Greetings Economists, On Dec 1, 2006, at 7:49 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Workerism, whether held in strong or weak form, is very common among Marxists, even those who have consciously rejected it, it seems to me.
Doyle; I presume you mean here something like I've felt at various times, that only being in the working class, not privileged in any sense can one really represent the working class? Which brings up how complex the problem then might be. The whole of society matters in an economic system. So that one would want to see how 'plastic' as opposed to essential something is. Made not born. Yoshie writes; It is about time to think about why Marxism "did not work in the places where Marxist theory says it was SUPPOSED to work." Doyle; Yes, and I would say that Stan doesn't. Stan doesn't see sects in a realistic way. He over generalizes the problem with small groups to the organizational issues a mass movement faces. Especially he has lost his way by thinking patriarchy proceeds capitalist modes of production therefore how patriarchy persists must be essential when production changes. Rather than that a mode of production allows human beings to anew address previous kinds of inequality that persisted. I'll switch over to Ted Winslow here because I think he presents some thoughtful threads that apply to how to think about this issue. And does this by quoting directly from Marx. Ted writes quoting Marx; Their instrument of production became their property, but they themselves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their own instrument of production. In all expropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore, only when controlled by all. Doyle; What was missing (the part Lenin developed in the Russian context) in Marx but has been elaborated more complexly in the last 60 years in knowledge production in the U.S. centered global power system is large scale interactive knowledge. To me, social organization, small parties who do not have control over mass media are painfully vulnerable to public exposure. Small groups can't accumulate knowledge as corporate entities can obtain. In a technical sense the big Corporate media is vulnerable to a critique of the mode of production. Any of that media cannot interact. But that matters little for small groups who repeat endlessly the problems of communication and connection between a small group of people and some leaders and the more large scale general problem of a mass party. Large media in Russia for example did not solve the problem of interaction of the knowledge production and therefore could not solve the communication and connection bottle necks that traditional media create in uniting all the public. Where a 'public' is a combination of large numbers of people who are in a common knowledge arena. The capitalists argue for individual liberty in part to mystify what liberty means, in part to rest their power upon what the common person is familiar with, and to my mind most importantly their capitalist ignorance in their history of what unity means. Where Marx writes 'modern universal intercourse', he adds how all must be involved. That's what is different about the knowledge production now than in his time. The concept is there in Marx, but the means (praxis) to do that rested still upon such vehicles as newspapers or printed text media then, which developed into moving pictures, but retained the lack of interactivity of previous media. These were the 'universal' media. Available to all. Small parties can't compete with that massive increase in knowledge production by relying upon their face to face interactive connections that give information big media can't. They often fail simply in repeating unfair, unequal, one to one relationships. Whether in bullying, causing emotional pain to control, or understanding how to mold experience of a few to the many. Nor could a technical understanding of the problem of the mode of knowledge production matter since the means of production cannot be conjured up out of theory. They await devvvelopes in a practical sense on the national or global scale. This same problem faces all less developed socialist cultures as well. Where production meets developed world standards where is the knowledge production? Is it universal? That must rest upon the universal character of the knowledge production itself. If my communications and my social connection with all is universal what does that mean? It must mean that I literally connect to all. Not just to mom, and dad, and brother and sister. It is as if on a given topic, my toenails, the gravel in the driveway, the lights in the street lights, all represent a knowledge connection to all. That if I talk I talk on any subject to all at once. And they all answer me at once and endlessly day and night for the foreseeable future as well. So the problem then is if 20 thousand answer at once how do they connect? How do we make the communication intelligible and the knowledge to represent all in Marx's universal sense. Once more I put out, Marx himself couldn't know how in his time. That if we look at Lenin, he was the better mass organizer. But that socialist movements themselves have run up against the barrier knowledge production presents as well. The modes of production of public knowledge, our only model for universal communication and connection still is based upon the tyrants model of the front of the crowd bellowing down to the dummies this is what I think and you had better think just that or I'll turn loose my thugs to wrench your mind open to my truth. Leninism had it's problems, but their experience still has much to teach us. How do we adopt the tools of knowledge production to unite us? What is to be solved? They show us the outlines of the problem, but like us don't know why the developed world remains the central conundrum of our movement. I say it is really the problem of knowledge interaction on the universal scale. And there are gauges to understanding the problem. For example, knowing how storage media are getting ever more spacious, a Google exec says he expects in ten to fifteen years it would be possible to store all the unique movies in English ever made in a single portable iPod. You or I can't absorb that library of knowledge. The re-use of knowledge on that scale is the central problem of universal social connection in the developed world for a socialist culture. All that knowledge being generated is useless rubbish if it can't be re-used. Social connection on the global scale requires that knowledge anywhere be had by anyone at any time. Not sent in book form to rest upon the bookshelf until you can read it once and discard it, but shaped by the tens of millions who use the knowledge in the moment and in history. This problem is historical, the socialist in the SU, or China wrestled with it, and the Cultural Revolution expressed the limitations of people who represent the party in a nation of continental proportions. But this really is a mode or production change from a time when information production was very slightly interactive, to a time when a library must provide instant access to the internet to be called a library, and a book shelf in a home is just a groaning board of obsolete verbiage. thanks, Doyle Saylor
