Showing posts with label labor rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label labor rights. Show all posts
Monday, August 10, 2009
Of course this is nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Americans, along with the overwhelming majority of Haitians and Hondurans, would be absolutely delighted if Haitian and Honduran workers producing clothes for the U.S. market would be paid more. Labor costs are a small fraction of the prices that consumers face. Wages are so low because that yields even more profits for those who already have more money than they can ever spend; the low wage floor is being determined by government policy in Washington, Haiti, Honduras, and elsewhere, not by the desires of consumers. No magic formula of economics determines the minimum wage that can be sustained in Haiti and Honduras. At the margin - whether the minimum wage shall be $3 a day or $5 a day in the export sector in Haiti - it is determined politically. If you say that the leverage of the U.S. consumer market should be used to support higher wages for poor workers in poor countries, rather than the opposite, you're likely to be told that this is not allowed. This leverage has been allocated to something else. The power of the U.S. market can only be used for things like forcing developing countries to enforce the patents, trademarks, and copyrights of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, software companies, and Hollywood.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
notes on capital
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10
(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)
(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.
(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).
(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.
(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?
(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)
(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.
(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).
(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.
(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).
(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.
(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).
(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.
(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.
(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).
(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.
(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"
(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).
(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).
(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"
(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.
(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."
(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."
(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.
(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).
(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."
(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).
(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.
(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?
(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10
(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)
(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.
(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).
(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.
(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?
(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)
(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.
(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).
(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.
(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).
(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.
(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).
(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.
(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.
(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).
(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.
(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"
(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).
(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).
(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"
(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.
(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."
(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."
(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.
(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).
(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."
(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).
(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.
(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?
(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
harvard needs a living wage, testimony two:
I clean 8am to 4pm at MIT and then 6pm to 10pm at Harvard. I've been cleaning at Harvard about 5 years now. I came to Cambridge from Barbados in '83, and ever since I first come here, I was always working two full0time jobs. 80 hours a week. I always do cleaning. always liked cleaning. The thing lots of work places try to do now is they try to get away from paying a lot of full-time workers. They see if they can cut the staff in half and get the same quantity of work done. and then they want part-tie people, because then they don't have to pay the benefits. That's just like what Harvard do.
I leave my house at about 6:30 in the morning every weekday. and I don't get back until 10:30 at night, so that's a lot of time from home. Sometimes it's not enough sleep. Depends on how the body feels. In the morning, your body wants to sleep but your mind tells you, you got to go, you got to go. I have three kids - 4, 9, and 21. On the weekends, I do spend a lot of time with my kids. I try not ot give to myself, to improve my kids.
Harvard is great as far as school is concerned, but in our department, it's not great for working. We work for a company - Harvard is a company. Sometimes a name fools a lot of people. When you say Harvard or MIT, you have a great name, but when you see the environment and you seewhat's going on, you're not happy just to have a good name. When people hear you're working at Harvard, they think you get a ot of money because it's a big college. But as far as I'm concerned, the working environment is bad. Right now, one guy's out sick, nearly seven weeks and he didn't get a paycheck yet. Every day they tell him, it's in the mail. How long will it take a paycheck to go from one part of Cambridge to another? You have to work with the worker to make him happy in the environment he's working.
You have people who don't want to talk because they scared to lose their job, or scared the supervisor is going to put more work on them. And you get treated sometimes different depending on where you come from. The boss is no going to say, because you from Haiti, I don't like you. I give you more work, but his actions speak louder than words. The money here in Cambridge is better than in Barbados, but I didn't really come here from the money. I come here because my family lives in this country. My grandfather lived in this country from the time he was a boy, so he sent for my mother and she brought me here. I used to live in Cambridge with my grandfather, but now I live in Malden.
It's bettter at MIT, because MIT is a better environment than Harvard. Sometimes my supervisor here talks to me, live we were talking about how to clean this desk, and I tell him so and so and he said, If you don't like it, you can go home, meaning to quit. He just talk down to me, so sometimes I get so mad. MIT pays better than Harvard. Other placdes for part-time pay more money than Harvard. Harvard needs to pay a little bit more money, because they want the work done nice and clean. No specks. As I say, I don't mind that, but pay me something to do that.
I haven't gotten a good raise since I've been at Harvard. I still don't get $10/hour. They freeze our raises for three years. You never get enough money, but you try to live with that, and you try to make ends meet. I put my money togethter with my wife to pay the bills. But other guys whose wives don't work or who don't make a good salary at their other job, I know they have a hard time. Sometimes they don't have money to buy groceries. I know one individual that works here - sometimes he can't buy any meat because he's back on his rent. But we try to strive to be thankful. We can't do no more.
-- Neil, Law School Janitor
I clean 8am to 4pm at MIT and then 6pm to 10pm at Harvard. I've been cleaning at Harvard about 5 years now. I came to Cambridge from Barbados in '83, and ever since I first come here, I was always working two full0time jobs. 80 hours a week. I always do cleaning. always liked cleaning. The thing lots of work places try to do now is they try to get away from paying a lot of full-time workers. They see if they can cut the staff in half and get the same quantity of work done. and then they want part-tie people, because then they don't have to pay the benefits. That's just like what Harvard do.
I leave my house at about 6:30 in the morning every weekday. and I don't get back until 10:30 at night, so that's a lot of time from home. Sometimes it's not enough sleep. Depends on how the body feels. In the morning, your body wants to sleep but your mind tells you, you got to go, you got to go. I have three kids - 4, 9, and 21. On the weekends, I do spend a lot of time with my kids. I try not ot give to myself, to improve my kids.
Harvard is great as far as school is concerned, but in our department, it's not great for working. We work for a company - Harvard is a company. Sometimes a name fools a lot of people. When you say Harvard or MIT, you have a great name, but when you see the environment and you seewhat's going on, you're not happy just to have a good name. When people hear you're working at Harvard, they think you get a ot of money because it's a big college. But as far as I'm concerned, the working environment is bad. Right now, one guy's out sick, nearly seven weeks and he didn't get a paycheck yet. Every day they tell him, it's in the mail. How long will it take a paycheck to go from one part of Cambridge to another? You have to work with the worker to make him happy in the environment he's working.
You have people who don't want to talk because they scared to lose their job, or scared the supervisor is going to put more work on them. And you get treated sometimes different depending on where you come from. The boss is no going to say, because you from Haiti, I don't like you. I give you more work, but his actions speak louder than words. The money here in Cambridge is better than in Barbados, but I didn't really come here from the money. I come here because my family lives in this country. My grandfather lived in this country from the time he was a boy, so he sent for my mother and she brought me here. I used to live in Cambridge with my grandfather, but now I live in Malden.
It's bettter at MIT, because MIT is a better environment than Harvard. Sometimes my supervisor here talks to me, live we were talking about how to clean this desk, and I tell him so and so and he said, If you don't like it, you can go home, meaning to quit. He just talk down to me, so sometimes I get so mad. MIT pays better than Harvard. Other placdes for part-time pay more money than Harvard. Harvard needs to pay a little bit more money, because they want the work done nice and clean. No specks. As I say, I don't mind that, but pay me something to do that.
I haven't gotten a good raise since I've been at Harvard. I still don't get $10/hour. They freeze our raises for three years. You never get enough money, but you try to live with that, and you try to make ends meet. I put my money togethter with my wife to pay the bills. But other guys whose wives don't work or who don't make a good salary at their other job, I know they have a hard time. Sometimes they don't have money to buy groceries. I know one individual that works here - sometimes he can't buy any meat because he's back on his rent. But we try to strive to be thankful. We can't do no more.
-- Neil, Law School Janitor
harvard needs a living wage, testimony one:
I work at Harvard from 7:00 'til 4:00. Then I go to the Supermarket - that's my second job, bagging groceries. I do that 'til 10:30pm. I'm home by 11:30pm. In bed by midnight. Yeah, I'm tired physically, and I;m tired up here, in the head. I'm at the point where things start to bug me that normally don't. Sometimes I just need to back off and cool down a little bit before it's too much. I don't need to be a 50k man. All I'm talking about is a living. Basic stuff - a roof over my head, a meal. Right now, I've got that, but only because I'm at the supermarket 'til 10:20 each night... Of course, sometimes you have a day that's not too bad. But boy, I'll tell you, there are a lot of days when you're walking around in a fog. You're just pooped out. You just can't think on it too much. You just go. You run like hell... See, managers always try to cut expenses, and they see wages as expenses. They're trained that way. They get trapped in that mindset, and they forget that it's people they're talking about. It's a person, a guy, trying to live on that.
--Lewis, Harvard Custodian
I work at Harvard from 7:00 'til 4:00. Then I go to the Supermarket - that's my second job, bagging groceries. I do that 'til 10:30pm. I'm home by 11:30pm. In bed by midnight. Yeah, I'm tired physically, and I;m tired up here, in the head. I'm at the point where things start to bug me that normally don't. Sometimes I just need to back off and cool down a little bit before it's too much. I don't need to be a 50k man. All I'm talking about is a living. Basic stuff - a roof over my head, a meal. Right now, I've got that, but only because I'm at the supermarket 'til 10:20 each night... Of course, sometimes you have a day that's not too bad. But boy, I'll tell you, there are a lot of days when you're walking around in a fog. You're just pooped out. You just can't think on it too much. You just go. You run like hell... See, managers always try to cut expenses, and they see wages as expenses. They're trained that way. They get trapped in that mindset, and they forget that it's people they're talking about. It's a person, a guy, trying to live on that.
--Lewis, Harvard Custodian
Thursday, May 24, 2007
memorial day massacre in chicago:
"In several instances from two to four policemen are seen beating one man. One strikes him horizontally across the face, using his club as he would a baseball bat. Another crashes it down on top of his head and still another is whipping him across the back."
"In several instances from two to four policemen are seen beating one man. One strikes him horizontally across the face, using his club as he would a baseball bat. Another crashes it down on top of his head and still another is whipping him across the back."
Sunday, May 20, 2007
europe at the world bank:
For far too long European governments have supported policies at the Bank that their domestic constituencies wouldn't tolerate for one second if a foreign bureaucracy imposed them at home. Would social democrats in Denmark tolerate that the World Bank impose on them "education reforms" like the school fees that have blocked access to primary education in Africa? Would Labor Party activists in Britain tolerate that the World Bank impose on them "health sector reforms" like clinic fees blocking access to prenatal care? Would European social democrats have tolerated that the World Bank impose on them the corrupt privatization of the water utility in Bolivia, the corrupt privatization of public pensions in Chile and Argentina, the destruction of Mozambique's cashew nut processing industry, the "labor sector reforms" that undermined the right to organize?
For far too long European governments have supported policies at the Bank that their domestic constituencies wouldn't tolerate for one second if a foreign bureaucracy imposed them at home. Would social democrats in Denmark tolerate that the World Bank impose on them "education reforms" like the school fees that have blocked access to primary education in Africa? Would Labor Party activists in Britain tolerate that the World Bank impose on them "health sector reforms" like clinic fees blocking access to prenatal care? Would European social democrats have tolerated that the World Bank impose on them the corrupt privatization of the water utility in Bolivia, the corrupt privatization of public pensions in Chile and Argentina, the destruction of Mozambique's cashew nut processing industry, the "labor sector reforms" that undermined the right to organize?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)