Re: On Academe and the list was Re: NACLA and Colombia

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Gary MacLennan wrote:
>
>  > However the issue I wish to deal with primarily is the status of academics
>  > on this list. To listen to Michael and Yoshie and Carroll (!) one would
>>  think that academics were an endangered species on Marxism@lists. Rubbish I
>>  say.
>
>Let's take this in little pieces. It's not the fate of academics on marxism
>lists I'm concerned about -- I'm concerned about the profligate use
>of that class of arguments generally characterized as "poisoning the wells
>of discourse," which happens whenever one focuses on the nature of
>the speaker and his/her relations rather than on the content of what
>was said. Now of course the species of this with which everyone on
>this list is quite familiar is red-baiting. She's soft on Stalin, so whatever
>she says is suspect . . . etc.
>
>I don't like red baiting -- and I don't like any of its cousins, half-sisters,
>step-mothers, or great grandmothers or grandchildren. And constant
>sneers at academics *as* academics falls into this category, and it
>poisons debate and discussion.
>
>If Lou had just described what a lousy account of the Sandinistas X
>gave, all would have been well. But he had to go and label him an
>academic. So what the fucking hell!
>
>Carrol

On LBO-talk, one non-Marxist leftist recently wrote: "I am against
the intellectual class,especially when it takes imperial form."  This
remark shows the consequence of not learning from Harry Braverman &
of accepting Max Weber and/or Emil Durkheim's conceptions of social
class & divisions of labor.  So, I wrote in reply:

There is no _intellectual class_ under capitalism.  Intellectuals may
be paid or unpaid; and if remunerated, may be wage laborers (who are
paid barely subsistence wages, like yours truly, or paid decently,
like Michael Perelman), petty producers (like Doug Henwood), or
capitalists (like Bill Gates).  To put it differently, intellectuals
cannot be all put into the same class, by virtue of being
intellectuals; nor do they together constitute a class separate from
capital & labor.

The opposition between manual & mental labor is primarily a
contradiction _within_ the working class created & exploited by
capital (read Harry Braverman's _Labor and Monopoly Capital_; buy it
here: <http://www.monthlyreview.org/labormon.htm>), _not_ between the
working class & capital.

Here is an introduction to Braverman's work -- Michael Yates,
"Braverman and the Class Struggle," _Monthly Review_ 50.8:

*****   ...Not long after I read the book, I reorganized a course I
had begun to teach, with the title "Labor Union Theory."  I
reconceptualized the course as a study of the capital-labor
relationship.  I begin it with an analysis of capital accumulation,
using Marx's famous letter scheme, M-C-C'-M'.  Then I argue that
profits derive from what happens inside the workplace, from the power
of the employer to extract surplus value from the labor of the
workers.  The trouble is that there is inherent in this a "labor
problem," that is, surplus value must be extracted from what
Braverman calls "an unwilling working population."  This forces
employers to continuously devise "managerial control mechanisms," and
it is the study of these and the responses of workers to them which
are the subject matter of the course.  Beginning, as Braverman does,
with pre-capitalist production, we move from the outworking system,
to the factory, to the detailed division of labor, to mechanization,
to Taylorization, to personnel management, to lean production.  These
workplace control mechanisms are always situated in a context of
class struggle, which includes not just struggle at work but in the
larger society and culture.  While I have added materials (on lean
production, for example), Braverman remains the heart of the course,
and nothing that has transpired since the book's publication has
rendered it in any way obsolete. In fact, as I shall argue, it is
more relevant today than ever....

<http://www.monthlyreview.org/199yates.htm>   *****

And we have to learn from Braverman _without_ accepting the premises
& conclusions of Max Weber & Emil Durkheim.

Workerism & "intellectual-baiting" owe themselves more to Max Weber &
Emil Durkheim than Karl Marx & Harry Braverman.

Yoshie