I was responding to issues raised in the thread, which had *multiple* participants. Please don't overinterpret everything I write as responding directly to *you*.
Jeebus ----- Original Message ----- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 9:40 PM Subject: [PEN-L] capital as an unbeatable telos/dream [was: RE: [PEN-L] "the Incredibles"] I wrote: >>I don't know about "unbeatable." It's true that capitalism drives to control all skill, to destroy worker-controlled skills, i.e., to deskill labor (following Marx & Braverman). But workers develop new skills. So the class struggle isn't totally over.<< Ian wrote: >I never asserted that you asserted that capital is omnipotent, although you intimate that that is a telos/dream of capital [so reified] in the statement above.< I didn't write about telos or dreams. I also don't use the word "capital" to refer to a Subject of history -- except as short-hand. I like to link every abstract concept to a concrete example, if possible. Please don't over-interpret what I write. It makes what I write into an ink-blot, while I try to use prose as carefully and simply as I can to avoid such crap (along with bilious verbiage). I was thinking of capitalist "microfoundations." The job of a capitalist manager is to seek profit everywhere and in every way. This involves trying to control the work process -- and the workers, who don't want to be controlled. This implies the deskilling drive: since most production processes are run by similar people with similar motives, that implies a kind of a macro-trend. But that's only on the "demand side." The "supply side" isn't (and can't be) totally under the capitalists' control (as I said), though they try. Workers are conscious humans (so far at least) and cannot be totally controlled. That's why, in the quotation above, I rejected the idea that "capital" was "unbeatable." It seems to me that if we don't try to figure out the inherent tendencies of capitalism as a socioeconomic system, it's pretty hard to fight them. Unless we can rely on a _deus ex machina_. Ian: > Others on the list intimate an implicit reified omnipotence on many occasions < I'm not responsible for them. >even as empirical work demonstrates a telos of omnipotence/control is not in the cards of history and deskilling is not a general trend of capital accumulation/technological change, else why the increasing technological-organizational complexity since, say, 1400?.< Capitalism only dates from about 1700 or so (in England, at least). More importantly, technical change does not simply follow the wishes of capitalism. For a tremendously long time, it wasn't subordinate to capitalism, but it is becoming increasingly so. BTW, I don't know if the social system is more complex than it used to be or not. Technology is, but there's no one-to-one mapping between society and technology so I can't merge them in my mind (as in "technological- organizational"). Further, capitalism has its contradictions (to use an unfashionable term). Specifically, the profit motive sometimes encourages technologies that undermine capitalist hegemony (e.g., the Internet, for awhile). Capitalism often encourages war, which doesn't always serve capitalist class interests (as when the Pentagon spawned the Internet). >Complexification through mass stupefacation is a contradiction.< Not being of the Frankfurt school, I reject Braverman's implication that deskilling automatically leads to mass stupor. Rather, what happens is that capitalists strive to conquer _worker-controlled_ skills (e.g., craft skills). So increasingly, skills are created and transmitted through institutions such as the public schools which have little choice but to serve capitalism. (After all, don't we all want our children to get jobs? and who supplies the jobs?) >Human beings *can't* control all the knowledge/artifacts they create.< who said they could? >The dream of total control [and what else is the image of God but a dream of total control?] is *over*.< Why is this "dream" more over now than in the past? It seems to me that (at least in the US, which I know best) workers' ability to counteract the capitalist effort to control them is _less effective_ now than it was (say) 30 years ago. That suggests that the capitalists are able to achieve their goal of greater control over our lives much more now than 30 years ago. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine
