>>6. Are teachers in the working class ? Do teachers create value ? Can teachers be exploited ( and who will teach the teacher?) ? Same question about office workers, clerks, secretaries, nurses, garbage pickup workers, water plant workers, public lighting workers, et al<< Reply WL: No . . . Teachers are not in the working class, they are part of the capitalist class . . . just playing. The question of defining class is complex and has to be treated historically and given a distinct meaning depending on ones context. I do not object to folks who treat women as a class within the working class because I understand their meaning. Karl Marx does not have the last word on women and never wrote from that point of view.
Of course teachers - in general, are part of the working class or a class - social group, of human beings in our society exploited by the bourgeois property relations underlying and creating our distinct cycles of reproduction, exchange and consumption of material goods. That is my point of view but may not be the next persons point of view, even if they call themselves Marxists. The answers to the various questions posed presupposes an outlook and general framework that defines the various categories of social life in question. Marx speaks of property relations and their legal expression that allows the individual to be regarded as a capitalist, even though the individual may in fact not literally own - as an individual, any aspect of the infrastructure of material production. If I have acquired enough money to be regarded as a capitalist in my life activity - and not have to sell my labor power for subsistence, then I would not regarded myself as proletariat or working class. Especially, if outside of a catastrophic break down of the social system, my money possession removed any reasonable possibility of me having to actively sell myself - my labor power, in order to engage our system of exchange based on private property. Virtually everyone is exploited through the bourgeois property relations, which governs exchange relations in society, except the capitalists as a class. Can teachers be exploited is a question that should be reversed. What should be asked is "can teachers NOT be exploited in a society governed by property relations in its last final form - bourgeois property." One can be exploited as a consumer. One does not have to make something with their hands or using a machine to be exploited. Teachers are a "class" or "subclass" or strata within the working class, which is itself stratified. Some untenured professors make considerably less money and benefits than autoworkers. Some tenured professors might be regarded as capitalist. Are both equally exploited at the gas pump and the movie theater? Then there are the hundreds of thousands of elementary, high school and junior high school teachers most certainly part of the working class - in my understanding and use of the concept class. Do teachers create value is kind of weird to me. Does the guy delivering pizzas create value? Do the schools teaching people how to do manicures create value? Do driving teaching schools and the people who work there create value? Does the garbage man create value? All these folks are part of a historically evolved system of profit making and they help someone to realize a profit or an expanded value by their laboring process. Teachers organized and created on the old industrial form of our society were an indispensable component in our value producing society as a system. Schools teach and trained millions of people and generations to take their part in an active system of value production. Capital long ago learnt how to pay for these teachers as taxation of the workers. The workers pay all the taxes . . . period. Teachers are hired and teach within a system of exchange based on the buying and selling of labor power, driven on the basis of cycles of societal reproduction as bourgeois property. To the degree their skills no longer are need to stabilize and enhance profit making is the degree capital fights to not employ their services. Yes, teacher are exploited. Does the woman who greets you at Wal Mart "create value" seems the wrong question because we are dealing with a historically evolved social relations - with the property relations within, of production and exchange. Specifically, a complex system of relationship operating on the basis of the bourgeois property relations. The guy pushing the carts at Wal Mart is part of their system of labor exchange and aids in their profitability. Does the individual guy pushing the cart create value is a question that presupposes a different way of looking at things. Did I create value as a Black Jack dealer is the wrong question. Was I an active part of a systemic relations of profit making? Of course. Does the cashier at McDonald's or the Burger King or Taco Bell "Create value?" Does the guy who mops the floor at Target department store create value? Does the workers at the "Half Off Bookstore" "create value?" Does the nurse helper paid wages in a hospital create value? Seem to me the issue is posed in an inverted manner that confuses the reality of our system of value creation. Behind McDonalds or the Burger King is a history and development of the instruments of production and social needs, which changes how the division of labor is expressed but someone has to prepare the food. The cashier has to be understand in light of the revolution in production which cast them as a distinct aspect of what was once a Ma and Pa business with both doing everything. Does the waitress create value? Go to a "full service restaurant" - The Texas Road House, without a waitress and then think about if you are going to go back there or to the one with a waitress. Does the waitress create value as a service worker? Open a full service restaurant or ask someone that has or someone that works in one, if the waitress creates value. She or he is indispensable to the realization of profit. >>11. Does "proletariat" mean the same thing as "working class ." ? << No, at least in my usage of the term. When I use the terms poverty stricken or destitute proletariat, I am hoping no one understand this to mean the autoworkers. I guess I could use the expression destitute working class but everyone I know believes working class mean those people who are not destitute. The "proletariat" is used to mean what Marx states it to mean in the Communist Manifesto as applied to today. The terms are interchangeable to a degree because the proletariat is of the working class by virtue of it having no existence other than the sell of its labor power - even if millions or a billion people cannot sell their labor power. Context and outlook defines ones meaning and I often use the concept "real proletariat" as a political proclamation as opposed to a theoretical presentation, although it is at times a theory conception. >>1. Is the working class declining?<< Relative to what? Is the working class declining numerically? Depends on what you mean by working class. There has been a working class by various names for a very long time or a laboring class. If decline means the portion of value as wages the workers receive relative to last year or a decade ago, as part of the total capital expended in production, as measured against what is expanded as dead labor, then I would say yes in the absolute sense. That is to say decline is looked at from the standpoint of the organic composition of capital or the portion of living labor versus dead labor in the production process since say . . . the advent of Fordism. I have not looked at the figures in the last three or four years but back while I was a union representative at Chrysler, the CEO spoke of overcapacity and cutting 200,000 workers out of the world wide auto work force. The decline is absolute from the standpoint of the revolution in the means of production even during period of relative increase in the size of the world work force. China is projected to have as many automobile on the road as in America by 2030 and this means an increase in its workforce but it is relative. Even this relative increase will be subject to the absolute tendency to decrease the living labor in the production process. If decline means a numerical part of humanity and the working class means all those who have no means of subsistence outside the sale of their labor power I would say No. Because the mass of humanity is more than less proletarians, increasingly outside active engagement of the productive forces and unable to sell their labor power for an amount of subsistence to see their lives and that of their children go forward. I do not consider the mass of humanity as unemployed serfs. It really depend on what you mean by working class and the context of your usage. >>>12. What is the significance of the changes in the division of labor and organization of production due to the scientific and technological revolution for all of the above ? ( What is the scientific and technological revolution ? ) <<< WL: Social Revolution. Social revolution comes about as a result of the development of the means of production. Means of production contains property relations but what is revolutionized as primary is the physical components of means of production or the productive forces or the underlying technological regime. Once we agree that human beings are the most revolutionary agent in human history and the precondition for history, means of production need to be defined. In my way of thinking the means of production primarily - not exclusively, means the things outside man used in production: instruments, tools, machinery, water sources and underlying energy grid - with the property relations within. Basically the productive forces as the technological regime. I lean heavy towards the manner in which Nelson Peery frames questions, especially as the concepts were hatched 15 years ago. At that time no one would even listen to presentations on changes in the technological regime constituting a revolutionary change or revolutionary impulse changing the mode of production. 15 years ago was still behind the ground breaking writings of Alvin Toffler and his 1980 book "The Third Wave." Toffler presented a reasonable outline of the process twenty years ago. The "Third Wave" and "Power Shift" - 1990, are the handbooks of the world bourgeoisie. The scientific and technological revolution means how human agency changes the technological regime from one state of development to another or what Engels call the inner impulse driving progressive accumulation of productive forces. Engels describes the technological revolution leading to the rise of the bourgeoisie as a property class in details. I use the concept "mode of production" and the "industrial mode of production" or the transition to post industrial society as concepts explaining the current changes underway. In my opinion we are not in transition to economic or political communism. >>>13. Does the term "mode of production" have more than one meaning in Marxist terminology? Does it apply to changes in organization of production short of a shift from capitalism to socialism, or feudalism to capitalism? That is, changes in the socio-economic formation? Does it apply to changes due to development and revolutions in science and technology since the Industrial Revolution? <<< WL: Depends on who defines the term. What does Marx state and what does one eyes and experience in light of Marx state? Here is the second part of the question reformulated for clarity: "Does the term "mode of production" . . . apply to changes in organization of production short of a shift from capitalism to socialism, or feudalism to capitalism?" Since I have a somewhat different outlook this question is almost impossible to answer because it is inherently opposed to how I understand that which is fundamental to the concept mode of production. It like asking "does the term mode of production apply to the organization of production if a shift is not taking place that is from capitalism to socialism, or short of a change in the form of property." Or "can one speak of "mode of production" outside the transition in the political form of the property relations as in the transition from feudalism to capitalism." I do not understand the concept mode of production to mean a set of property relations but rather, the specific shape of the productive forces and the technological regime as primary, with the property relations within. By feudalism and the transition to capitalism, I assume you mean the social revolution or scientific revolution during the period of landed property relations as the primary form of wealth, and its impact on handicraft and the emergence and broadening of the field of manufacture leading to the industrial revolution. I do recognized the tremendous importance in the change in the form of wealth from landed property to movable property or gold and its spurring of exchange. Also the role of slavery is recognized and generally I approach this not so much from the deployment of slave labor, which is very important, but rather the infrastructure that was developed to effect the slave trade or the growth of heavy manufacture. Just building the ships need to transport say a million people over several hundred years required an incredible reorganization of the laboring process or changes in a historically distinct mode of production. The Industrial Revolution was above all a revolution in the mode of production. Changing the property relations allowed for breaking the old property relations that acted as a fetter upon this distinct mode of producing material wealth. The question for me as I have lived my life and tried to understand what is in front of me, is the impact of the technological revolution and a given state of development of the productive forces as the fundamental characteristic defining a distinct mode of production. Landed property relations does not define the specific character of the technological regime. Was the "slave mode of production" a landed property relations? How one describes this depends on their purpose and standpoint. I am aware that this deviates from how Marx described the capitalist mode of production or rather how others describe how Marx describes the capitalist mode of production. It was Engels who basically stated that Marx describes the industrial system - mode, of production as a bourgeois property relations and since Marx people have called this the capitalist mode of production. "Mode" is the real question. The issue is not production because immediately the question becomes one of describing the deployment of labor and the form of the laboring process and classes, on the basis of a given state of development of the productive forces - with the property relations within. If describing the meaning of "mode" as primarily NOT the property relations . . . means being outside of the American Marxists, I can live with that. The other question kind of answer themselves. Question 10: "What does "proletarianization of the middle strata" mean?" would require producing the context in which the middle strata is described. As an abstraction this seems to mean a process where layers of the working class, are being forced down or facing a curve of falling wages that pushes them towards the more poverty stricken sector of the workers and not towards the bourgeoisie. "The process" is always the revolution in the means of production which alters the working class and renders increasingly larger section of labor superfluous to production. If the context was produced it would be clearer. Again question 7 is the same: "7. What is the difference between the working class and the working masses, if any? working people?" It depends on the context. In a union meeting while giving a report to the member if I used the term working people I meant those present in the meeting. If I used the term working class I meant basically 90% of American society. Context determine meaning. Waistline. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
