On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 7:38 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Here is Foss: > 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.
This is an excellent essay. Who is Daniel A. Foss? -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
