Re: Marxism in rich countries

[Greg Schofield <gschofield@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Carol as agree with much that you have said and probably because I have
jumped in late on a discussion what I was attempting to do was focus on
nonproductive labour in relationship to profit realisation as against
actual commodity production. From a class standpoint I agree totally with
the notion that selling-one's labour is the critical social experience and
the one of political import regardless of whether labour is being directly
consumed, a commodity produced or a profit realised.

Comrade Jurriaan's speculation on information as a commodity is what
suggested my reply. I believe his idea is ground that needs to be covered,
though I would be arguing strongly that information is not nor ever can be
a commodity as such, while capital's move into this area can only result in
culturally crippling oppression. Perhaps the illustrations I have used to
get to that point were a bit obscuring - in fact I was trying to say that
such divisions and categorisation were not important except as a means of
mind clearing to look at other matters - ie information.

Nor am I dismissing Jurriaan's view as I think he touches on the critical
questions.

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia


At 07:26  7/06/01 -0500, you wrote:


> Greg Schofield wrote:
> >
> >  the singer and the haircut never become
> > commodities because they never become fully alienated from the worker - it
> > is the workers labour being sold directly as consumption.
> >
>
> Marx's social laws (i.e., historical tendencies) simply do not connect
> to the practice of categorizing particulars. What you fasten on here is
> that _physically_ some jobs (_from the point of view -- _individualist
> point of view_ of the particular worker) offer a more direct
> relationship between the worker and his/her usable product. But from the
> perspective of social analysis, this is utterly irrelevant. (It may be
> relevant to the worker's spouse or therapist.) One does not arrive at
> social categories (complexes of social relations, not boxes of marbles)
> by starting with details and adding up to the category. One begins with
> the whole and analyzing its internal relations. The working class are
> all those in the social order who possess nothing to sell but their own
> human capacity (mental/physical), and thus must sell that capacity to
> live. The singer may be as it were self-incorporated, a petty producer,
> as may the barber. The singer may also have so high a wage as to make
> her/his class membership an irrelevant consideration (hard cases make
> bad law).
>
> This adding up to reach a whole (two combine into one, as the Chinese
> capitalist-roaders proclaimed it) rather than one divides into two
> involves one in endless minutiae and is foreign to the spirit and letter
> of marxism.
>
> Carrol