to other countries or regions to escape workers who are organized—it expands the reserve army and ensures that even those workers who do organize and struggle do not succeed in keeping real wages rising as rapidly as productivity. The rate of exploitation, Marx believed, would continue to rise. Even with rising real wages, the “abyss between the life-situation of the worker and that of the capitalist would keep widening.”
This is some acknowledgment of the points Isaac made in his last post. Not only have nationalist union slogans failed workers worldwide, but it's clear that Lebowitz recognizes that the worldwide market for capital ensures that organized labor (as it exists) cannot win in the long run. And note that he quotes Marx--"the life-situation of the worker and that of the capitalist would keep widening." This is why Marx saw capitalism collapsing and, ultimately, a need for revolution beyond a moral choice regarding the exploitation of the worker.
The next session takes this point even further and deals with the point more explicitly. And this is not simply Lebowitz's updating of Marx. It is Marxist theory as opposed to the doctrine of another era or the program of a political party from some past era.
Exploitation is not the main problem
This concept rallied workers to build trade unions and gain reforms, but the deeper issues become more clear every day.
47. It is a big mistake, though, to think that the main problem with capitalism is inequitable income distribution—i.e., that the basic reason that capitalism is bad is that workers receive less income than they produce. If this were the only problem, the obvious answer would be to focus upon changing the distribution of income in favor of workers, e.g., strengthen trade unions, regulate capital through state legislation, follow a full employment policy (that reduces the effect of the reserve army)—all such measures of reform would shift the balance of power toward workers.
Again, as I noted in my response to Isaac's post on the previous section, these were adequate strategies for an era of expanding economy. Today, as worldwide globalization begins to find its limits and as once prosperous economies begin to collapse, none of this reform has any leverage. Some say there are no more reforms left in the system. It's easy to see that there aren't enough reforms left to get at the hemmorhaging of jobs and the value of labor being driven down to zero. (I'm not saying it's there yet; I'm not saying we'll ever be so labor free as to get there; I am saying that's the direction.)
48. But only for the moment. Because it is essential to understand that capital never sleeps. It never stops trying to undermine any gains that workers have made either through their direct economic actions or through political activity. It never stops trying to divide workers, to turn them against each other, to intensify work, to drive wages down. Even when workers have had the strength to make gains (as in the period after the Second World War), capital looks upon those gains as temporary barriers to go beyond. It uses its essential power to decide how to invest and where to invest in order to regain the offensive (as it did in the so-called Golden Age). That inherent power of capital put an end to the “welfare state” and the “import-substitution” models that were introduced in many countries as a basis for economic development.
Again, this analysis is classic Marxism, and it further underscores why the trade union movement is inadequate to face the new era. Many of us may still be in unions (I certainly am), and I will not quit fighting for what ground we are able to hold on that front. At the same time, I have to go outside of my union structure and work with others--adjuncts, part-timers, the unemployed, students, etc.--to explore the potential for new organizational structures. And whatever my union does, it will strategically only be on the right side of history if it keeps these potential alliances in mind. My guess is that it will eventually end up very clearly on the wrong side of history, and then I'll have to cast my lot with those it's fighting instead of the real power trying to divide and conquer.
As far as I'm concerned, this is when the analysis begins to get really interesting--when we are forced to talk about strategy for dealing with new conditions in the context of this history and theory.
49. The problem is not that gains in reducing inequality and exploitation are only temporary. Whether workers’ wages are high or low is not the issue—any more than whether the rations of slaves are high or low. Rather, we need to look at the process of capitalist production itself—to see the nature of the workers that capitalism produces.
What I like that Lebowitz is doing here is that he is establishing the necessity of this analysis for understanding just what we are up against and what we must do.
To sum up--
For most of us, the loss of a job will lead to a lower income and less job security;
Globalization only means that the gap will continue to rise between those workers who continue to be employed and the handful of people running things;
Capital tirelessly (systematically, not even consciously) organizes offensively against workers--to pit them against each other and to turn each worker victory into a "temporary barrier" before it regains its offensive;
None of this can be changed by simply reforming the system.
As we move through this, I find myself wishing that we were digging into more of the math that drew these conclusions. Much has been done over the past 150 years or so, but one thing we can continue to do is offer our own perspectives, experiences and anecdotes that validate and/or challenge these conclusions. Eventually, I'd like to take this discussion into the methodology itself, but maybe we get some of the way there by simply talking about our experiences and insights.
Your thoughts?
Lebowitz writes:
The reserve army of labor
45. If productivity increases dropped from the sky, the falling cost of producing commodities could permit workers to buy more with their existing money wages; in this case, workers could be the principal beneficiaries of productivity gains. But, they don’t drop from the sky; to the extent that productivity increases are the result of changes initiated by capital, the effect is to increase the degree of separation among workers and thus to weaken workers. For example, every worker displaced by the introduction of machinery adds to the reserve army of labor; the unemployed worker competes with the employed worker. Not only does the existence of this reserve army of unemployed workers permit capital to exert discipline within the workplace but it also keeps wages within limits consistent with profitable capitalist production. Displaced workers, for example, may find jobs—but at much lower wages.
This last line is an important principle in Marx, a point he argued over and over again. In capitalist society, people believe this myth that the loss of a job is an opportunity for something else out there. And, certainly, that kind of luck can happen for individual people. But the nature of the system is that people are not going to be laid off to increase profits and then find they are, as a group, even the majority of the group, going to make more money in their new jobs. As a class of people's positions are devalued by the system, their new toeholds in the system are, in the main, going to be of less value.
I've seen this illustrated over and over again, admittedly anecdotally, in my experience. For every person I know who lost a job and found something better, I can list a dozen others who are either not fully employed or who have had to adjust to a lowered standard of living. Of course, as we've seen the loss of industry in the Rust Belt and in Southern California, in particular, we've seen lots of high dollar jobs disappear. The service industry work that has taken its place has been generally at lower wages with less security. At some point, the evidence of recent history outweighs (and validates) all the proofs Marx could muster.
46. The same thing is true when capital moves to other countries or regions to escape workers who are organized—it expands the reserve army and ensures that even those workers who do organize and struggle do not succeed in keeping real wages rising as rapidly as productivity. The rate of exploitation, Marx believed, would continue to rise. Even with rising real wages, the “abyss between the life-situation of the worker and that of the capitalist would keep widening.”
This is some acknowledgment of the points Isaac made in his last post. Not only have nationalist union slogans failed workers worldwide, but it's clear that Lebowitz recognizes that the worldwide market for capital ensures that organized labor (as it exists) cannot win in the long run. And note that he quotes Marx--"the life-situation of the worker and that of the capitalist would keep widening." This is why Marx saw capitalism collapsing and, ultimately, a need for revolution beyond a moral choice regarding the exploitation of the worker.
The next session takes this point even further and deals with the point more explicitly. And this is not simply Lebowitz's updating of Marx. It is Marxist theory as opposed to the doctrine of another era or the program of a political party from some past era.
Exploitation is not the main problem
This concept rallied workers to build trade unions and gain reforms, but the deeper issues become more clear every day.
47. It is a big mistake, though, to think that the main problem with capitalism is inequitable income distribution—i.e., that the basic reason that capitalism is bad is that workers receive less income than they produce. If this were the only problem, the obvious answer would be to focus upon changing the distribution of income in favor of workers, e.g., strengthen trade unions, regulate capital through state legislation, follow a full employment policy (that reduces the effect of the reserve army)—all such measures of reform would shift the balance of power toward workers.
Again, as I noted in my response to Isaac's post on the previous section, these were adequate strategies for an era of expanding economy. Today, as worldwide globalization begins to find its limits and as once prosperous economies begin to collapse, none of this reform has any leverage. Some say there are no more reforms left in the system. It's easy to see that there aren't enough reforms left to get at the hemmorhaging of jobs and the value of labor being driven down to zero. (I'm not saying it's there yet; I'm not saying we'll ever be so labor free as to get there; I am saying that's the direction.)
48. But only for the moment. Because it is essential to understand that capital never sleeps. It never stops trying to undermine any gains that workers have made either through their direct economic actions or through political activity. It never stops trying to divide workers, to turn them against each other, to intensify work, to drive wages down. Even when workers have had the strength to make gains (as in the period after the Second World War), capital looks upon those gains as temporary barriers to go beyond. It uses its essential power to decide how to invest and where to invest in order to regain the offensive (as it did in the so-called Golden Age). That inherent power of capital put an end to the “welfare state” and the “import-substitution” models that were introduced in many countries as a basis for economic development.
Again, this analysis is classic Marxism, and it further underscores why the trade union movement is inadequate to face the new era. Many of us may still be in unions (I certainly am), and I will not quit fighting for what ground we are able to hold on that front. At the same time, I have to go outside of my union structure and work with others--adjuncts, part-timers, the unemployed, students, etc.--to explore the potential for new organizational structures. And whatever my union does, it will strategically only be on the right side of history if it keeps these potential alliances in mind. My guess is that it will eventually end up very clearly on the wrong side of history, and then I'll have to cast my lot with those it's fighting instead of the real power trying to divide and conquer.
As far as I'm concerned, this is when the analysis begins to get really interesting--when we are forced to talk about strategy for dealing with new conditions in the context of this history and theory.
49. The problem is not that gains in reducing inequality and exploitation are only temporary. Whether workers’ wages are high or low is not the issue—any more than whether the rations of slaves are high or low. Rather, we need to look at the process of capitalist production itself—to see the nature of the workers that capitalism produces.
What I like that Lebowitz is doing here is that he is establishing the necessity of this analysis for understanding just what we are up against and what we must do.
To sum up--
For most of us, the loss of a job will lead to a lower income and less job security;
Globalization only means that the gap will continue to rise between those workers who continue to be employed and the handful of people running things;
Capital tirelessly (systematically, not even consciously) organizes offensively against workers--to pit them against each other and to turn each worker victory into a "temporary barrier" before it regains its offensive;
None of this can be changed by simply reforming the system.
As we move through this, I find myself wishing that we were digging into more of the math that drew these conclusions. Much has been done over the past 150 years or so, but one thing we can continue to do is offer our own perspectives, experiences and anecdotes that validate and/or challenge these conclusions. Eventually, I'd like to take this discussion into the methodology itself, but maybe we get some of the way there by simply talking about our experiences and insights.
Your thoughts?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Unity Versus Divisiveness
Unity of Labor versus the Division of Labor
This section does two things. It sums up much of what we've talked about before, but more importantly it uses that summary to show even more examples of how capitalism is, ultimately, at war with human development. While all the members of a band play their most powerful music when the individual parts express unique perspectives while serving the whole--by finding the nodal point where individuality and unity join forces, capitalism's chief strategy is to strip the worker of individuality, even dignity, alienate her from the work and divide her from her sisters and brothers in the work. A balance of individual reflection, creativity and social communion are essential to human development. Maximum exploitation of labor for the sake of global competitiveness is essential to capitalist survival. These two drives have no choice but an ultimate showdown.
And one of the saddest aspects of this, as I've mentioned before, is that the nature of the capitalist workplace is that we are always in conflict with those we are trying to serve. We are in competition with our peers and we are in a state of antagonism with our customers/students/patrons, whoever is relying on our service. For me, it means that I am generally most lonely during my workday. I overcome that loneliness, almost without exception, by breaking or bending the rules (social, cultural, sometimes institutional) in some way.
Can the rest of you sympathize with this?
Lebowitz writes:
Unity and separation among workers—unity is the strategy of workers
38. The answer is struggle: what happens to wages and hours of work depends upon the relative strength of the two sides. For workers in capitalism to make gains in terms of their workdays, their wages, and their ability to satisfy their needs, they need to unite against capital; they need to overcome the divisions and competition among workers. When workers are divided, they are weak. When workers compete against each other, they are not struggling against capital; and, the result is the tendency for wages to be driven down to their minimum and the workday to be extended to its maximum. That was and is the point of trade unions—to end divisions and strengthen workers in their struggle within capitalism.
The strategy of capital—divide workers
39. How does capital respond? By doing everything it can to increase the degree of separation among workers. Capitalists may bring in people to compete for work by working for less—e.g., immigrants or impoverished people from the countryside. They may use the state to outlaw or destroy unions or shut down operations and move to parts of the world where people are poor and unions are banned. From the perspective of capital, all this is logical. It’s logical for capital to do everything possible to turn workers against each other, including promoting racism and sexism. Marx described the hostility in the nineteenth century between English and Irish workers in England as the source of their weakness: “It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it.”
40. So, while it is logical for workers to want a little security in their lives, to be able to plan their future and raise families without being in a state of constant uncertainty, the logic of capital points in the opposite direction. In fact, the more precarious the existence of a worker, the greater is her dependence upon capital. Capital prefers the worker who is always worried that capital will abandon her, leaving her without a job and with an uncertain future. Capital, wherever possible, prefers the occasional, part-time, precarious worker, the one with no benefits, the one who will accept lower wages and more intense work.
41. The struggle between capitalists and workers, thus, revolves around a struggle over the degree of separation among workers.
Productivity increases
42. Precisely because workers do resist wages being driven to an absolute minimum and the workday to an absolute maximum, capitalists look for other ways for capital to grow; they introduce machinery, which can increase productivity. If productivity rises, then less hours of labor would be necessary for workers to reproduce themselves at that same real wage. By increasing productivity relative to the real wage, they lower necessary labor and increase the rate of exploitation.
43. In the struggle between capital and labor, accordingly, capitalists are driven to revolutionize the production process. That could be good news for everyone: with the incorporation of science and the products of the social brain into production, it means that significant productivity increases are possible. So, there is the obvious potential to eliminate poverty in the world and to make possible a substantially reduced workday (one that can provide time for human development). Yet, remember, those are not the goals of the capitalist. That is not why capital introduces these changes in the mode of production. Rather than a reduced workday, what capital wants is reduced necessary labor; it wants to maximize surplus labor and the rate of exploitation.
44. But, what prevents workers from being the beneficiaries of increased productivity—through rising real wages as the costs of production of commodities fall? How does capital ensure that it and not workers will benefit?
Of course, Lebowitz plans to answer these questions in the sections ahead, but we can certainly speculate on our answers now, based on our everyday, repeated experience.
Also, what keeps the unity of the workers from overcoming the power of capital? Why are we so convinced, as a society, that we are powerless in the face of the system? What can we do to change this way of thinking? What is the cost if we don't?
This section does two things. It sums up much of what we've talked about before, but more importantly it uses that summary to show even more examples of how capitalism is, ultimately, at war with human development. While all the members of a band play their most powerful music when the individual parts express unique perspectives while serving the whole--by finding the nodal point where individuality and unity join forces, capitalism's chief strategy is to strip the worker of individuality, even dignity, alienate her from the work and divide her from her sisters and brothers in the work. A balance of individual reflection, creativity and social communion are essential to human development. Maximum exploitation of labor for the sake of global competitiveness is essential to capitalist survival. These two drives have no choice but an ultimate showdown.
And one of the saddest aspects of this, as I've mentioned before, is that the nature of the capitalist workplace is that we are always in conflict with those we are trying to serve. We are in competition with our peers and we are in a state of antagonism with our customers/students/patrons, whoever is relying on our service. For me, it means that I am generally most lonely during my workday. I overcome that loneliness, almost without exception, by breaking or bending the rules (social, cultural, sometimes institutional) in some way.
Can the rest of you sympathize with this?
Lebowitz writes:
Unity and separation among workers—unity is the strategy of workers
38. The answer is struggle: what happens to wages and hours of work depends upon the relative strength of the two sides. For workers in capitalism to make gains in terms of their workdays, their wages, and their ability to satisfy their needs, they need to unite against capital; they need to overcome the divisions and competition among workers. When workers are divided, they are weak. When workers compete against each other, they are not struggling against capital; and, the result is the tendency for wages to be driven down to their minimum and the workday to be extended to its maximum. That was and is the point of trade unions—to end divisions and strengthen workers in their struggle within capitalism.
The strategy of capital—divide workers
39. How does capital respond? By doing everything it can to increase the degree of separation among workers. Capitalists may bring in people to compete for work by working for less—e.g., immigrants or impoverished people from the countryside. They may use the state to outlaw or destroy unions or shut down operations and move to parts of the world where people are poor and unions are banned. From the perspective of capital, all this is logical. It’s logical for capital to do everything possible to turn workers against each other, including promoting racism and sexism. Marx described the hostility in the nineteenth century between English and Irish workers in England as the source of their weakness: “It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it.”
40. So, while it is logical for workers to want a little security in their lives, to be able to plan their future and raise families without being in a state of constant uncertainty, the logic of capital points in the opposite direction. In fact, the more precarious the existence of a worker, the greater is her dependence upon capital. Capital prefers the worker who is always worried that capital will abandon her, leaving her without a job and with an uncertain future. Capital, wherever possible, prefers the occasional, part-time, precarious worker, the one with no benefits, the one who will accept lower wages and more intense work.
41. The struggle between capitalists and workers, thus, revolves around a struggle over the degree of separation among workers.
Productivity increases
42. Precisely because workers do resist wages being driven to an absolute minimum and the workday to an absolute maximum, capitalists look for other ways for capital to grow; they introduce machinery, which can increase productivity. If productivity rises, then less hours of labor would be necessary for workers to reproduce themselves at that same real wage. By increasing productivity relative to the real wage, they lower necessary labor and increase the rate of exploitation.
43. In the struggle between capital and labor, accordingly, capitalists are driven to revolutionize the production process. That could be good news for everyone: with the incorporation of science and the products of the social brain into production, it means that significant productivity increases are possible. So, there is the obvious potential to eliminate poverty in the world and to make possible a substantially reduced workday (one that can provide time for human development). Yet, remember, those are not the goals of the capitalist. That is not why capital introduces these changes in the mode of production. Rather than a reduced workday, what capital wants is reduced necessary labor; it wants to maximize surplus labor and the rate of exploitation.
44. But, what prevents workers from being the beneficiaries of increased productivity—through rising real wages as the costs of production of commodities fall? How does capital ensure that it and not workers will benefit?
Of course, Lebowitz plans to answer these questions in the sections ahead, but we can certainly speculate on our answers now, based on our everyday, repeated experience.
Also, what keeps the unity of the workers from overcoming the power of capital? Why are we so convinced, as a society, that we are powerless in the face of the system? What can we do to change this way of thinking? What is the cost if we don't?
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Dangerous Illogic of Capital
The Logic of Capital Versus the Logic of Human Development
Lebowitz starts this section by saying "there are many examples of how the logic of capital and the logic of human development are opposed." Isaac's comments after the last blog about the opposition between capital's focus on the nuclear family (really a concept of family based upon the source of income) and the need to focus on the larger, human family is one such example. The many ways in which our individual, personal development actually runs into contradiction with our long hours and often very constricting job parameters is another.
But Lebowitz chooses to focus on the conflict between capitalism and nature. If we see human development as something that should be in harmony with nature, then it is fairly obvious that the competitive drive to take over the globe for the sake of profit does not meet that need. The current turn toward the green economy seems disingenous at best. Celebrities buying green indulgences to make up for their travel emissions may be taken as an innocent enough gesture, but it's not doing anything to turn around the rapid destruction of our environment on every front. Neither, as the latest Progressive argues, is the rush to build more hybrid cars, which leads to more "guilt free" driving and arguably more carbon emissions in the long run. And then there's Obama on TV every hour or so arguing for the concept of "clean coal." Would we hear that argument from that man if he didn't run a country driven by profits?
I grew up in an oil town, and 35 years ago, we were concerned about the oil crisis. Manufactured or not, we knew it had real roots. My father would explain to me that his company was researching alternative fuels because these petrochemicals wouldn't last forever. Of course, he also confided that his company was not going to stop pushing fossil fuels until it became more profitable to sell renewable resources. All these years later, we're building speculative capital out of such schemes, but what good it will do is unclear, and any such measures may already be too late.
In a sane world, wouldn't we take the reins on this global environmental crisis by focusing on alternative sources of energy and letting the oil companies go by the wayside? Wouldn't we stop clearcutting the majority of our forests today and start looking at ways to make better use of all of the materials we have at hand?
The logic of the day--on every front I can think of--demands that we put human (including environmental needs) above those of industry. This system simply won't allow it. In terms of what we need for our development, the tail is definitely wagging the dog.
That's no way to run a world, and if we can't figure out a way to do better, then the choice may be taken right out of our hands. I choose to believe there's still time.
Lebowitz writes:
The logic of capital versus the logic of human development
36. There are many examples of how the logic of capital and the logic of human development are opposed. Think, for example, about nature and the environment. Human beings need a healthy environment and need to live with nature as the condition for the maintenance of life. For capital, though, nature—just like human beings—is a means for making profits. Treating the earth and nature rationally (from the perspective of human beings), Marx noted, is inconsistent with “the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profit.” Capitalism thus develops while “simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”
37. The logic of capital, in fact, is the enemy of the logic of human development. Standing opposite capital’s goal is “the worker’s own need for development.” But, if capital and workers are pressing in the opposite direction in capitalism, what determines the outcome?
Lebowitz starts this section by saying "there are many examples of how the logic of capital and the logic of human development are opposed." Isaac's comments after the last blog about the opposition between capital's focus on the nuclear family (really a concept of family based upon the source of income) and the need to focus on the larger, human family is one such example. The many ways in which our individual, personal development actually runs into contradiction with our long hours and often very constricting job parameters is another.
But Lebowitz chooses to focus on the conflict between capitalism and nature. If we see human development as something that should be in harmony with nature, then it is fairly obvious that the competitive drive to take over the globe for the sake of profit does not meet that need. The current turn toward the green economy seems disingenous at best. Celebrities buying green indulgences to make up for their travel emissions may be taken as an innocent enough gesture, but it's not doing anything to turn around the rapid destruction of our environment on every front. Neither, as the latest Progressive argues, is the rush to build more hybrid cars, which leads to more "guilt free" driving and arguably more carbon emissions in the long run. And then there's Obama on TV every hour or so arguing for the concept of "clean coal." Would we hear that argument from that man if he didn't run a country driven by profits?
I grew up in an oil town, and 35 years ago, we were concerned about the oil crisis. Manufactured or not, we knew it had real roots. My father would explain to me that his company was researching alternative fuels because these petrochemicals wouldn't last forever. Of course, he also confided that his company was not going to stop pushing fossil fuels until it became more profitable to sell renewable resources. All these years later, we're building speculative capital out of such schemes, but what good it will do is unclear, and any such measures may already be too late.
In a sane world, wouldn't we take the reins on this global environmental crisis by focusing on alternative sources of energy and letting the oil companies go by the wayside? Wouldn't we stop clearcutting the majority of our forests today and start looking at ways to make better use of all of the materials we have at hand?
The logic of the day--on every front I can think of--demands that we put human (including environmental needs) above those of industry. This system simply won't allow it. In terms of what we need for our development, the tail is definitely wagging the dog.
That's no way to run a world, and if we can't figure out a way to do better, then the choice may be taken right out of our hands. I choose to believe there's still time.
Lebowitz writes:
The logic of capital versus the logic of human development
36. There are many examples of how the logic of capital and the logic of human development are opposed. Think, for example, about nature and the environment. Human beings need a healthy environment and need to live with nature as the condition for the maintenance of life. For capital, though, nature—just like human beings—is a means for making profits. Treating the earth and nature rationally (from the perspective of human beings), Marx noted, is inconsistent with “the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profit.” Capitalism thus develops while “simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”
37. The logic of capital, in fact, is the enemy of the logic of human development. Standing opposite capital’s goal is “the worker’s own need for development.” But, if capital and workers are pressing in the opposite direction in capitalism, what determines the outcome?
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Exploitation of the Family
Friedrich Engels' The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State is an important book on many levels, but particularly because it raises the questions of feminism in terms of how the exploitation of women is built into the capitalist system's blueprint for family relationships. Whether today's family is traditional, a "Mr. Mom" home or something much more egalitarian in terms of the couple, the system still depends on exploitation of the family's resources. In this seciton, Lebowitz sketches the nature of that exploitation.
Lebowitz writes:
Necessary labor within the household32. Capital, we have argued, wants the lowest possible necessary labor. But, there is one kind of necessary labor that capital would like to expand—unpaid necessary labor. So far, we have only talked about the necessary labor in the things that workers buy. Marx did not ignore the fact, though, that people need to convert those things they buy in order to consume them; he talked about activities “absolutely necessary to consume things”—like cooking the food purchased. Indeed, Marx pointed out that the greater the “expenditure of labor in the house,” the less money you need to purchase things outside the house.
The most obvious example of this, "cooking food," is given in the example. Of course, there are plenty of other examples that come to mind--from home assembly of that furniture that you buy at Wal-Mart to the gas that is required to distribute things from the store to the home, generally a cost added to the consumer by shipping and handling or taken on by the consumer altogether.
Anyone who's ever lived in a poor neighborhood knows the irony of ghetto prices and distribution--there are no stores within a half hour's walking distance that have even halfway decent prices. So, you either live out of the Stop and Shop, or you find a way to make the mile-long journey to get what you need. Plenty of walking going on, which is yet more unpaid labor on the distribution end. What other examples come to mind of ways in which labor necessary for the consumption of commodities goes unpaid? It's amazing how many corners are cut that we don't even think about as corners to cut.
On top of that question, we might also consider the irony that people are increasingly moving to on-line shopping and, for a long time now, fast food eating. How and why does the price of fast food outweigh the cost-savings (for corporations) of providing food that people will cook at home? Also, how are these corporations making more money out of on-line distribution? (Cutting out the middle man?)
33. But this labor performed in the household is invisible. Why? Because capital does not have to pay for it. We know, too, that the majority of this work is done by women; and it is work that is generally not recognized or valued. Yet, without this labor within the household (which Article 88 of the Bolivarian Constitution recognizes as “economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth”), workers would not be available for capital in the labor market.
This certainly suggests the motherload of answers to the questions posed by paragraph 32. What has traditionally been characterized as "women's work," all of the things that go into running a household, raising children and even knitting the social fabric in which the family functions and the children are raised--all of those things that contribute to the workers' lives and guarantee generation after generation of reliable wokers--that's all work that no one pays for.
The primary wage earner in the household, in a sense, pays for this help out of his or her paycheck by supporting the person and/or people that do this work, but the corporation does not accept responsibility for this work. I would suggest that this is why what we know of as a women's movement in this country has primarily made gains for people with different genitalia in the capitalist workplace while ignoring feminine values and the value of what has traditionally been labeled "women's work" to the social fabric.
[A historian friend of mine has an operating thesis that the women's movement of the 19th and early 20th century actually had a much more feminine-centered agenda than the second wave of feminism we all identify with the 1970s. As she would admit, a lot of it was reactionary to a fault, but it was still genuinely about family values as opposed to corporate priorities, ranging from abolitionism to the many temperance unions, and an end to long working hourse for women and children, etc.)]
To the extent these issues are addressed, they get called "family values," and the assumption is no one should have to be paid to do the right thing by their family and their children. Of course, no one knows how to argue in response. But there is a response. If this society gave a flying flip about social justice in terms of family values, then we'd find a way to put the cash on the barrelhead to make sure all family work is some way monetarily supported by the society as a whole. You pay for what you see as important; family work is not a commodity within the corporate system, so it is not important as anything more than an idea and a guilt trip to coax people into accepting the status quo.
34. While capital does not pay for this invisible labor, it benefits. The more work that is done free in the household, the less the wage has to be. The more free time that men have as a result of women’s work in the household, the more capital can intensify the capitalist workday. As the purchaser of labor power, capital is in a position to gain from the unpaid labor of women within the household. And the more intense and lengthy that work in the household, the more capital can gain. And, it works the other way, too: the more capital drives down wages and intensifies the workday for both male and female wage-laborers, the greater the burden placed on the household to maintain workers.
This is good stuff, the logical extension of paragraphs 32 and 33. Capital depends upon exploiting the labor of women (and sometimes men) who work 70 to 80 hours a week maintaining a household (even women who work full time jobs still tend to spend something like 57 more hours a week working on the home--men, considerably less).
When you start adding these things together, the thievery that is the modus operandi of capitalism borders on mind-boggling. The worker is paid a wage that is only worth a portion of the output of his or her day's work; that's one way the corporation steals from the worker.
Secondly, the corporation works the employee harder with each passing year in order to increase profits, profits never proportionately shared with the employee.
As Isaac pointed out, corporations offer benefits as a lure to employees and then let many of those workers go before they can claim those benefits--this is not to mention the many ways that benefits don't necessarily translate into all that is promised when the worker tries to collect on them.
Then there is the other excellent point Isaac made that workers are paid more for overtime hours because the profits that come with not having to increase the workforce to cover these additional hours yield much more into the corporate coffers than the rate of overtime pay.
Add to all of that the ways in which corporations take advantage of all of the domestic work that keeps employees coming in to work, reasonably happy, healthy, presentable and mentally sound, and the calculations of the ways capital exploits the common person's capacity for labor become overwhelming.
Yet another list we might generate would be other, so far unmentioned forms of unpaid labor that the corporation counts on in its exploitation of the employee. What comes to mind? Again, as Isaac said, there is no easy way to get such ideas over to the average American, but beyond simple activism (which I know from experience can lock itself into a deadend mindset that teaches people nothing), I think it's terribly important that we prepare ourselves for each of these conversations as they might come up.
35. How could we deny that the logic of capital is contrary to the need for the development of women?
In part, of course, this is about the double burden handed women in our society. If she takes on a career, it must be balanced with this concept of being a home-maker, and when the corporations are only set up to cover the labor capacity of the employee, that home-maker job necessarily gets short shrift.
But I would add to this the way in which, maybe not women as a whole, but feminine perspectives, ideas, ideals and values get short shrift by the system. What kind of world would we live in if we did not prioritize such feminine values as the care and nurturing of children, family systems and community? The one we live in? The one driven by war, dog-eat-dog competition and austerity programs that throw 650,000 people out of work each month with very few social services to support their families?
I'm all for a much more feminine society, one in which masculine values are on an equal playing filled with feminine values. Capitalism ensures that masculine values take first priority, and that's got us locked into endless war and an ongoing cheapening of life and all of the qualities of life that make it worth living.
Your thoughts?
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