Plagarism Fodder (on Foucault and Marcuse)...

[satricion]

I think your lack of direct contact with the literature is telling in your arguments but you are making a valid point about problems with the alienation idea.

Firstly, alienation is more than what you have described. Alienation comes from Marx's idea of production as inherent in human nature (which you agree with). But it's a concept that springs from his ideas about human beings driving their own production and their control over production being necessary for self-actualisation.

Because of the relations of production in capitalism that Marx describes (ie property relations), workers do not own their own output, nor control their own production, and hence become alienated from their own human nature. This is what alienation is. It is linked to Marx's ideas on subjectivity.

However what you say is true, and this is why to some extent the alienation thesis has problem (except your comment about not wanting to expend the effort beyond working at some factory...I won't even go into the problems with this because I know from other posts you've done that you're a rabid individualist and it would derail the thread to argue about this).

You are wrong about alienation never being questioned from within sociology...Foucault was doing just this...this is partly reflected in the higher quality of his views on subjectivity...Foucault defines power as productive as well as repressive...there is no human nature to be repressed for Foucault, it is there to be produced by power/knowledge.

With regards to your 'nobody ever promised that technological innovation would emancipate everyone from tedious work' remark...Marcuse made the study of this a highlight, hence his 'surplus repression' argument which I think is a very sound one.

As a final point:

Think about your own life and the arguments you have put forward in this thread.

Would you be arguing for genes being the be all and end all of life if:

1) Medicine was not such a powerful political force in society.
2) Gene theories of disease had not become popular in current scientific thinking.
3) Gene theories of disease did not so effectively legitimise the individualist ideology of capitalist society.

And think of life in general.

Would we have so many books about 'how to have good sex' written by doctors if the meaning of sex hadn't changed over the years? I mean...we had sex before medicine had any credibility as a profession at all. We had sex before we had rational science. And it had a different meaning...people thought of it in different ways...Foucault goes through all of this...maybe you should read the History of Sexuality! (Although I personally think that other works of his are better...Birth of the Clinic is great for example). Keep in mind also that Foucault was as much as anything else a historian...he procedes by analysis of historical texts...he's not just making it up.

 

[ebola?]

>>They may both deal with it, but they both assume that their approach or point of view is superior. Foucault sees everything through a 2nd person cultural lense. While Marx looks at the world through a 3rd person material lense. When it comes down to it they are both right as far as their perspective takes them. What goes on in the material(3rd person) world certainly does effect and mold culture. But at the same time the manmade material world is largely a reflection of our own interiors. It goes both ways equally.>>

I'm reading a very different Foucault and Marx from you.

ebola

 

[ebola?]

>>In open competition, the idiosyncracies of individual interactions will result in a superstructure or "society.">>

What open competition? In society, as it exists, the "rules of the game" will, along with a host of other contingencies, shape how and when genes are expressed.

>>
I would say that making tools, recognizing patterns, and having a healthy curiosity about the world are all aspects of humanity. When these are taken away, I think that constitutes alienation.
>>

I agree, although I would add that alienation is an objective phenomenon whereby the laborer is estranged from the product and process of her labor and other humans. This activity and it's culmination is instead placed under external control. I would again point you towards the chapter on alienation in the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (pages 70-81 in the Tucker reader).

>>My point was that in a modern free society....alienation is not a problem. For most of the people most of the time....creative pursuits are easily available. For a lot of people, they are creative in their work. For example, pretty much anyone in a professional field gets to be creative - architects, doctors, researchers, urban planners, product designers, chemists, policy-makers, writers, producers, musicians.....it goes on and on.>>

You're correct in arguing that alienation is partially ameliorated in the professional sphere. Most humans on earth are not professionals!

>>[human nature]...which in the end does not tell us much about anything. >>

It's true. My current angle of choice is to compare the current to the possible. Working backward and arguing for a "human nature" is almost always on shakey ground.

>>My point is that you cannot *presume* the existence of change without evidence. For example, how can you *prove* that humans are becoming "more and more" alienated due to society becoming "more and more rationalized"?>>

You're correct. Marcuse lacks firm empirical ground. However, we can look to concrete techniques based in Taylorism and look at their defusion into both mental and manual labor.

>>
Now, ebola has informed me that people with tedious repetetive jobs are alienated. Well, when they go home they can do whatever they want.
...
The fact is, we live in a physical world where we need to eat. Gathering food is boring and repetetive, but needs to be done. >>

Is this the best society can be?

>>There is hierarchical organization where it is necessary, but communal activity in most other sections of society. >>

How are you judging what is necessary?...I think the restriction of non-hierarchical forms to most interactions in the private sphere is limited. We can do better. We can also observe the penetration of mass-consumerism into leisure...in this sense, creativity-affirming activity is reduced to choice of commodities.

>>Yet in the public sphere we choose to have [hierarchy] because it is efficient and it works. >>

I sure didn't choose this. Did you?

>>
- make tools
- recognize patterns in the world
- infer causal relationships from those patterns

No amount of "repression" can prevent these things from emerging. In fact, there isn't *anything* that could stop people from doing these things. Yet there is no shortage of social theories claiming that that all kinds of macro-level phenomena are stripping people of their basic humanity.>>

I don't know of any body of social theory that argues against this or deems it repressive.

>>
My point was that in a modern free society....alienation is not a problem. For most of the people most of the time....creative pursuits are easily available. For a lot of people, they are creative in their work. For example, pretty much anyone in a professional field gets to be creative - architects, doctors, researchers, urban planners, product designers, chemists, policy-makers, writers, producers, musicians.....it goes on and on.>>

This society is a myth. You are applying your middle-class lens to the world at large.

>>Now, ebola has informed me that people with tedious repetetive jobs are alienated. Well, when they go home they can do whatever they want.>>

Yeah...like feed their kids or pass out on the couch from exhaustion from working two jobs. It's great!

>>The people in modern society who get to be creative are those who pursue the education necessary to be creative, or who take the risks involved with mass production. There is no inherent "right" to be entertained 100% of the time. Sometimes life is boring, get over it. If you don't want to expend the effort beyond just working at some factory....then that's what you choose.>>

What...the...fuck? Am I going to return to Portland and find my best friend a strident right-winger? Or are you again playing devil's advocate for your amusement?

>>[alienation] crops up in a lot of sociological thought, but it is never questioned from within the discipline. >>

Actually, alienation is often critiqued from a Durkheimian, Weberian, and even Foucauldian perspective. We'll have to have a conversation about this.

>>Because of the relations of production in capitalism that Marx describes (ie property relations), workers do not own their own output, nor control their own production, and hence become alienated from their own human nature. This is what alienation is. It is linked to Marx's ideas on subjectivity.>>

This is succinct and correct, but I don't think alienation can really be described in one sentence.

ebola

 

[yougene]

errr I got Foucault and Baudrillard mixed up with each other.

But I still think Marx gives too much emphasis on exchanges in the physiopshere.

 

[ebola?]

I agree, although I think his ontology allows room for culture (and a very useful analytical framework for looking at it). A close reading of the Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Tucker 3-6) will show that in addition to the economic base and ideal super-structure, there is something Marx calls social consciousness. Its relationship to the rest of Marx's ontology is a bit unclear, but I think it gives room for subjectivity and ideational action.

Furthermore, looking to the Theses on Feurbach, it is clear that for Marx, mental reflection on laboring activity and laboring activity itself is fused in praxis.

ebola

 

[protovack]

I would again point you towards the chapter on alienation in the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (pages 70-81 in the Tucker reader).

Quoting directly from "Estranged Labour"

We shall start out from a actual economic fact.

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things.

Which workers become poorer as they produce more wealth? What kind of "wealth" are they producing? If Marx means workers on a production line attaching part A to part B, how is that wealth? The wealth came from the engineers who designed the parts and the people who borrowed the money to start up the business (those who took the risk). The people working at the factory are taking no risk and have no skills. After training and a few days of practice, they are producing the maximum number of widgets possible per unit time. Marx claims that the more they produce, the less valuable each unit product is and thus technically the worker is compensated less and less over time as he produces more. The argument is a stretch - mainly because there is a maximum number of widgets that can be made in any unit of time. Once the worker reaches that level of efficiency, his compensation will neither increase or decrease. Marx suggests a downward trend, but I don't see the trend he is referring to. From this Marx makes the rhetorical assertion that "the devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in the value of the world of things." This is simplistic and while it may sound good on paper, I don't think it really means anything.

So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital.

It is true that when Marx wrote, industrialism was ruthless. Today, however, we have learned that even the least skilled workers must eat. Things aren't as bad as they used to be.

This fact simply means that the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer.

What the product of his labour is, he is not.

the worker places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object.

the more the worker exerts himself in his work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into being over against himself

The realization of labour is its objectification.

The product of labour is labour embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification of labour.

So much does the realization of labour appear as loss of reality that the worker loses his reality to the point of dying of starvation.

that the life which he has bestowed on the object confronts him as hostile and alien.

An argument stated over and over may still be a questionable argument.

the worker becomes a slave of his object; firstly, in that he receives an object of labour, i.e., he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. Firstly, then, so that he can exist as a worker, and secondly as a physical subject. The culmination of this slavery is that it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physical subject and only as a physical subject that he is a worker.

And then the worker goes to the store and buys something and gets it all back. Marx is correct if you assume that the worker is actually a *slave*. Today that is not the case.

1. the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume;
2. the more value he creates, the more worthless he becomes;
3. the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker;
4. the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker;
5. the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker;
6. the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature.)

Why does Marx insist on restating his thesis over and over and over....each time more simplistically? As if the more unexpected his idea, the more true it must be.

It is true that labour produces marvels for the rich, but it produces privation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labour by machines, but it casts some of the workers back into barbarous forms of labour and turns others into machines. It produces intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker.

Another list of phrases which mean nothing. This is such a simplistic view of the world. It is like he is looking at the world as a superficial collection of dichotomous events that "must" cause each other.

What constitutes the alienation of labour?...the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour.

The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.

I ask *which* workers Marx is thinking of. He speaks as if everyone is some slave working in a factory. It wasn't true in Marx's time and it's not true today. Further, while the worker may lack humanity while working, he gains it back when he obtains things *without* having to work for them, say for example, at the store. Marx (up to this point in his discussion of alienation), has ignored the "products" side of the reaction.

We now have to derive a third feature of estranged labour from the two we have already examined....Estranged labour, therefore, turns man’s species-being – both nature and his intellectual species-power – into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence. It estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human existence.

Does it? I'll have to trust Marx on this one.

We started out from an economic fact, the estrangement of the worker and of his production. We gave this fact conceptual form: estranged, alienated labour. We have analyzed this concept, and in so doing merely analyzed an economic fact.

I appreciate his confidence but find his support lacking.

Just as he estranges from himself his own activity, so he confers upon the stranger and activity which does not belong to him.

Thus, through estranged, alienated labour, the worker creates the relationship of another man, who is alien to labour and stands outside it, to that labour. The relation of the worker to labour creates the relation of the capitalist – or whatever other word one chooses for the master of labour – to that labour.

Marx ignores all the people that were involved with the invention of the objects and the organization required to produce them cheaply. By focusing solely on the least-skilled workers, Marx's argument is little more than a rallying call.

Marx is right about some workers being alienated (although I don't think he is very convincing). There is a lot missing from is analysis though.

For example, let's look at two events as a reaction:

Worker produces widgets ----> Worker buys widgets

Let's say the worker makes 1 widget and earns $1. The worker later goes to the store and uses his $1 to buy food, books, and other products, which prior to their sale contained the object of *another* person's labor. The worker now owns that labor, and thus has regained what is his.

So there are 3 processes at work:

1.) The building and organizing of the company and the creation of the products.
2.) The production of the products by workers
3.) The consumption of other products made by other workers

Marx ignores 1 and 3, focusing only on the act of production. Does he think for some reason that a worker does not get all his labor back when he goes to the store? Does he ever make a convincing case for this?

And on the spiritual side, does he ever consider the fact that un-skilled workers are compensated in part for their labor in that they don't have to expend any mental effort to make their wages?

 

[protovack]

This society is a myth. You are applying your middle-class lens to the world at large.

Am I? Or are you applying your marxist lens to the world at large? Last I checked, an industrialized society requires a middle class of skilled professionals. Every society has a middle-class "golden age." Sometimes the power elite may attack the middle class...but these attacks are temporary. In time, people realize that a stable middle class is a requirement for having a stable society. Among the middle-class, you see creative professionals.

Formerly, there was a "middle class bubble." This was during the time of rapid expansion of production. In this period, un-skilled workers were temporarily promoted to the middle class through high union wages (willingly paid by corporations because they needed workers to produce things).

Today, the middle class is shrinking back down to its natural state. It is a return to a smaller "bourgoise" middle class made up skilled professionals. There is absolutely nothing surprising about that, in my view.

What...the...fuck? Am I going to return to Portland and find my best friend a strident right-winger? Or are you again playing devil's advocate for your amusement?

First, noting reality does not make me a "strident right-winger." And I am not playing devil's advocate (well, not really). I do believe in certain rights for all people. However, I do not believe that people have the "right" to be shielded from any and all economic risk.

For example, anyone can work at a factory without any skills or education. That makes it an attractive choice for mentally lazy people. Getting an education is hard. Learning skills is difficult. Yet it has to be done by somebody or else society would fall apart. For instance, take a husband and wife where both work. Now, they can either have kids and continue to do that for another 10 years, or they can decide to do something else. One person can continue working while the other gets a loan to go to school and become something.

This is where I derived my statement "If you don't want to expend the effort beyond just working at some factory....then that's what you choose." This now makes me a "strident right-winger"?

I worked with a guy at the Interlogix factory who bought a brand new Acura while he was making $10/hour. He figured out that with his paycheck, he could afford his tiny apartment and also a new Acura. That is a choice. Instead of driving his new car around Portland to the clubs at night, he could have chosen to take classes.

How do people make these choices? What is the difference between the guy with the Acura and the person who decides to go to nursing school?

 

[ebola?]

Very exhaustive reply...thanks!
If I don't get back to you in time, we'll have to talk in person on thursday night or over the weekend...
Now, though, I must either relax or read.

ebola

 

[satricion]

"Does it? I'll have to trust Marx on this one."

Well yes you do...this is part of Marx's philosophy...it is an idea entrenched in his subjectivity...take away the paradigm and it's meaningless...

Also, Marx does not consider the fact that low skilled workers do not have to expend mental energy to be a compensation...he considers this alienating and I agree with him.

Finally, your argument about being able to buy things back for your money isn't a plus for Marx...it adds to the humiliation of the working class that they as a class must pay money for the things they produce. It's part of the aleination process.

One of the problems with the alienation thesis that I think you're picking up on is that in Marx's terms, everyone is alienated unless they're the owners of the means of production. This would include corporate CEO's. This is a problem with the thesis and with 'crude' Marxism as a whole. But I think if you went through the writings of the Frankfurt School (of which Marcuse was a part) you would find much sounder and less simplistic arguments for these ideas...especially in the works of Jurgen Habermas. Check it out! Even if you don't agree, Habermas is quite an experience.

I agree with you that alienation is a difficult to properly operationalise concept...that's why I prefer Foucault's subjectivity to Marx's...the problem with Marx (similar to the problem with your genes argument) is his subjectivity. It's inherently problematic and reflects the same problems that a lot of social theorists up to Foucault had.

As to your final comment about unskilled work and education...to attribute the whole thing to lazyness is ignorant and simplistic...the things that influence whether or not people get educated and how well they go in education have been studied since sociology's inception and lazyness isn't part of it. If you want to debate this that's fine but I'm not sure it's really relevant to the present discussion.

 

[solistus]

I skimmed the thread, and I have yet to read the essay (it's 3:20 AM and I lack the energy), but I'd like to comment briefly on alienation. Marx's notion of alienation comes from Hegel; Marx cites Hegel's example of the slave and the master. The slave is forced to produce for the master, but that which she produces is alien to her; it is imposed upon her by an Other, namely the master. Thus, she is alienated from her production and thus her existence. The master is alienated as well, because she does not produce her own goods.

This is one of my biggest objections to Marx. Hegel's concept of alienation was much more far-reaching than this and acknowledged that production is not the only factor to consider. Alienation is a hard-to-define concept that is essentially the opposite of self-actualisation. The reason Hegel (and, by extension, Marx) says the slave/master situation is bad is because humyns have a desire to apply their subjectivity to the objective world (i.e., to produce things based on their ideas for goods to produce), and that doing this allows the gap between the objective and the subejctive to be filled, thus ending alienation. However, Hegel makes a big deal about intersubjective interactions as the 'true' route to liberation from alienation. It is in our relationship to the Other that we are able to mediate the trauma of our existence. Marx somewhat disregards this, and focuses exclusively on labour and production. This leads Marxist theory to conclusions still based on the primacy of production, which, as some modern critics liek Zizek point out, mean that it never really accomplishes its own radical goals, at least until Marxist theory is modified to include some contemporary discourses on power, the subject, etc.

I'll make a more complete response tomorrow, if I remember. I'd love to analyse your essay from a neo-Lacanian perspective

 

[ebola?]

A couple clarifications on Marx's alienation for protovack:

1. Marx's chapter on alienation is filled with rhetorical flourishes and claims based on the labor theory of value. These must be taken with a grain of salt if we are to pull anything useful out of the chapter.
2. What is the object from which the worker is separated? Marx is thinking primarily about capital, which is reinvested in the means of production and contributes to the consumption of the capitalist. Herein lies the crux of Marx's account of exploitation in the laboring process.
3. You are right in saying that Marx puts too little focus on the sphere of consumption. Still, the worker can only purchase a quantity of commodities equal to her wages, rather than the full productivity of her work. This is shown empirically by the existence of profit.
4. Marx has a notion of productive and unproductive working activity, which leaves his theory in want of caveats that he fails to add. This is why we don't have an account for the "value" of innovation and cunning capitalist speculation.
5. >>I ask *which* workers Marx is thinking of. He speaks as if everyone is some slave working in a factory. It wasn't true in Marx's time and it's not true today.>>

Marx was talking about the conditions of industrial production in 19th C England. Yes, they were as terrible and ubiquitous as he describes, and Engels has the ethnographic data to back it up.

Thinking about the present day, we need to think of production on a world-wide scale. Think not only of American factories, but also of intensive export zones in East Asia and Latin America.

6. >>Further, while the worker may lack humanity while working, he gains it back when he obtains things *without* having to work for them, say for example, at the store. Marx (up to this point in his discussion of alienation), has ignored the "products" side of the reaction.>>

For Marx, creative actualization occurs in laboring activity in cooperation with others. This is for the most part lacking in consumption in the sphere of commodity trade. Instead, we have choice amongst consumer wares over which workers do NOT dictate the nature of production.

7. Species-being: This is tricky. It took me two years to properly understand this and a couple weeks to break away from a professor of mine who misunderstands the concept. This is Marx's concept of human actualization, his "anti-alienation", and his idea of the personal (but also immediately social) condition of communism.
...

>>
ebola:
This society is a myth. You are applying your middle-class lens to the world at large.
protovack:
Am I? Or are you applying your marxist lens to the world at large?>>

Of course I am. We all work with lenses.

>>Last I checked, an industrialized society requires a middle class of skilled professionals. Every society has a middle-class "golden age." Sometimes the power elite may attack the middle class...but these attacks are temporary. In time, people realize that a stable middle class is a requirement for having a stable society. Among the middle-class, you see creative professionals.>>

Yes, but the middle-class is a relatively small and privileged stratum, as you yourself will argue below.
...

>>Formerly, there was a "middle class bubble." This was during the time of rapid expansion of production. In this period, un-skilled workers were temporarily promoted to the middle class through high union wages (willingly paid by corporations because they needed workers to produce things).>>

I would argue that during this period, there was also a labor-capital accord drawn up to quell class-struggle that threatened the basis of the US's economy and state. This is also reflected the implementation of Keynsian economic policies. In essence, FDR and the economic conditions of WWII "saved" us from communist revolution.

>>Today, the middle class is shrinking back down to its natural state. It is a return to a smaller "bourgoise" middle class made up skilled professionals. There is absolutely nothing surprising about that, in my view.>>

It is confusing to call the middle class "bourgeois" or even "petit-bourgeois". The bourgoisie is the capitalist class, in Marxist terminology. I would imagine Marx would whole-heartedly agree with your observation, but say that this development is only natural within the capitalist logic.

>>That makes it an attractive choice for mentally lazy people. Getting an education is hard. Learning skills is difficult. >>

Do people really usually shy away from mental activity? I have yet to meet someone who finds dull, repetitive work pleasant in its simplicity, although I'm sure there are some people like this.

ebola

 

[ebola?]

I must also note that for Marx, the capitalist too is alienated, but in a different, more complicated way than is the worker.

ebola

 

[satricion]

I agree with you that species-being can take time to understand.

Don't you think that the ambiguousness and basis upon shaky philosophical ground that characterises Marx's subjectivity makes Foucault's the better theory?

Foucault still leaves room for useful material analysis without the dubious subjectivity that Marx (and the Frankfurt School) rely on...

 

[protovack]

I have a question...what do you guys mean when you refer to someone's "subjectivity"?

 

[ebola?]

The individual, insofar as she has a perspective on the situaiton in which she finds herself and is able to reflect on her self-hood.

ebola

 

[satricion]

^^
Yeah.

Like in sociological theory we ask "how does X construct the subject?"

It's sort of like, how are human beings represented in this theory? What is "human nature" according to this theory. I think "human nature" would probably be the easiest way of describing the concept of subjectivity.

It's a big issue. You can ask "how does Marx construct the subject" but you can also ask "how do doctor's construct the subjectivity of their patients", or "how do patients construct the subjectivity of their doctors" or "how does rational science construct subjects" or something. You're asking what view of human beings do these things have? How does this affect the behaviour of the people involved?

It's a very complicated concept especially in Foucault's theory. For Foucault, the subject (ie, people) are "constructed" by knowledge and power relationships in society. So in Foucault's theory, the way that we relate to ourselves, our minds, our bodies, other people, institutions are socially constructed. Social factors produce human beings and their own thoughts in the same process in which human beings produce social factors.

You can't talk about any aspect of Foucault's theory without involving the others. His power/knowledge/subject concept is a very compelling one and explaining it in the context of a thread on a web forum is pretty much impossible, especially since it is supported by so much empirical work.

Marcuse's subjectivity comes from Freudian theory (as Ebola's essay clearly explained), and is a little less difficult to grasp since it is so much more concrete. So for Marcuse (and Marx), the subject is something that has an inner, concrete nature ("human nature") that doesn't change over time. Not so for Foucault.

 

[ebola?]

>>So for Marcuse (and Marx), the subject is something that has an inner, concrete nature ("human nature") that doesn't change over time.>>

Well...this is a complicated issue. Human nature, for Marx, is human potential (ie, species-being) to be actualized in laboring activity. Different modes of production differently stunt the ability of species being to be brought to fruition. To this, Marcuse adds a Freudian dimension.

ebola

 

[protovack]

Do people really usually shy away from mental activity?

Yes they do, although for different reasons. Some may come from a lower-class background, and so they don't even imagine that they could enter the professional class. Similarily, middle-class kids are constantly reminded as they progress through school that they are already "tapped" to be professionals.

So obviously there are class issues. And then I do believe there are a lot of people who merely prefer a simpler life.

You are right in saying that Marx puts too little focus on the sphere of consumption. Still, the worker can only purchase a quantity of commodities equal to her wages, rather than the full productivity of her work. This is shown empirically by the existence of profit.

Yes, profit exists in our current society. Are you sure that the 10-20% of productivity that goes to profit is really lost? Maybe it pays for something. Maybe it is because of this profit that there are stores where the worker may buy something.

Let's say a worker makes $50/day. Can you *prove* that the goods which can be bought for $50 are not actually worth $50?

Of course not, because "dollars" are just placeholders for value.

It is such a simplistic argument to say that the worker "loses out" on "what is his" because of profit.


It's like saying "eating is not fair, because 50% of the calories you ingest are consumed in just digesting the food. Therefore we should abolish the small intestine because it is the organ that uses those calories."

Well, no.......the small intestines are necessary to digest the food. You never "had" those 50 calories. They are automatically burned in digesting 100 calories of food. You can't get something for nothing.

Similarily, some people refuse to see the necessity of profit because they think it is "unfair." In reality, the ability to profit is what enabled the construction of businesses, which then hire workers.

And then there are the costs of running a business. Let's say a company has 10 employees and that it made $1000. If it gives each employee $100 dollars, how will it pay an engineer to design a new product? How would it pay a mortgage on the site? How would it do anything beyond pay the workers $100?

It wouldn't. But that is the problem with the assumption held by many well-meaning sociologists that profit is inherently destructive and repressive. Marx looks at one tiny little aspect of the entire picture and ignores everything else. But the way it is written, it *sounds* like he is considering everything (And we have considered this fact....and now let me step up a level of analysis and look at things from a wider angle....and so on). Yet it is all founded upon a weak assumption - the assumption that the worker is somehow being "cheated" out of his labor by this thing called "profit."

Now of course I am the first one to criticize capitalism when it fails, for example, when it attacks the rights of workers to organize, or when it seeks to exploit workers in the south who have no chance to recognize their situation before it's too late.

But that doesn't mean profit is or ever has been an "alienating" force. Nor does it mean that Marx should be trusted.

From his writing I can clearly tell that Marx is an extremely intelligent observer, but his lens is just extremely narrow. Maybe he should have been a scientist %)

 

[ebola?]

>>So obviously there are class issues. And then I do believe there are a lot of people who merely prefer a simpler life. >>

I guess we're left with an empirical question: whether factory workers find the dull repetition of their jobs pleasant.

>>Yes, profit exists in our current society. Are you sure that the 10-20% of productivity that goes to profit is really lost? Maybe it pays for something. Maybe it is because of this profit that there are stores where the worker may buy something.>>

The majority of profit is reinvested in the means of production. This is something that a lot of Marxists conveniently ignore. You seem to be arguing that profit is necessary to impel production and commerce in the first place. This appears false, if only by the fact of the existence of prior modes of surplus production not driven by the profit motive.

>>Yet it is all founded upon a weak assumption - the assumption that the worker is somehow being "cheated" out of his labor by this thing called "profit.">>

Er, you have the Marxist argument backwards. Exploitation is derrived from alienation, not the reverse. What needs to be assumed is that the activities of the capitalist are not somehow intrinsically valuable and that profit must have its root in commodity production.

Thus, the even deeper assumption is that labor is ontologically primary, and that commodity trade is a distorted reflection of social relations to the means of production.

>>Maybe he should have been a scientist >>

You may find his purely mathematical proofs (nothing to do with his social philosophy) more compelling.
...
so, are we having beers tonight, or WHAT?

ebola

 

[satricion]

"Maybe he should have been a scientist".

What does this mean? Marx was a social scientist...and a historian and a philosopher and an economist...are you trying to patronise his analysis by labelling it 'non-scientific'? You belittle your own argument by doing this. Every scientist has a paradigm...Marx's is quite complex and Ebola has already pointed out some ways you're misinterpreting it.

I guess I should also point out that the labor theory of value has never really been proven...many a career has been dedicated to trying to do it but it's never to my knowledge been achieved.

Also, you contradict yourself by saying that people are too lazy to go out and get more intellectually challenging jobs and then acknowleging class influences...if a working class person doesn't have the mindset or education to leave their job then that is just as real and concrete a constraint on social mobility as a brick wall. It still exists and still influences thoughts and behaviour.

There has also been a massive amount of research on not only class influences on educational attainment (guess the relationship!), but also class influences on getting jobs once you have the education, and on moving up the social heirarchy once you have. None of these relationships are simple, but they exist and are influenced by social factors that actually exist.

If you want to 'do sociology' you need to realise that it is a science...you can measure these things and identify structural relationships in the way people's lives get to progress...just saying that people are lazy is the same as dismissing an entire discipline in favour of your own simplistic one line argument.

If you really want to get into this stuff then read some Foucault...even if you decide you don't agree you'll at least enjoy the journey. Some of the issues you have with Marx you might find ameloriated by Foucault. (course I might be biased since I blatantly think he's awesome)