The Interests of Capitalism versus Human Development

Where Are Your Interests?

Because the conversation has been pretty quiet, and because I fear losing what momentum we have unless we get to the crux of things, I'm going to skip a section here and go straight to a sequence of ideas that ought to get us talking.

Paragraphs 8, 9, and 10 in Lebowitz deal with the fact that the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999 was an attempt to support capitalist institutions while aiming for higher goals of human development. He suggests that was appropriate for the time the document was written, but then raises questions about whether human development and capitalism are ultimately compatible.

The next three paragraphs deal with a basic breakdown between what Friedrich Engels called "two new classes" of the industrial era that were busy "swallowing up all of the others." These two classes are essentially those who own industry and those who sell themselves to industry. Though much has changed in the last century and a half, if anything, this polarity has become more vivid, with yet another class coming into view (a class both Marx and Engels actually did anticipate), a class that is losing its place within the system. Today, it is more clear than ever that the employed and unemployed have common interests that are different than those who own the dwindling number of companies running the world.

But I don't mean to get ahead of where we are. Let's look at this basic analysis. Can we agree that these two classes Lebowitz describes are "swallowing up all of the others"?

The logic of capital

11. Think about capitalism. In capitalism, the logic of capital dominates; and that logic goes counter to the needs of human beings for their own development. In capitalism, the goals of production are the goals of capital for profits. For capital, human beings and nature are just means to that goal.

Capitalists and workers

12. Consider the nature of capitalist relations of production. There are two central aspects—the side of capitalists and the side of workers. On the one hand, there are capitalists—the owners of wealth, the owners of material means of production. And their orientation is toward the growth of their wealth. Capitalists purchase commodities with the goal of gaining more money, additional value, surplus value. And that’s the point, profits. As capitalists, all that matters for them is the growth of their capital.

13. On the other hand, we have workers—people who do not own the material means of producing the things they need for themselves. Without those means of production, they can’t produce commodities to sell in the market to exchange. So, how do they get the things they need? By selling the only thing they do have available to sell, their ability to work. They can sell it to whomever they choose, but they cannot choose whether or not to sell their power to perform labor if they are to survive. Capitalism requires people who must sell their power to produce in order to get the money to buy the things they need.

First, the logic of capital is so familiar to us we have several cliched expressions that sum up what's being said here. "Money makes the world go round" being just one of them. Is it true that the goal of profits is in direct conflict with human development? How and why?

Second, where do you exist in relation to these two classes? Would you say you own the means of production for our society or would you say you sell your ability to work to get what you need? What other classes are there, and are they in fact being swallowed by these classes?

I'll leave the first point to you all, but I'll answer the second based on my perspective. I'm in the teaching profession, part of academia, which has often seen itself as separated from the old dichotomy of owners versus workers. But is it? We have a union, even if we like to call it a "faculty association." And we are increasingly seeing situations where teachers' jobs are being cut, even tenured faculty positions are on the line.

For many reasons, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm a white collar worker. My job is to process students through two levels of our academic credentialing system. I have classroom management skills, and I know how to grade papers, and my own academic credentialing says that I can approve or disapprove of student work based on the laws of the system. But that separates me very little from a quality check person in a factory or a line supervisor. As we face issues of increased workload (class size) and budget cutbacks at all levels of the state education system (we barely have a Federal education system), it becomes more and more apparent that college teachers need some political consciousness to face the challenges ahead.

It is also terribly obvious that our interests lie with the partially employed who are our colleagues (97 English teachers in my department are part-time temporary while 27 are full time), and that we ultimately have more in common politically with our students and the unemployed in our community than the politicians and CEO's who are trying to cut their losses (including people who work for them) in order to maintain what control they currently have.

Unfortunately, I think most teachers are a long way from that kind of class consciousness. This is one reason I think a discussion like this is so important.

Your thoughts?