luke

(1744): written 40-60 yrs after death of Jesus

(1830): Zecharaiah asks a rational question, and is made mute [what kind of God is this?]

(1831): blessed is she who believed [what kind of a conception of faith is this? compare to dictionary definition]

(1831): social justice passage--"he has brought down the powerful..." [but, again, is this accidental to the position of Christianity? think of its evolution, into Church doctrine. why does it abandon this? why are certain parts of the text picked up on, at certain moments?]

(1833): "and for glory to your people Israel" [is this a God who looks after all people? or just Israel? two wholly different implied projects]

(1834): wrath/punishment, but as part of a compassionate project?

(1835): social justice passage--'whoever has two coats must share' [what might this imply, today?! and for our 'Christian' candidates?]

(1837): Jesus performing more miracles [well what, again, does this imply about Faith?]

(1838-1839): curing the leper [here, question of the prior condition--i.e., where does evil come from? Satan? things we bring on ourselves? 'your sins are forgiven you'. these two are inconsistent]

(1840): what role do the Pharisees play? [dogma vs. principle behind laws. in a sense, opens up space for a re-interpretation of laws, based on principle. in other words, it suggests (either implicitly or explicitly), that laws can shift (cf. circumcision, not washing before eating, the 'sabbath')]

(1840): social justice passage--"Blessed are you who are poor..."

(1841): "Woe to you who are full now..." [NB: (1) not, everyone will be full; (2) God is not doing this now--why? one can understand why Marx would call this opiate]

(1842): the good slave [restored to good health, but never freed, of course]

(1843-1844): "faith saves" the woman who wept at his feet [but she's seen miracles! what kind of conception of faith is this, again?]

(1845): rebuking wind and raging waves [well, why were they raging in the first place?]

(1846): miracle, after miracle

(1852): "ask and you shall receive" [plainly not true.]

(1854): injunction to fear God [what does this add to conception of Faith]

(1854): life does not consist in "abundance of possessions"

(1855): "blessed are those slaves" who work their asses off [hmm, what kind of model of social justice is this? inconsistent, at the very least]

 (1858): why do you act humble, or do whatever else [b/c you will eventually be exalted? not because it's the right thing? how does this compare w/ previous ways of thinking about morality? very similar, and interesting, b/c it contrasts to Kantian, which is how we today think about Christian morality]

 (1861): Lazarus vs. the rich man [doesn't bode well for the 1%, eh? implies a very serious moral obligation on us, no? again, inconsistently very radical, this text]

(1863): sucks to be a slave..

(1863): why isn't everyone praising God?! [what kind of god, again? discuss this passage]

(1864): Sodom is the model for judgement day, Lot's wife example to avoid [nuts! the most reactionary incident in the Bible in it's most progressive book]

(1871-1872): question of Judas' responsibility [whence evil?]

(1875): "we deserve our cruxificion" [on the one hand text proclaims radical forgiveness, on the other hand crucifixion is just desert? today we wouldn't accept this for any kind of crime. just another example]

corinthians I

(2002): class composition of early Christian community (poor are the foolish, the unwise) [this is critical to understanding the framing, here. use as introductory point]

(2006): civic judgement [same basis as today's 'uncivilized' communities who claim right to sharia]

(2007): "the body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord" [example of different, new attitude to pleasure and the body]

(2008): celibacy is highest [again, shifting mores]

(2011): Paul defending his laboring [interesting, in light of class base, again--see 2012]

(2014): Paul's misogyny ["Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife"]

(2015): again, the lower-class appeal--musn't humiliate those who have nothing

(2017) in contrast to Plato, a different conception of the interdependence of parts of the body. the 'weakest' is the most important [again, do we understand this as intrinsic to Christianity, engrained in it forever more? no, it's a product of whom Paul is appealing to, and it changes rapidly as Christianity evolves]

(2021): eternal soul argument. [more like an assertion]

da bible, God

(4): standard view is that Torah was divine word mediated by Moses, but narrative indicates otherwise (instances pointing to authorship later than Moses)

(4-5): modern theory is that Toran is not a unified whole—rather, composed of four sources that were redacted together (earliest source 10^th century BC, latest was sixth century BC)

(7): claims that Moses wrote Genesis appear only in Greco-Roman period—originally anonymous

(8): earliest parts of Genesis were written by scribes in the context of monarchies of early Judah/Israel, but later parts were written as late as after fall of monarchy in 586BCE

(8): in short: “Genesis was written over centuries by multiple authors…” [what are the implications of this, for the religious? for the sociological?]

(8): divided into two sections: I. the primeval history, chs 1-11; II. ancestral history, chs 12-50

(10): not scientifically accurate, butthis is a modern concern [hmm]. treat it metaphorically or allegorically [OK—what does this mean? take an example]

Genesis

(12): humanity is made in the image of God [what does this imply about our status? about good/evil? about free will?]

(14): two stories about creation, side-by-side [compare/contrast]

(15): the serpent and Evil, and God’s humanity [good place to raise problem of omniscience/omnipotence]

(19): the wickedness of humanity, and God’s commitment to destroy them [again, the problem of Evil]

(25): God fears the unity of humanity [God’s pettiness in nipping a rivalry in the bud? what’s this all about?]

(32): God demanding sacrifice after sacrifice [why? God as petty, jealous, craving attention]

(35): God sometimes in the plural, sometimes in the singular [the evolution of monotheism]

(35): God asking about whereabouts of Sarah [omniscience?]

(36-37): raining hellfire on Sodom and Gomorrah [genocide and destruction. what kind of God, again?]

(64): Onan spills his semen on the ground, and is put to death. 

(65): making slaves of the Egyptians

(80): Joseph’s brothers are not morally culpable, because his explusion was all a part of God’s plan [This raises some very thorny questions about morality and responsibility. In fact, it suggests that there can be none. We’d have to find some way to distinguish between this action, and others—so?]

Exodus

(81): similarly, “best understood as a composite of traditions shaped over many centuries by an unkown number of anonymous storytellers and writers.” clearly not written by Moses. 

(81-82): explusion of Pharaoh’s workforce, figure like Moses, mass emigration—none of this is mentioned in nonbiblical sources. likely that it drew on some sort of liberation of ‘West Asiatics’

(84): God is rewarding the midwives’ fear of him [again, God as petty, vainglorious, etc.]

(85): God ‘remembers’ his covenant, after decades of their being oppressed! [it took long enough—again, what kind of omniscient, omnipotent God]

(87): God gives Moses evidence of his authority, via miracles [what does this imply, for faith? Isn’t faith supposed to be precisely the opposite?]

(88-99): astonishing--God keeps hardening the Pharaoh’s heart, but then holding him and the Egyptian people responsible for the Pharaoh’s intransigence [sadism, pure and simple]

(91): referring to his future crimes as ‘wonders’

(97): the mass murder of Egyptian firstborns

(98): and Passover, to consecrate this ‘blessing’

(101-102): Pharaoh was going to let them be, but God hardens his heart so that he pursues Moses. Motivation is to ‘gain glory for myself’[Anything to give Him an opportunity to murder dozens of people, of course. ]

(109): the Chosen people (“you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples”)

(110): “I am a jealous God” [damn right]

(110): collective punishment (“punishing children for the iniquity of parents”) 

(111): God, again, demanding that the people ‘fear’ him

(112): injunctions regarding how to handle slavery

(114): you shouldn’t charge interest to the poor [shall we take this one to heart, then?]

(116): injunction to demolish and expel the Amorites, Hittites, Perizittes, Canaanites, Hivites, Jebusites.. 

(129-130): where Moses convinces God not to commit genocide, once again. though Moses returns from the Mountain and orders the death of three thousand brothers, sons, etc. 

(131): again, collective punishment (“visiting iniquity of the parents upon the children and the chidren’s children”)

- - - - 

(1) The problem of evil: whence does it arise?

(a) On the one hand, if God is omniscient/omnipotent, he’s caught in a contradiction. Surely you can’t hold people responsible. 

(b) But let’s say he’s not, and that we allow humans free will. Interestingly, there’s plenty of evidence for his not being, throughout what we read. Doesn’t this mean we’re working with a different conception of God than many of us probably imagine the Semitic tradition as defending? Maybe that’s OK. 

(c) This doesn’t, though, free God of the obligation to respond to much of how he deals with Evil, in what we read. Tare several instances where he is clearly responsible for the actions of certain humans (cf. Pharaoh), yet he punishes them nonetheless. There are also clear examples of punishment being levied against those who are responsible only because they have the misfortune of being linked, by blood, to the ‘criminal’ (cf. the Egyptian people). What is the principle being advanced here, then? [Hint: it is totalitarian]

(d) And the awfulness of punishment? Genesis and Exodus show a God running roughshod over civil liberties. In other words, even if we think there is free will, and we argue that certain humans sinned, the punishments are fierce. 

(2) The question of the Bible’s historicity. There are a whole host of laws and edicts that we would deem insane, by today’s standards [Examples?]. We might explain these by arguing that the Bible ought to be set in its historical and social context (punishments are severe, but they’re par for the course; endorsing slavery, yes, but it was a modal social institution at the time). But we’ve then stripped the text of its sacred character. It becomes a historical document. This raises a few questions. 

(A) Doesn’t this spell trouble for believers? Why follow injunctions laid down in this text, versus others, if it’s not actually the work of God, but of any number of anonymous humans working over centuries to codify common wisdom? (Related: if not sociologically, what might it mean for a believer to interpret this text allegorically/metaphorically [I have no idea])

(B) It raises a whole new line of questioning: why are certain parts of the text are emphasized, and others de-emphasized. Politicians may appeal to God, but they’re not discussing God’s injunction that you can’t charge interest on loans to the poor. Why do certain ideas get picked up at certain times, and not at others? In other words, if we accept that organized religion is historically embedded, what explains its character, and its evolution? 

(3) The problem of Faith. What is it? Here God ‘proves’ his authority by appealing to a series of miracles, in the presence of Moses. But if the people’s faith is grounded in miracles (and, what’s a corollary, God’s destructive power), is it really Faith? Isn’t Faith what prevails in the absence of evidence, not in the presence of it? 

(4) The principle of ‘a Chosen people.’ What is the principle being advanced here? And to what extent do we expect the chosen people to be favoured over others? At what point does it become wrong? 

(5) Emancipatory possibilities. Corradi spoke about the Bible as inaugurating a sense of social justice. Do you see this, in the liberation of the Israelities, from Egypt? [As a weak claim about ‘liberation’ in the abstract, this is bizarre (i.e., that a general sense of justice is produced by this incident): how do you highlight this specific instance (since there are probably plenty of others that could be adduced as general origins), how do you substantiate the causal chain (this weak sense is supposed to become a strong sense, somewhere down the line)? As a strong claim, God save us from this definition of social justice (since it coincides with his Wrath against the Egyptians). And there is the absurdity of all the counterfactuals raised (had this not been written down by any number of scribes, we would not have had a sense of ‘social justice’?!). Surely it’s sufficient to say that appeals to social justice emerge wherever we see a concrete clash of interests. 

(6) Looking at religion ‘sociologically.’ Corradi discussed this at length, in lecture [What did he say? Durkheim, etc.] . This follows from stripping the Bible of its sacred character (though it’s not necessary to do so, to examine this angle of religion). We look at its role, in this world, in creating a sense of community through ritual, shared belief, etc. Compare, for example, what it means to celebrate Passover sociologically, and what it means ideologically/religiously [community ritual vs. commemoration of the slaughter of Egyptian firstborns]

(7) The Western tradition. The purpose of this class is to substantiate the claim that there is something universal, in the particular. We’ll talk about this more, with Pericles. But do we see anything in the Bible that we would identify as either factually universal (i.e., it actually prevails universally), or desirably universal (i.e.,  part of what we think a good society should have)? 

(8): The question of monotheism. Corradi discussed observing the evolution of this sense of God’s oneness. And indeed, there are several moments in the text that hint at a plurality of Gods.

clyde barrow, critical theories of the State

(6): Welfare State doesn't redistribute from rich to poor, but from lucky to unlucky [hmm]

(6): distribution of income from rich to poor is the work, instead, of Trade Union's, not the institutions of the Welfare State [i.e., unemployment insurance, etc.]. the premise, again, is that one has to work or be attempting to work to be eligible

(11): Lukacs wants to claim that Marxist theory refers to a method. But Marxism is rooted in certain concepts (relations of production, surplus value, exploitation, etc.) and should rise and fall with those concepts. [AMEN]

(17): Capitalist class is economic network based both on institutional position (managers, etc.) and property relations (i.e., ownership). Comprising about .5 to 1% of the population. A highly diversified working class comprises about 85% of the population.


instrumentalism, or plain Marxism

(18): for instrumentalists, this capitalist class escapes anarchy/achieves coherence through mechanisms illuminated by

1. positional analysis (interlocking directorates, etc.)
2. socialization analysis (ideology, schooling, etc.)

 (25): identifying ideological subsystem as part of the State [this is silly--and he raises the problem in a later chapter: this risks making the State an 'ideological' construct. we should agree on a minimal working condition, and then think about the ways it intervenes in society, sure. But not define it by its interventions]

(26): colonization studies

(26): a historical shift from the legislative to the executive branch, in order to facilitate cohesive, regular intervention

(28): challenge of explaining why State managers (mid-level bureaucrats) intervene in capitalist ways. Miliband's explanation is ideological [can't we have a 'rules of the game' explanation?]

(30): Special interests dominate on the most important issues

(33): challenge of explaining why instrumentalism doesn't culminate in the domination of the State by competing SI networks. Answer is because the capitalist class is also organized--it has 'policy planning networks'

(40): instrumentalists see reform as the product of (a) popular protest; (b) looking out for long-term interest

(44): for instrumentalists, social democracy is an example of how capturing the State executive can yield tangible gains

(46): Poulantzas' critique that instrumentalism focuses on 'agency' to the exclusion of structure

(47): Offe's is that it can't explain well enough why things don't collapse into anarchy

(48): [challenge, in general, is to specify the mechanisms by which class struggle matters, in the instrumentalist theory of the State. proximately, need to keep business going without interruption; ultimately, danger of threat to established order, etc.]

(49):  the challenge of falsifiability--but you can't rely on selective case studies, as Skocpol does, to 'alsify' the theory. especially when there's disagreement regarding the interpretation of those very same case studies.

structuralism, or neo-Marxism

(52): three sources of contradiction/crisis: (1) economic crisis; (2) class struggle; (3) uneven development

(58-59): Offe, Bridges, et. al. rescue structuralism from Poulantzian functionalism by noting two mechanisms

1. state's own fiscal functioning is bound up with the health of the economy
2. State's legitimacy is bound up with economy

(60): interesting--Best and Connolly note that this is particularly evident during downturns, as Democratic/progressive mayors have cowered in face of threat of capital flight

(61): as Przeworski has noted, these mechanisms imperil probability of a gradual road to socialism, because Capital responds

(62): soft vs. hard structuralism (i.e., do capitalists need associations?)

(68): table of pre-tax and post-tax income distribution, in US

(72): voluntarism doesn't equal methodological individualism

(73-75): imp, (alleged) problem w/ mechanism of capital flight [hmm, this is unconvincing--unclear data, untimely responses, and reliance on neo-classical wisdom. confuses the cashing out of the claims with its coherence as an argument.]

derivationist

(79): orienting claim is that State's role is to produce 'general conditions' conducive to capital accumulation. derived either from contradictory logic of capital accumulation, or from requirements of overseeing class struggle [well, obvious question is why? which it doesn't seem to answer, clearly]

(91): centralization of State authority typically seen as sign of greater autonomy

systems-analytic 

(100): see graphic

(100-101): Offe's version: exclusion, maintenance, dependency and legitimacy principles

(104): 'antipodal trouble', for WS--i.e., in moment of crisis, it risks either a legitimacy crisis (via austerity and rollbacks), or a economic/politcial crisis (continuing social program while keeping dominant power relations intact) [got to break through!]

(111-112): again, importance of labour market particiaption to WS model--and thus, the problem posed by rising surplus populations and unemployment

(122): not legitimacy that people give the state, but rather their acquiescence

organizational realist

(125): state managers are self-interested maximizers whose main interest is to enhance their own institutional power. thus, state-capital relation is understood as marriage of convenience, in a sense [but this is not different from good structuralist version--State managers can have a whole host of projects in mind. the relevant question concerns the constraints imposed upon them]

(128): at moments of crisis, State managers will make their independence known [but (a) why, what's the mechanism, if not struggle? (b) cf. 2008-2012]

(131): four ways to assess the strength of States [interesting for Pak]

(135): Skocpol giving serious weight to the importance of inherited expertise (i.e., this explains why US has agricultural policy but no industrial policy, post GDepression)

(139) Skocpol proving only what she assumed, in case of AALL

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.

- - - - - -