[PEN-L:6902] Re: teaching reform and revolution? revisited

[Blair Sandler <blairs@xxxxxxx>]

Helene Jorgensen counterposed exploitation with labor-management
cooperation. But there is no necessary contradiction here: exploitation is
all too compatible with labor-management cooperation ("jointness"). In
liberal North America people tend to use the word exploitation to indicate
situations where workers are *really* badly treated (e.g. garment industry
sweatshops). In Marxism, of course, exploitation has a different meaning.
Workers with flex time and quality control circles and decent benefits and
even some job security are still exploited if they work for capitalist
enterprises.

I don't want to encourage my students to think that capitalism can solve
all its contradictions, that if capitalist bosses are just nicer or more
concerned about their workers, then we will live in the best of all
possible worlds. Exploitation will inevitably produce a continuing stream
of miseries, or at least it would seem so judging by history.

Shawgi, on the other hand, writes that "monopoly capitalists are not
interested in the well-being of workers.  Their aim is maximum capitalist
profits." This may be so, but I don't want to teach my students that the
only way to be successful in business is to squeeze the workers dry and
suck the marrow out of their bones by any means possible. If one of my
students ever reaches a position of some authority, I'd like to think that,
perhaps in part due to my influence, s/he might be inclined to adopt
strategies that exploit by producing environmentally-friendly rather than
exploit by producing environmentally destructive commodities; strategies
that exploit by increasing real wages rather than decreasing them (it is
elementary Marxian theory how real wages and exploitation can increase
apace, no?), and so on.

Furthermore, while I agree with Shawgi's statement on an emotional level,
theoretically I think it does an injustice to Marxian theory. First of all,
as Doug Henwood has argued compelling and succinctly in LBO 71, *monopoly*
capitalists are not the only problem. I hate capitalism whether it is
monopolistic or not (and yes I understand the dynamic relationship between
small and large capital). More to the point, capitalists are human beings,
that is, their subjectivity is fragmented and contradictory, the product of
*all* the social relations in which they participate, and not determined
solely by their relationship to the means of production or more generally
their role in social production. (Just as workers' consciousness is not
determined solely by their relationship to capitalist production.) The
capitalist *qua capitalist* may not care about workers, but real
capitalists are overdetermined by the social totality, and not determined
just by capital. Marx himself was very clear about this and stated so at
least several times in CAPITAL. (e.g. see the Preface to the First German
Edition, p. 10, International Publishers: 1967: "here individuals are dealt
with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic
categories...."

I don't think that heightening the contradictions by itself will lead to
revolution so I'm not interested simply in making things as bad as possible.

In truth I think these questions are extremely complex and difficult even
in discussion with sophisticated Marxists and radicals; I am at a loss how
to present these complexities at an intro level to students who know
neither NC theory (except unconsciously) or Marxism (at all). Perhaps the
fault is mine: instead of titling my post "reform or revolution?" maybe I
should have used the subject header "teaching reform and revolution?"

Appreciating all the replies so far; keep 'em coming, folks!

Thanks.

Blair







Blair Sandler
blairs@xxxxxxx