On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 10:36 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > 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.
Is it this guy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Foss -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
