This was a terrific discussion Jim and everyone. I agree with your
interpretations.
I wanted to add one last bit from Daniel Foss, who argues, below that Baran and
Sweezy were the last true Marxists, among other things. I have NOT shared with
him anything that the PEN-Lers here wrote. . .but he forges on in any case. . .
.this is the last I'll write on this. . .but if you have any final words before
I put this article to rest. . .Brian
Here is Foss:
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Militant Bolshevik Greetings!
I note with some amazement that one of your correspondents suggested that a
burger--flipper in a final-stage fast-food assembly plant "adds $1 to the value
of each hamburger." The application of bourgeois economic categories was not at
all what I was getting at: that was the conceptual transfer of an activity,
food preparation, from the sphere of "biological reproduction" and "domestic
consumption" to "productive labour in commodity production" - by Marx's
definition in the sphere of material production - by the sheer fact of its
having been industrialized and monetized. As I said yesterday. the
configuration of the human behavioural repertory in Marx's day, and still, very
largely, today, reflects patriarchal sexism in the organization of "life," as
some called it. What was not paid for was not "work"; what was "work" was done
outside the home, and pretty much - to minimize incongruities - by men. Sex was
mentioned as another activity shifting in its category-placement: in Victorian
times, as today, a highly-monetized labour market for sex partners - male as
well as female - existed. Yet till this very day, female practitioners have
vainly sought the respectability of the appellation "sex workers"; male ones
have been slow to organize ever since Theodosius the Great burned the
"homosexual prostitutes of Rome" at the stake in 391. Now, it should not take
any reminding that one of the two principal denotations of "labour" is that
prolonged series of spasms and contractions undergone by women - till almost
yesterday, at the risk of their lives - in giving birth; and that is the most
centrally important event or occurrence in social reproduction, by comparison
wherewith, all other production is but metaphor.
Rivers of ink were spilled throughout the history of workers' movements,
socialist parties, and Marxist theory, on the question of defining productive
labour. By the twentieth century, a ceiling of no more than one-third of all
workers were employed in factories; a large and rapidly-growing percentage were
employed in offices, wholesale and retail sales, technical and highly skilled
occupations requiring specialized advanced training or education, and
managerial, professional, and administrative positions below policy-making
levels. Were these "workers," performing "productive labour," and consequently
potential converts to socialism or allies of the factory working class or not?
The German Social Democratic Party was the first to face this issue, even
before World War I; and did so because that party was not only the heir of Marx
and Engels; it was thoroughly aware of that fact. The British Labour Party and
other working class parties were more amenable to fudging their principles.
The options were: 1. No, because the office workers and other recipients
of salaries or methods of remuneration other than hourly wage labour were not
participants in the "capitalist labour process" "at the point of production.
Hence the widely-copied formula, "workers by hand and brain."
2. Yes, because they were participants in the "collective social
labourer" whose blended effort was responsible for the production of the
use-value (the article, otanbject, Thing produced).
3. Some of them were. Others were not: Say, some of the employees in the
office, the mechanical and electrical engineers, for example, were inescapably
necessary for the contrivance of the physical process of making those aspects
of the product essential to its fulfilling its use-value, and for doing so at
low enough cost (exchange value) to permit the mass-marketing of the
article-object-Thing to consumers to barely afford to purchase the contraption
on the instalment plan. Or, even better, on consumer debt.
4. Fat lot of difference 3. would make, since the office workers and
sales force respond politically to the circumstance that they do not get dirty
doing the work; that they went to high school/college/whatever together for the
very purpose and expectation of making a living in undefiled circumstances.
5. Yet another argument applied specifically to the post-World-War II USA
hegemony in the world market: Until 1973, the USA made most of the world
output; likewise, it consumed most of the world output. Nothing the
mega-corporations and multinational conglomerates of the time did, however
wasteful, seemed, to P. Baran and P. Sweezy, authors of Monopoly Capital
(Monthly Review Press, 1964), to endanger this American dominance. They
accordingly posited that the contribution of office workers to the economy was
as "surplus absorbers." These were featherbedded employees who were busily at
work collectively consuming office buildings, metropolitan infrastructure,
office supplies, and appropriate attire, decor, and educational backgrounds -
the latter having been made the presumption, presupposition, qualification, and
socialization into the class atmospherics of the positions wherefore they were
hired: In order to supply the massive numbers of nouveaux-genteel
recently-upwardly-mobile armies of (mainly male) corporate bureaucrats and
their ubiquitous female office-servants/"Other Women" - as portrayed on the
series Mad Men - the society was at that time impelled to build Clark Kerr's
"Multiversity," and to clone it everywhere.
On top of all that, the "surplus absorbers" performed the bulk, or
critical portion, of private household consumption: they (a) Owned Their Own
Homes. (b) Owned The Family Car, and maybe a car or two besides, so that the
main "breadwinner," the husband/father/male spouse could drive from home to
work to home to work, &c. Which is called "functioning": In capitalism, you do
the same damned thing over and over again; Or: You do less.
Their children started showing up in the offices of campus shrinks, complaining
of Alienation. Pardon, lest we forget all the other Stuff that was required for
the respectable family to Cram into places in the house; if there was an
overflow, then into the garage. Still later, Steve Jobs would use that very
overstuffed garage to add to the American Myth. Which all happened in
California, of course.
The above was generated from the bowels of the capitalist system - which
is, after all, embodied in a society; and in real-world societies, Some Things
Are Always More Important Than Money, though Not the ones They tell you - by
Unintended Consequence, since it presumably stood too much in violation of
capitalism's Prime Directive of profit: where the productivity of
manual/production workers has long been quantifiable to several decimal places'
precision, that of office workers lagged behind; and nowhere was this more true
than in measuring the work output of would-be class equals of the management
(say, junior executives) or the latter's ancillae (Latin for the ubiquitous
female slaves of the elite household). This continued to be true well past the
introduction of desktop computers; and, in fact, not till 1991 did claims of
productivity gains due to computerization start to hold water. Even so, it was
long before "lean and mean" managements succeeded in reducing prior
overstaffing to the point where "workers" as a whole were registering
productivity increases!
Prove it, you say. Well, Baran and Sweezy are dead; but had they lived,
they'd no doubt point out the corporate bureaucratic swamp into which the
automobile industry lurched, and thereafter languished until its total collapse
in 2009. Already, in the late 1960s, the Japanese automakers were making better
cars and selling them in North America at lower prices; or else North Americans
were willing to pay premia for higher-quality Japanese and German products.
Collapse on this order of magnitude was by no means easy for the USA car
industry to accomplish.
Baran and Sweezy were obligated from the Marxist record as Heretics. They
had no successors; and the applicability of "surplus absorption" as a concept
or theory disappeared with the onset of Neo-Globalization. [Note: Capitalism is
Always globalizing! What most people call "globalization" needs to be
distinguished from previous epochs of world trade expansion, e.g., before World
War One. - daf] Nobody continued their line of analysis. Which should have
taken the form of: Both the process of capitalist production and the process of
capitalist consumption involve the performance of unnecessary, socially useless
or even toxic labour, and on a very large scale. By the same token, there is
lots of labour which is socially beneficial, which the capitalist will under no
circumstances pay for; and which will not get done, even by altruistic
volunteering, if the doing of suchlike work will make Capitalism look like
something that capitalists - and their now-multitudinous adulatory followers -
decry it as making capitalism look un-capitalistic. Wherefor the latter, the
complainers and denouncers, apply the curseword "Socialism."
Which is unfair. As I wrote, back in 1968, "more properly, 'Social-wasm.'
Past tense." Still, and to this very day, nobody has made up a word for what
I'm For. Oh, I am reminded that tonight is the Eve of Recycled Materials
Collection, entailing hours of hideously boring reading-up of Stuff I've been
Putting Off Dealing With; not to mention the eating-raw of the remains of
what's in the Curry Paste jar to throw it in with the Non-Paper products; for
none of which do I expect to get paid. Good citizenship is its own, uh, Reward.
And which should not have existed in the first place to the point and extent of
requiring my Throwing It Out.
"But who will collect the garbage?"
"Why does it exist, requiring collection?"
"But there was always garbage. Even in the Bronze Age, there was….."
"Yeah, you appreciate it cuz it's your job, as an archaeologist. Just
watch yourself after working hours..
[Note: back in the bygone past, they had Ostraca if something got
smashed; and the papyrus got written on the blank side, if any. - daf]
Daniel A. Foss
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Devine <[email protected]>
To: Progressive Economics <[email protected]>
Sent: Tue, Oct 30, 2012 2:11 pm
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Against Marx - 2 Conservative anthros against the Labor
Theory of value - please comment
Angelus Novus wrote:
> Solution: smack these "anthropologists" over the head with Vol. 23 of the
> MEW,
...<
it's wrong to damage books.
--
Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, at
the very least you should know the nature of that evil.
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