12/07/2011

readings today deal with a transitional juncture in American history.

titled “the crisis of liberalism”

typically this is identified with the late 60s, with (1) civil rights movement; (2) anti-war movement; (3) decline of American economic hegemony

but, Vivek is saying, the core institutions of the 'liberal order' begin to degrade earlier. the quick collapse of liberalism is hard to understand unless you also understand the earlier erosion of the institutions that underpinned it.

what the readings today reveal is that many of labour's gains had already been lost/squandered—through, for example, the nature of Taft-Hartley in1947. or, the break-up of the CIO and the expulsion of the Communists in the early 1950s devastates the labour movement, changing the very image of what the labour movement ought to have been (i.e., towards officialdom, away from rank-and-file).

by the late 1950s, labour is in fact structurally very weak. it's ability to defend itself against capital is weak.

this weakness is masked by two factors:

1. despite the defeats that sidelined efforts to institutionalize the shop-steward system, the shop-stewards haven't quite been displaced by the early- to mid- 1950s. this keeps alive some organizational capacity on the part of American workers, despite structural weakness.
2. more importantly, the period from 1945 to mid-50s, profits are heady and the going is good. workers win gains.

with the end of the 1950s, though, the economic downturn begins to win. the pillar supporting whatever little power labour had is taken away, and employers begin to launch an offensive against rank-and-file power. by the 1960s, the day-to-day negotiation that shopstewards carried out with management is being replaced by a bureaucratic grievance procedure.

workers find their power decreased, in short. grievances filed by workers start to pile up—unacknowleded and unaddressed.

as a consequence of this, the trade union leadership's legitimacy starts to erode. union leaders are doing nothing to defend workers through the grievance procedure.

the rebellion in the late 60s, which is the consequence of this, has the potential of reproducing the 30s. but it very quickly meets with defeat.

the rank-and-file rebellion was more the 'last gasp' of the compact.

- - -

11/30/2011

two issues

1. what was the political context for the emergence of American social democracy
2. what were the limitations of this framework (i.e., the New Deal)

the theoretical challenge, which is addressed to State theory, is to understand how to make sense of these policies.

the reason that this is a challenge, simply, to State theory is to make sense the content of all of these policies associated with the New Deal.

in the 1980s, a challenge was posed by Skocpol, suggesting that Marxists tended to collapse State power into class power. Marxists, she thinks, didn't give sufficient weight to goings-on in the State in their own right. She countered with 'state-centrism,' which was distinguished by it allowed for autonomy far more thoroughgoing than 'relative autonomy.' see 1983 article in Politics and Society, which launched the debate

she argued that the State was autonomous in two senses: (1) autonomous from class forces; (2) State managers have interests of their own, which are distinct and often independent from classes

the New Deal, for her, was an example of this.

there are two explanations of the New Deal.

the established position, against which Skocpol arguing, was called 'corporate liberalism'--brought about by far-sighted, enlightened capitalists in respose to the Great Depression, in order to rationalize the political economy. two ends: (1) revive the economy; (2) achieve labour peace.

the New Deal policy is explained as an expression of capitalist preferences, and the State more-or-less follows these dictates.

the neo-Marxist position, noting that big chunks of the capitalist class were opposed to the New Deal, asked why it was that unenlightened capitalists lost out to enlightened capitalists? both Ferguson and Goldfield make the claim that the core elements of the New Deal were opposed by capitalists. what drove them to accept the reforms was driven by the labour insurgency. the key trigger being the enormous costs that the labour mobilization imposes on capital.

here, in Ferguson, those elements which could best afford the costs (foreign-oriented, capital-intensive) come around to the reforms. the textile industry, the Southern plantocracy are opposed, then, by the Rockefeller bloc which breaks away and supports the reforms.

Goldfield's argument is more-or-less consistent with this. he's more interested in directly rebutting Skocpol, of course. the claim is that Skocpol overlooks the fact that it wasn't until the labour movement reached its zenith that the Roosevelt administration came around to the Wagner Act. the intensification of the labour movement, in other words, gave the administration the wherewithal to approach the capitalist class pleading for concessions, and it gave them the support of a powerful fraction of the bourgeoisie. the State found a political base within the ruling class.

the Lichtenstein reading was meant to convey some sense of the limitations of the power that labour achieved. in Chp 7, he shows that the actual powers that labour was able to wrest away from management remained quite limited—the key thing was the system of institutionalized negotiations that was put into place on a day to day level, between the UAW and management. the instrument for negotiation in the 20s and 30s centered around a very powerful shop-steward culture—the shop stewards were in a constant state of negotiation/challenge over the conditions of work. plants were run through constant negotiation between management and shop stewards.

the UAW tried to initially institutionalize this power on the part of shop stewards. rank-and-file constantly pushed shop stewards to represent their militancy. the union was always a union movement, even in day to day reproduction.

Auto industries found this intolerable. in 1940 there's an epochal stand-off between GM and the UAW. GM demands that an arbitration system replace the shop stewards system. Reuther concedes, which is remembered as an act of betrayal. one reason that he did this, of course, was to marginalize the Left within the UAW, as part of his alliance with other elements against the Communists/Socialists, who were arguing for a system of institutionalize shop-steward power.

this had the effect of de-mobilizing the rank-and-file. the shop-steward was replaced by a Committeeman. workers had to wait for days/weeks/months. over time this transformed the structure of the union—the whole point was that grievances were to be handled without disruption of production. what this did was it took the rug out from any possibility of wildcat/extra-contractual action. the union quickly became a guarantor of labour peace.

Lichtenstein emphasizes the importance of this turn. it incapacitated the unions for later decades—this was an important step towards the enfeeblement of the labour movement. obviously it wasn't exposed in the boom years, but as the crisis set in, so did the movement's rot.

- - -

shop-steward counterfactual is not just imaginary—England and Sweden had strong shop-steward movements.  

10/11/2011

botwinick, oct 11^th

new left falsely understood lack of labour organizing as failure of Marxism; in fact, it's consistent with a more clearly reconstructed version of Marxism, and an appreciation of the obstacles to organizing.

these are internal constraints on the organization of labour.

today we'll discuss external threats.

even when workers get organized, even once the overcome the constituent, internal obstacles, their ability to win concessions is constrained by the logic of accumulation—the context set by captialist competition.

the central conclusion is that its not only economic outcomes that are governed by the logic of accumulation, but also political outcomes.

this is why Marx spends thirty years on DK.

first limit: profitability—capitalism has in-built, system-wide mechanisms which repel improvement of working-class life. if wages rise, rate of investment declines, which means employment generation slows down, the reserve army of labour rises, and wages are brought down. this is the constraint of full employment. in contemporary capitalism, bringing the State in, there exist institutions that guarantee a baseline level of unemployment—the Fed's job is this, basically ('profit-squeeze' theory of crisis would fit here).

this is a limit on the system as a whole; wages as a whole, and profits as a whole.

but capital doesn't exist as homogenous units that are identical. the level of heterogeneity is important.

there are firms that are very capital-intensive, some with better techniques, etc.

workers, when they engage in bargaining, confront capitalists with different degrees of productivity and capital intensity—which will mean that they will incur different costs, when they concede to workers.

now, there are three limits

(1) 'costs of obstruction'--as soon as employees take up demands, employers have to decide whether it is worth it to heed the immediate impulse to repress their demands. where the costs of obstruction are sufficiently high, the capitalist will not say 'no,' but will relent.

workers have to impose costs sufficient to bring the employer to the table.

now, it will depend on two things

(2) do you work for the regulating capital?

reguating capitals are those plants operating with the most widely available, more-or-less widely available techniques. we're not talking about those plants with unique, and impossible to replicate techniques.

otherwise, workers are employed mainly in subdominant capitals.

the limits to wage demands are greater in subdominant capitals than in regulating capitals. an employer's ability to stay in business will depend on his ability to re-adjust to these costs. regulating capitals have a greater ability to recoup the losses that come from wage increases. either they'll raise prices, or, more likely, some will leave the sector, inducing higher prices through reduced supply.

after regulating capitals have raised wages, subdominant capitals can be organized—this is because they run the risk of going out of business, if they raise prices before regulating capitals. but if they do it after those have been successfully organized, workers have a better shot.

(3) the capital intensity of your sector

when wage costs are high as a portion of total costs, wage increases are very difficult for capital to accommodate.

in the history of the US, this theoretical framework has purchase. it's at least part of the reason that organizing in the South was less effective than organizing in the North—it's not just racism, nor is it mainly racism.

labour unions targeted the 'price-leaders' in auto, rubber, etc. there was an understanding that if we can organize these firms, the rest will follow. Weinberg, research director at UAW, said (1) success at better firms is important; (2) less efficient firms shouldn't be rewarded for being less efficient by being allowed to avoid unions—in essence, trying to replicate Sweden's efforts (though, w/o active labour market policy, you're fucked).

it's as the crisis sets in, and US industries cease to be regulating capitals on a global level, they become less accommodating to wage increases—this, at the same time that the labour movement calcifies into the bureaucratic monolith with which we're familiar. hence, concession after concession after concession is the story of the 1970s and 1980s.

- - -

difficulty is that business unionism breeds in the context of declining industries

- - -

(1) getting rid of labour-intensive jobs?

10/04/2011

today, the issue of class formation

among historians, class formation refers to the structural process by which a class emerges. this isn't our concern, today—not the emergence of social structures, but rather the formation of class political capacity. its organization as a coherent actor.

you would think that nothing is more important in Marxist theory than the question of class formation. but, as a theoretical issue, the issue has been sidelined; it's been central to political debates, without being heavily theorized.

the questions were always dealt with concretely, in context, but not cashed out in abstract terms.

the Second International is full of this kind of stuff; deserves to be mined for insights. we don't have 'data', because—unlike then—we're nowhere near power.

this issue is dealt with, theoretically, by the 'New Left'. it didn't last long, unfortunately—partly because the New Left gives up on class, but also because not many of the individuals on the New Left were embedded in organizing and struggle.

central to Offie and Wiezenthal's argument is the claim that there's a systematic link between class structure and class formation—the structure sets the constraints on actors' ability to organize around their interests. importantly, this is a story of differential constraints.

the argument is made at a very high level of abstraction. a strength of the theory, insofar as this suggests that certain barriers to organizing are intrinsic to the structure of capitalism. descending levels of abstraction, introducing race and whatnot, will not erase these basic barriers.

why do classes organize, at all?

indeed, Offie and Wiezenthal argue that only one of capitalism's two constitutive classes has to organize. capitalists do not need organization, in order to advance their interests. the very fact of capitalist reproduction ensures that capitalists keep the upper hand.

workers, however, cannot advance their interests except through organizing. if left to themselves, workers are at the mercy of capitalists.

thus, for capitalists, political organization merely amplifies an already-existing structural advantage. in effect, capitalists can devote their energies to breaking workers' organization.

it is workers that have to expend their resources on forming organizations.

thus, first, the facts about the class structure explain why some actors have to organize themselves.

the second part of the argument concerns the question of what makes workers successful. for the New Left, the failure of workers to organize was an indictment of Marxism, exhibiting the irrelevance of 'class' to social structure, etc. hence the flight from class.

the power of Offie and Wiezenthal's analysis is that it undermines this, at its root. they suggest that the 'infinite divisions' argument presupposes a world of interest groups, not of classes. this is pluralism—politics comes out of the contingent clash of interest groups.

(agency is an 'elixir' that dissolves all social structures)

Offie and Wiezenthal reject this. centrally, their argument is that the structure of capitalism doesn't just distribute interests differentially, but it also distributes capacities unevenly. the organization of workers is continually undercut by the structure of capitalism.

the inability of workers to organize is not a refutation of Marx's theory, but a confirmation.

why? what are the mechanisms?

when capitalists and workers undertake their exchange on the market, they do this as class actors.

when they organize themselves, inhibiting mechanisms appear.

the first weakness, for workers, is the uniqueness of labour-power as a commodity. capital is a fluid, malleable substance, that can be detached, split up, and also amalgamate. it's never attached to a person. workers cannot become bigger and bigger workers, individually—they can only become bigger associations of workers. this is associating (for workers), versus merging (for capital).

critically, this fact has differential consequences. when you try and form bigger and bigger associations, workers will be more effective—BUT, you have to combat the problem of its constitutive heterogeneity.

three problems emerge.

first, the problem of trade-offs—different workers will attach different valuations to different issues/demands, in a campaign. associations will have to prioritize demands. the issue of interest aggregation.

second, different workers have different bargaining positions. for some workers (the least-skilled, the poorest, etc.), collective organization is everything; for others, though, there are workers for whom individual survival strategies are practicable. [here we've descended a level of abstraction, of course].

now, the task for organizers is to convince some workers to redefine their interests.

third, for every worker who is employed by a capitalist, he cannot avoid the problem that he can't escape his employers' interest. workers depend on the employer for their livelihood. the viability of the employers firm has to be one of the constraints that the workers take on board, when aggregating their interests. this is not true for the employer.

this is the structural root of business unionism (the philosophy that says labor and capital are partners in an enterprise). it's rational, all else being equal. this is where Bob Fitch goes wrong.

fourth, all union organizing takes place in the context of managerial power. once you see reason for some employees to resist association, employers have the power to repress all organizing efforts. William Z. Foster's essays, on this score.

these are all the dilemmas that enter into the formation of organizations.

the next dilemma, Offie and Wiezenthal argue, regards organizational sustainability. unions need to be large, but largeness begins to entail trade-offs that lead to bureaucratization. unions, also, have to exert control over their membership—they have, after all, promised their employers labour peace. they have to squelch the internal life of the union. as this happens, the union is less likely to generate feelings of solidarity, and thus less likely to induce members to act. workers are more likely to become free-riders, seeking to minimize the costs they will bear in the course of collective action.

thus, if despite capitalism's continual generation of antagonisms, it remains stable, this is why: it is exceedingly difficult for workers to effectuate the strategies required to defend their interests. capitalist dominance is built into the structure of capitalism.

this is the cruel irony of capitalism—the agents that most need organization are those who are least able to effectuate it.

- - - - - -

09/28/2011

class structures generate rules of reproduction.

in capitalism, capitalists have to find and utilize labour to produce commodities that they have to sell, competitively, on the market.

workers have to find employment, and submit to the authority of capitalists for a given period of time (to some extent).

this process pits these two classes against one another, generating antagonisms.

'labor and monopoly capital' virtually started labour process theory. this was an enormously influential book.

the labour process is common to all social structures. defined as the way in which workers and means of production are put together, to produce goods. has a validity across MoP. in class societies, this can always be divided into necessary labour, and surplus labour.

but there's something distinctive about capitalism. prior to capitalism, the weight of the surplus component is limited by the necessary component; the surplus component is a residual. this is because of (1) weakly developed productive forces; (2) in all pre-capitalist societies, the guiding motif is use-values—what is produced is geared to 'needs' of producing classes [is this the best way to cash this out? shouldn't it, instead, be in terms of what producers can be forced to do? because there are always imperatives to increase surplus]

in other words, the surplus is not driven by the immediate needs of the surplus class to produce a profit—they will need military expenditure, and they will need things to consume—but neither of these imperatives place a significant weight on the direct producers. [a 'weak compulsion' argument (which is different from Brenner's arguments about feudalism, which is more of an 'incapacity to compel' argument]

in capitalism, all the emphasis is on the valorization process—the labour process is now subjugated to it.

these carries two consequences

1. now, the capitalist is not merely trying to extract surplus labour—but he's trying to extract it to the maximum level possible.
2. moreover, the capitalist wants to extract surplus at levels of efficiency that enable him to compete effectively.

in other words—capitalists try to get workers to work as long and as hard as possible in order to successfully compete.

once the capitalist takes control of the labour process and tries to extract labour at a competitive level, it generates a conflict. the drive to rationalize the labour process invariably induces a response, to resist.

this is the crucial precondition for the resort to managerial authority. managers exist for one basic reason—workers don't do what capitalists want them to do, absent being told to. workers are not fundamentally driven by the competitive logic that drives capitalists.

managers have to find ways to reduce workers' resistance to the change of the labour process and technological change—and the way they do this is by removing their control over work. one example of this, of course, is through the breaking of the monopoly of knowledge that workers have over their work (vivek arguing that breaking monopoly of knowledge is an instance of a more generic drive to seize control; otherwise unduly highlighted in the literature, instead of this more important fact of seizing control).

this is the source of 'de-skilling'. in some ways, this isn't the best term—what he means, more, is the 'breaking down' of tasks, within a workplace. as tasks are broken down, workers will require less skills, of course. BUT, this should not be mistaken as a secular tendency towards de-skilling, at the general level of the economy. Braverman's argument is cashed out at the level of the job/task, not the level of the economy.

the issue of resistance—Braverman is often accused of ignoring resistance of workers to technical change. (1) this misundertands the object of Braverman's work—he isn't predicting an inevitable outcome. he's simply trying to theorize capitalism's drive to break down the labour process. resistance introduces ineterminacy, OK; (2) moreover, empirically—the basic fact is that capitalism has won.

the goal of theory is not to make you feel better about the world. one has to understand how capitalism works; except in very exceptional circumstances, for short periods of time, capitalists win. 'if everything was contingent, we wouldn't need socialism.'

is Foucault like Braverman? first, Foucault doesn't have a theory—no explanation of where a 'disciplinary' drive comes from. for Braverman, its Capital; for Foucault, doesn't exist. second, Braverman's normative/descriptive framework has some understanding of what human flourishing is, what human interests are. this is what it means for this to be a 'degradation' of work. Foucault's entire project is driven by the denial of human interests.

in Foucault's ontology, the human agent is the consequence of power structures. whereas for Braverman, we are confronting humans, with interests, stuck in power structures.

re: racism, two distinct claims: (1) capitalism everywhere generates racism; (2) race/racism is integral to capitalism, when describing it at the highest level of abstraction.

it doesn't follow that you can abstract away from gendered/racialized identities to understand the real world. although, of course, we are staking importance in our abstract model—we think capitalism's drives exist everywhere and importantly independent of any given culture. we think it explains the world—re: race, we think it explains the terrain that generates racism (in other words, we don't give it theoretical priority—its not the 'base'), and on which we will have to fight our anti-racist struggle.

see Jane Humphries RRPE on women's oppression

abstract labour is not a different kind of labour, from concrete labour—labour is always and everywhere concrete.

09/21/2011

EO Wright's fundamental contribution is that class is not 'income', but the conditions under which people labour in order to acquire a certain income.

today, we'll see the way the class structure generates strategies for capitalists, and workers.

fundamental fact is thtat everyone has to sell in order to buy—capitalism generalizes market-dependence (preferred, by Vivek, to the idea that what defines capitalism is 'generalized commodity production. the two go together, but the former is preferable as a succint conceptualization of capitalism).

what distinguishes workers and capitalists is what they have to sell.

w-class sells labour-power

capitalists sell goods produced by labour-power. this, of course, presumes that they have bought labour-power (so they must buy labour-power in order to be able to sell commodities).

M – C – M is a description of what capitalists do, but it's at too high a level of abstraction. because this also describes what merchants do. and that's not what we're after. merchants sell goods that others have produced; but capitalists sell goods whose production they have supervised.

C – M – C is the logic in which the worker is entrapped, he/she is after use-values. his/her main concern is the reproduction of oneself.

(1) so, in order for the capitalist to begin the production process—the capitalist has to 'mobilize' labour. this is not historically trivial, at all; the existence of a large mass of wage-labourers is historically specific to capitalism required the creation of a 'doubly free' body of workers.

when capitalists 'first' incorporated workers into the production process, they were found with the skills of artisans of feudalism—an accommodation of the skill-set with which workers were found. they, first, were working at the behest of capitalists, but not at the command of capitalists.

this, of course, is the formal subsumption of labour, to be contrasted to the real subsumption of labour.

(2) the second thing that capitalists must do is exploit labour – they must produce a surplus. workers will have to work long enough to produce enough stuff, over and above costs, to be worth it for the capitalist. here, of course, we get the struggle over the length of the working-day. the struggle, for the capitalist, is to make the surplus part of the day as relatively large as possible.

there are two tactics

(a) extension of the length of the working-day—increase of surplus-value by absolute means

(b) decreasing the duration of the portion that goes into necessary labour-time, which is effected by productivity improvements in the production of the means of subsistence—increase of surplus-value by relative means. by and large, this latter fact will be an 'unintended consequence' of capitalist competition.

in general, the formal subsumption of labour is co-eval with the production of absolute surplus-value. the real subsumption of labour, on the other hand, is typically co-eval with the production of relative surplus-value.

but the pursuit of absolute surplus-value lives on, of course, in advanced capitalism.

historically, the achievement of the 8-hr working day initiated the 'shift' to the production of relative surplus-value. (1) there's a question, here, of course about collective irrationality being the result of individually rational action. (2) moreover, why isn't competition sufficient, in this stage of capitalism? it's not clear that modern manufacturing begins, really, until the 1870s. economic historians are clear that machine innovation was in quite specific parts in England till much later than is commonly understood.

why do you need to control the labour process if you're producing relative surplus-value? this is Braverman, of course—you need the power to fire workers, and you need authority to shape the labour-process.

(3) the third thing that capital has to do is reproduce the labour supply. but do capitalists, as a class, possess the rationality to do this, if they're pursuing their individual self-interest? there are a lot of radical/left theorists who have argued that sections of capital have been 'more rational' in this regard; Marx's arguments, around absolute surplus-value, suggest differently. if the latter is true, you obviously need a third actor (the State).

the reproduction of workers has to occur in a way, of course, that also reproduces their dependence on capitalists. if you were to give everyone an 'opt-out' that also reproduces them (a guaranteed living-wage), capitalists will oppose it.

here introducing general law of capitalist accumulation.

as capitalism grows, you might well get tighter labour markets. wage is bid upwards.

however, the law of accumulation also brings with it technical change (at a faster rate, when wages are high), which expels workers into the reserve army of labour. this maintains a baseline level of competition amongst workers, for jobs. all this is an unintended consequence—captialists don't necessarily design the existence of a reserve army.

one can capture the balance by thinking about the competing effects of the 'labour-shedding' effects, and the 'labour-incorporating' effects.

(4) the last step of this argument, of course, is to explain why the competitive drive amongst capitalists exists. why is it the case that capitalists have to compete against each other?

what makes capitalists attempt to maximize surplus-value, of course, is the fact that they are pitted against each other. if they don't behave ruthlessly, they go out of business. the structure of capitalism compels capitalists to innovate.

- - -

the 'historical/moral' component of the value of labour-power—there are certain needs which come to be understood as necessary.

productivity defined as stuff produced/variable capital

in that case, productivity increases as 'organic composition rises'--i.e, when technology is labour saving. that's built into the definition

capital productivity vs. labour productivity vs. land productivity?

rationality has two dimensions: formal rationality, which means that individual pursue strategies consistent to given ends; substantive rationality, which means that individuals pursue strategies consistent with their well-being.  

05/08/2010

class introduced us to the MoP, and its internal dynamics.

Marxism predicts that you can divide up history so it appears to be a distinct sequence of modes of production—each MoP is identified by its distinctive class structure, which has its own dynamics and its own contradictions.

the question that arises is whether the sequencing of these sets is random—or whether it has to occur in the way that it did.

if there is a 'link', then you have not only a theory of social forms, but also a theory of transitions. at its most ambitious, Marxism aspires not only to be a theory of MoP but also a theory of historical develompent.

the question for Marxists, then, is you have two 'regional' theories—are both equally plausible? is one of them more plausible than the other?

the verdict that Cohen tries to give is that the theory of 'directionality' is 'valid' theoretically. the core of Cohen's defence rides on the 'optimality' thesis (which imposes an extraordiarily strong constraint on HM—it insists that when any given MoP descends into crisis, the PR that replace the existing PR will be selected for the functionality wrt the further development of the PF).

the question that arises is whether this is plausible. for the selectional mechanism to work, of course, there has to exist a mechanism.

the verdict that Wright gives, of course, is a 'weak' version—they argue that the PR will be conducive.

Vivek argues that even this is not plausible—we have only a 'minimalist' HM that can be salvaged.

with this, the theory becomes so weak that it loses much of its 'explanatory' punch—the 'explanatory' punch now moves to claims re: “class struggle.” as the claims of canonical HM weaken, HM has now become a 'class-struggle'.

this does not mean that PF have no role. if that were the case, history would be a random walk.

does this bode ill for Marxism?

Vivek couldn't come up with a single reason that Marxism needs a theory of history.

there's not very much at stake here. for what Marxism is supposed to be, it's not clear that much is lost by not having a theory of history.

it's useful to clarify that Brenner's theory is not an 'open' theory—it is a 'production relations' determinism, but not 'productive forces' determinism.

05/01/2010

Moody's framework for understanding the rise of neoliberalism is quite different from the work that's currently appearing. This work tends to focus on 'electoral coalitions'--the decline of old voting blocs, understood in pluralist terms. Understood as the reintegration of old constituencies into new voting blocs (David Mayhugh). In sociology, there has been good work—it has looked at data on PACs and funding sources for politics. But predominantly it looks at it through two lenses: (1) institutions—no real theory, Vivek is arguing; (2) thinktanks—so the idea is that thinktanks generaate ideas, ideas float into the heads of politicians, and hence you have shifts. Political economy has been shifted off the table.

It's trivially true that there were shifts in the 'meaning' universe. But thinktanks were creatures of the corporate community, and the 'causal arrow' definitely runs the other way.

The approach that Moody presents proposes to situate these factors in an analysis of shifts in political economy—underlying all these shifts, he argues, was an underlying shift in the balance of power between classes. The escalation of an attack on labor in the late 70s, and the coming together of business in a class project.

Underneath this is another mechanism—what triggers the corporate onslaught is an underlying crisis of profitability. This, of course, addresses the question of why corporations mobilize at this point? ('leftish' answers have been given: the 'compact' between Capital and Labor was broken by the social upheavals of the late 60's, or by globalization, etc. Common to this view is that this resolution solved some problems—“Fordism”. Misleading for several reasons, Vivek is arguing: Capital didn't 'agree' to anything. It agreed to 'live' with what was imposed upon it. It never was a compromise. It was 'muted hostility'. The only reason it put up with it was because attacking labor would have been two costly, both in terms of direct costs and opportunity costs. What changes in the 60s is the profits crisis.

Thus we are alerted to the fact that 'politics' is always 'political economy'--the space for political contestation and political alliances was affected by the tempo of capital accumulation (greater space in the 50s, less in the 60s/70s).

This is the theoretical framework of Moody's argument: that 'class struggle' proceeds in the context of shifting economic facts.

It is the shift in these social forces that explains the tectonic shift in American politics as a whole. What Moody is explaining, in short, is why everything shifts to the Right.

- - - - -

1. active labor market requires serious political strength, no?

nationalization as a strategy is threatening to capitalists. so the Swedes thought that they couldn't have both an active labor movement and nationalization, in the 1930s. the Fre7nch bourgeoisie, on the other hand, could live with nationalization, because you didn't have a labor movement mobilized in the same way.  

04/23/2010

New Deal was put into place through an intensification of 'class struggle'--that was the point of last week's lecture. (Debate took place in the 80's—started by Skocpol, who wrote about it as the action of bureaucrats acting against the whims of Capital).

The Marxist response was to say that she was partly right, insofar as Capitalists didn't want the New Deal. But she was wrong in missing the importance of labor mobilization. (There is debate amongst Marxists, of course—some refer to 'enlightened capitalists' addressing the system's contradictions)

What the readings therefore emphasized was the power of labor.

This week's readings attend to the limitations of the New Deal legacy. These do not analyze the weaknesses of the New Deal (a full analysis would have to include thinking about Southern Planters and the weakness of the legislation itself).

The extent to which Labor did well in the Golden Age masked, in effect, the weaknesses of the movement—these readings tried to identify the structural sources of the labor movement's weakness. Whatever the list is, it will include the following: though the labor movement grew, it was never able to extend unionization across a plurality of the workforce; union membership was regionally highly concentrated, which gave American corporations a serious regional flexbility—before 'globalization', American capital began a migration within the continental land mass of the US; the internal source of weakness was the defeat at GM in the late 30's, where the parameters of the agreement shifted to a 'committeeman' system, leaving the rank-and-file less necessary for officials (shifted towards a 'monological' culture).

Added to this is two strategic decisions: the decision of the Communist Party in 1937 to draw back from its militant line, and especially after 1939—this took the most reliable wing of the trade union movement, and effectively neutralized it; the civil war within the labor movement, as the Left was basically kicked out by the late 1940s by Reuther and co—related also, obviously, to towing the line of the Dem. Party.

Thus, by the 1950s, the trade union movement is seriously weak—even while it's still growing, of course, until 1953-1954 (peak of union density). Union officials now relied much more on partnerships with Capital. It seemed to be working, though, only because of uniqueness of the conjucture, i.e., the unprecedented expansion of the economy—no company wanted to disrupt the inflow of profits, at this stage. This, for trade union bureaucrats, clarified that an 'accord' with management was the future. What they were relying on was not a mobilized rank-and-file, but the hesitance of employers, at a time of growth, to attack labor at a time when revenues were flowing in. [Doesn't the Brenner reading also argue that this had to do with 'wildcat strikes', etc.?]

This, it goes without saying, masked the serious weakness of the Labor movement.

After a few strikes in the late 50s, a 'honeymoon' takes on the guise of a confrontation. The beginnings of a total war. You see a serious, noticeable 'speed-up' of the labor-process at the shop-floor—made possible by the fact that shop-stewards are impotent. They file grievances, but this does nothing, of course.

It's in this context, that you see an explosion of unrest—from the late 1960s to early 1970s, the mid-west is rocked by a wave and wave of wildcat strikes. Workers fighting not just management, but their own officialdom, as well.

Thus, serious fissures are showing themselves, in the 'liberal' order. By the 1960s, you see the structural weakness of American liberalism. It is after the upsurge, of course, that you see the full-frontal assault on Labor—Reagan, and the rise of the Right within the Democratic Party.

This week the important moral was the structural weakness of the Labor movement, even at its height, which lays the basis for understanding what it is that American capital is motivated by, when it launches its assault. They realize that they cannot recapture their profits without attacking labor: because of higher costs, and the welfare state that it supports.

- - - -

A big problem for T. World countries is lack of domestic market, which produced underutilized capacity (insofar as your importing machinery designed for bigger markets). Another reason for underutilized capacity is the lack of suppliers for spare parts, etc. [Important discussion here of 'racism', and whether it matters sui generis in determining whether 'farm workers' are excluded from the Wagner Act]

Roosevelt's AAA mechanizes agriculture—this has knock-on effects that lead, ultimately, to the collapse of the racial order, the agglomeration of workers in Southern and Northern cities, and the civil rights movement. In the 1920s, even the murmur of mobilization meant death—but in the 1950s, planters can accommodate this.

Why not organizing the South? 1. change from mobilization strategy, to corporatist strategy; 2. resources problem; 3. level of racial antagonism.  

04/16/2010

new deal lecture

question of the conditions under which reform under capitalism are possible.

the general argument, of course, is class struggle. but what is about class struggle that produces this?

thomas ferguson gives an argument that is reminiscent of botwinick's framework—concessions become rational when the cost of obstruction is greater than the cost of concession.

the consequence, of course, is that working classes have to impose cost on capitalists.

what ferguson shows is that the reform coalition within the american business community is constituted by the degree to which they feel the costs of upsurge—those that feel the costs of concesssions to labor the least, in other words, are most likely to feel the costs of the upsurge first (and can best afford those concessions, of course).

the second fact that these readings introduce is the 'blockian' argument that reform will be transmuted to be acceptable to the ruling classes, to capitalists. the mechanism for this, of course, will be that legislation will be shepharded through the State.

in these articles, the organization of the labor movement are black boxed. the lichtenstein reading foregrounds the micro-history of the organizing (chapter 7—the key point in that chapter is the inability to institutionalize the role of shop-stewards; instead, it had to resort to a bureaucratized grievance procedure as a means for expressing workers' power. this makes shop stewards a cop, rather thana mobilizer).

- - - - -

additional social organizing is not redundant to labor organizing, and maybe not even just additive—but possibly interactive/multiplicative. calling into question the entire social order, not just economic questions.

first new deal coalition as an attempt to shore up the old order (you see this today, too), but it didn't ­work (today the crisis has abated, and without a labor upsurge)

question of whether capitalists approach the state as an 'organized fraction,' or whether the State itself does the organizing of 'fractions', etc.

american political economy after new deal characterized by two things

1. welfare state
2. an expansionary push

04/09/2010

on ideology ('structured musings')

what is often times called a 'theory of ideology' is not, really, a theory at all. when you try and distill theoretical conclusions, it's usually fairly thin.

thus far we have explained—why class matters, the rules of reproduction of capitalism, how laws of motion work themselves out through the accumulation process, how the accumulation process leads to antagonisms, how the roots of the stability of the system lie in the collective action problems, and how that stability is reinforced through the State.

we have explained, therefore, the stability of capitalism without referring to 'ideology', at all. this is a stark difference to classic accounts. not just in sociology, but even in 'western marxism' (interwar period to 1960s and 1970s).

we've gone against this grain—a startling conclusion: ideology is not a fundamental or central factor in explaining the stability of capitalism.

so, then: what is exactly the role of ideology?

a kind of Gramsci-ism (mediated through Stuart Hall) answers that ideology is important because the working-class consents, through ideology, to its domination. but what does consent mean, here?

1. a resignation to being exploited. if this is what we mean, though, you don't need ideology—it comes from the structural limitations confronting the workers in a given situation.
2. something narrower—meaning that workers take their exploitation to being 'legitimate'. if that's what you mean by consent, it's most likely empirically and demonstrably false. the hold of this kind of consent on the minds of lower order is tenuous (sby the way, this was poured into gramsci by the post-althusserians. he's not to blame).

this means that invoking ideology here is probably mistaken.

so we're back to square one.

one of eagleton's suggestions: the main role of ideology is not to secure worker's domination, but enabling workers to make sense of their domination. to 'rationalize' their situation. it provides workers with a 'story' that makes sense of their social world. in so doing, it doesn't create social stability, but it does help 'reinforce' it. in sum: the basic conditions for social stability come from the structural context, but this is further reinforced by the story spun to them. [how exactly do we attribute analytical weight, then?]

note, there is no reason that 'ideologies' have to be false or distorted—workers may very well understand their situation accurately, but still have to live with it. or even, as Eagleton says, many a true statement can serve 'ideological' functions. most people who are confronted with a situation that they would like to change, are confronted by serious 'cognitive dissonance'--they'll probably come up with some kind of story [but this is a private conception? how about social roots of ideology?]

how does it do this, though?

by painting the social order as legitimate, it is traditionally said. but this is a thin reed, it seems—the assessment of social order as being legitimate is strongest amongst the wealthy [but how is this cashed out? surveys?]

Marx often points to two other mechanisms:

1. taking the social order to be 'natural'--you reify the social order insofar as you take it to exist naturally independent of your own practice.
2. not by blocking people's conception of the unwholesomeness of their situation, but by diluting it (roots of economism).

what are the mechanisms, then, by which ideology serves these functions? here's where we're getting into the 'murkiness'. where do these ideologies come from?

'ruling ideas as the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships' – saying that socio-structural changes generate dominant ideas, rather than vice versa

two important things:

1. a materialism that is quite critical, clearly.
2. but there is a problem, then—there's no mechanism to explain why these ideas, in particular, ought to be 'ideological' ideas. but unless you think that all ideas are 'ideological', you still need to explain how these ideas emerge that perform these functions. [possibility of selection, though? by trial and error?]. certainly, the same relationships and same experiences have to produce a revolutionary, critical set of ideas.

what is the mechanism, then?

'the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas'. class with means of mental production, etc.

the dominant discourse of a social epoch is one which is going to take a set of material relationships and advance them through the 'media'. notice, here, your firmest gruond here is going to be on the side of 'ideological production'--we have a pretty robust theory of why media, in capitalism, is biased [see chomsky]. if you shift to 'ideological reception', though, we have more of a problem. it becomes much more murky.

there has been a tradition in the understanding of 'ideology' that has advocated for a definition that's much wider (not a 'negative' conception, but a 'neutral' one)--the possibility of working-class ideology. Marx opposed ideology to science; Lenin opposed bourgeois ideology to proletarian ideology. and Lukacs, of course, takes this much farther.

if you start with a materialist premise, that ideas are generated from practice, then insofar as 'unjust ideas' are produced by that same material practices/institutions (media, trade union bureaucracy), it follows that a critique of ideas will be bound up with a critique of those insitutions and practices that sustain injustice and unjust ideas. all those institutions and practices which produce distorted ideas must be dismantled. [materialist theory of ideas vs. materialist theory of ideology?]

- - - -

Marxists talk about 'ideology' simply because the detritus of ideas heaped upon workers are a primary political obstacle to organizing. And this is also why capitalists and the State spend so much time on fomenting 'ideology'. 

4/2/2010

theoretical parameters of vivek's book are a bit askew from what we've been looking in, in this course.

two enduring forms of the State

1. welfare State
2. developmental State

wanted to show that the developmental State could be understood in the same frame as the developmental State. it used to be thought of as a 'third-world State'. and when the 'developmental State' came around as a theoretical category, it was understood a-theoretically. vivek looking at it as a 'capitalist State'.

the terms of this debate, though, were different.

the key concept that was developed came from the debate about the Welfare State, which was 'state capacity' – when Marxists say that the welfare State functions to perpetuate capitalism, they assume both a willingness and a capacity to administer to capitalist interests. this cannot be taken for granted; it has to be built.

because it has to be built, facts about the State itself are going to have a large bearing on whether and how State capacity is built. in the developmental State literature, this had a large impact. it came out of the context of neoliberalism, where the argument was that State's will necessarily muck it up (rent-seeking, or crowd out, or whatever). in every case, the State will harm development. this came out of Latin American stagnation—they squelched private intiative.

BUT: by the late 80's/early 90's you had a growth miracle in E. Asia. and you had extensive State intervention. what the developmental State literature argued was that what distinguished these States was 'State capacity'--they had the capacity to intervene successfully. the question was not State intervention, but the quality of State intervention.

the question that was not asked, however, is how State capacity gets built. the argument, when it was made, was as simple as, well, politicans built it (Peter Evans' book is a partial answer—you need good bureaucracy and good ties to the private sector. But even here the answer is not given as to the origins).

in vivek's book, there were two cases: India and Korea. in the former, it was a failure; in the latter, a success. difference was capacity. why?

easy answer: gift of long historical process. determined at the outset, in a sense.

but neither country had much of a developmental apparatus, when it started out. that means that there was a punctuated period of State building. in Korea, this was successful. in India, not.

the answer that vivek gives is that it has to do with the reaction of the capitalist class to State-building. this was novel because it was assumed, prior to this, that capitalists don't matter, because these were poor countries. but in fact, vivek shows that the opposite was true.

what it shows, then, is that the developmental State was constrained by bourgeois power because the caiptalist class was able to forestall State-building. the attempt, then, was to bring

why did the Indian capitalist class rebel?

- - - - - - -

remember, the two theoretical arguments re: the State

1. instrumentalist accounts
2. structuralist account, the most important of which has to do with 'business confidence'

theda skocpol offers an account of 'full autonomy' – that the State can ride roughshod over the capitalists, if it will.

in dev. state literature, the notion of State-centeredness was at its height in the late 1980's, mid-1990's. it was a counter to the neoliberal arguments that had been dominant, at this time, after the Latin American collapse in the 1980's (those countries where States had intervened, in the past). the only way, it was said, to accelerate the pace of Capitalist development was for it to become a 'nightwatchman State'.

Amsden and Wade upset this apple-cart. it was not the fact of State intervention that determines the outcome, but rather the quality.

well, what conduces high-quality State-intervention? the answer that emerged was: States with adequate capacity. if the State has this ability, then, it can overcome the obstacles people pointed to (obstacles were rent-seeking on the part of private agents, and State predation).

KEY--one argument could have been about the 'social setting'--a kind of Marxist account, about the history of the two countries, etc. in Left literature, there had been this notion that in the Third World, classes are underdeveloped (Hamza Alavi). the idea, here, being that States are much more powerful, viz-a-viz social classes. the only actor that was seen as being capable of upsetting the State's agenda was the landed class. this literature in Latin America, and elsewhere, always points to the absence of land reform. as an economic fact, certainly, but as a political fact (the power of landlords). this, however, was an inference; it wasn't an argument. nowhere was the industrial bourgeoisie seen as being capable of blocking the State's agenda. [a subsidiary argument was that, even if industrialists do matter, why would they care? it's going to be a State, for them—capitalists were thought to be natural allies of the developmental State.]

a very powerful argument at the time was that Korea succeeded, at the time, because it was an authoritarian State. vivek's argument is that the opposite was the case, in fact (to be developed, later) – in an authoritarian state, a class that you should find that is unable to impose its will on the political process, in fact, is labor, not capital. it's true, maybe, that your control over labor might make capitalists more amenable to a partnership. four countries: taiwan, korea, france (45-68), japan (54-mid 1980's)--'successful capitalist planning'. the latter two were democratic states].

the argument in the Korean State is that, even when the State controls finance, it is subservient to capital. example being given is the switch to heavy industry in Korea in 1973. control of finance is only a weapon when capitalists have a high demand for finance, which presupposes 'business confidence'.

[if military takes on capital, workers may lose jobs. if workers take on capital, capital loses its power of the 'investment strike,' because work is already stopped]. think through this.

in both India and China, Nehru and Park have political hegemony. Nehru could have pursued his agenda, but political elite pointed to the go-slow. In Park the political rivals didn't have the support of the capitalist class. this is key, clarifies the impotency of a 'within-state' argument.

the question of land reform—if the book had been about growth, then land reform would have had to be in the book. what vivek is looking at is one part of what explains growth, which is State capacity. [key--absence of land reform increases the incentives for capitalists to ignore plan directives. planning, remember, is premised on the notion that capitalists pursue industries that have high private returns but low social returns (luxury good sectors, niche sectors, etc.). highly unequal income distributions, which follow from failed land reform, give rise to these kinds of sectors. so land reform does matter, in this sense.]

[thinking about brazil, chile, etc., and the transition of the 1920's/1930's/1940's] what about the landed class? it wipes out the dominant, landlord class. the immediate reason is because the evidence didn't show any landlord influence (found one petition from landlords). all of the two-dozen business organizations expressed their opposition to this legislation. what that said was that they're just not a factor. why? what about latin america, and the supposition that landlords didn't like developmental state (remember, this is not about economic growth)? the commitment to build developmental states is really a phenomenon of the post-1930s; the commitment to industrialization starts in the Great Depression, mostly as a necessity (because third world countries are cut off from their markets). when you compare the two threats, is it not the switch to rapid industrialization, rather than the switch to the developmental state that threatens them? industrialization, remember, threatens to wipe out the landed class. the supposition is that industrialization rendered them politically helpless—how do you get the onset of developmental states/industrialization without land reform? the explanatory task, here, would be to understand how the power bloc shifted in the 1930's and the 1940's.

from 1960-1975, India was far less corrupt than Korea. today, the most corrupt state in the world is also the world's fastest growing economy. [cf. Mushtaq Khan]

Japanese multinationals in Korea were using the country as an export platform; European and American multinationals used India as a home market, blocking Indian access to the American market.

size of the domestic market (domestic demand) does not produce an export-led strategy (China, DR/PR). export markets are not more attractive because they're highly competitive (they're used as places to dispose of excess inventory at firesale prices, sometimes).

two counterfactuals

1. you use the labor movement, as in France, to push a developmental State, then you push them out. labor has a role in state installation, but nothing in State reproduction.
2. you would have had a social-democratic developmental State. so it's important not to think of ISI as mal-development, ISI is a world-historical success. but, of course, pound for pound, India could not have matched Korea. [yes, ISI carries internal contradictions—but so does ELI. this happens in the mid-90's in Korea, they cease to be interested in a developmental state.]

- - - -

KEY, the question of the 'flying geese'--what Japan did with Korea, remember, is give them low-value niches, so that they themselves would have room for capital good exports. Korea and Taiwan do the same thing, later, with South East Asia (and this helps the book's argument—Indonesia and Malaysia don't have developmental States, so they're not nearly as successful as Korea and Taiwan).

also, let's remember that Japan's strategy, re: Korea, is greased by the executive branch in the US (Congress is more ambivalent).

Two contingencies, in this book:

1. Opening created by the arrival of the Japanese
2. Park Chung-Hee's taking advantage of opportunities granted him by the Japanese.   

javeed alam, caste and left politics April 2010

what makes Left practice increasingly difficult in India? and not worried about leaving a pessimistic impression.

here discussing the failure of the Left to win over its core constituency (the 'peasantry').

the Left has seen a relative decline amongst this population [here, it seems, quite clear that the Left means the CPI-M].

the question of the worker-peasant alliance—and its importance, not just for the seizure of state power, but also for buidling the foundations of social democracy.

revolution, let's be clear, is not predicated on the depth of knowledge about a society.

here, then, speaking of the specificity of the class formation, in India. new classes are forming within peasant communities in India—you have a big growth of poor peasants, for example. but because of stregnth of 'caste', you have fragmentation—poor peasants are not coming together.

the way to understand this phenomenon is to begin to look at international differentiation within caste communities

1. a long period of capialist development, followed by land reforms, moderniztion, education, etc. after independence, the backward castes all became proprietary peasants, where they were, before, tenant farmers. new modern classes have emerged amongst the castes.
2. where land did not often go to the direct tiller (in the land reform), many dalits were forced to remain agricultural laborers. if the land reforms had been of a different nature (gone to the tiller), the pattern of development would not have come about in the way that it did.

within the class formation, the middle class (largely drawn from the rich and middle peasants) has also been in the course of formation within these caste communities. these are central to the process.

many larger/intermediate caste formations have been breaking up (the dravidian movement, for example, is breaking up)

a new, white-collar middle class, which is seen as the only path to success. and this unification under these classes is, simultaneously, the domination of the rich peasants.

this is a kind of absence of freedom which is forced, collectively, by one jat on another.

and also, the reality that the call for caste social justice (for dalit justice) is a bourgeois demand—there is hardly any economic agenda in the demand. whether it is a democratic advance is not germane, right now. but this shows a shift, in the conception of democracy.

major argument, in sum: casteism has emerged as a major phenomenon because of the decomposition of the consciousness of the middle classes.

caste has typically been thought of as a 'superstructural' pheonemon. here contesting that—the development that I have traced are conditioned by a historically-grounded material force (what has been the nature of the bondage of the direct producer? by asking the question, you shift the terms of debate from the earlier discussions. this is central, even today. because what you call the 'dailt', today, were actually the producing classes in india, either in agriculture or secondary manufacture. pre-capitalist social relations linger on, in the current mode of production. all these sections of society were made up of dependent jatis on the upper-castes—what is important to note is that the dependence was of a collective nature, which has long-term implications for the form of struggle that emerged later. the nature of the unfreedom of the producer was of a collective kind, which was different than the unfreedom of the european serf.)

[here, starting to say something absolutely absurd—the degradation of manual work, here, explains why indian immigrants come to the US and become white-collar!]