KELLEY VS ANGE so, now, does this mean that ethnography or what have you is useful for revealing the crap that intellectuals pump out which might be a way of moving with the preponderance of the object? that is, academics and researchers at think tanks and the like will pump out work that can tell us about how capitalism works because they're part of 'the preponderance of the object' and that would be useful. but otherwise, ethnography doesn't move with the preponderance of the object and so it can only be useful to those who want to analyze it in terms of revealing the way capitalism works? i took dennis's comment to ken as saying that we can't foget about the operations of capitalism: capitalism has us. kelley =<><<>><>=  Chris wrote: >Indeed of course under >capitalism labour power is a commodity. =<><<>><>=  i think that r. edwards' point in _contested terrain_ is a crucial framework for interpreting hidden injuries: the only thing sold here is the potential for productive labor --employers actually have to wrest the work out of people. so, employers look for ways to sort people by intensely examining the commodity people are selling. i think there are interesting aspects to this interplay between these hidden injuries and the way it operates to ensure that labor power is realized as productive labor. to illustrate but by drawing on the lower rungs of the work hierarchy: in the catering biz, when you need extra staff you call the employment agency for some "warm bodies." what purpose could this possible serve, to pay people $7-$8/hr knowing full well that they won't be productive? it would seem irrational, no? it actually creates solidarity: the 'warm bodies' are ridiculed by both mgmt and regular employees producing a tenuous solidarity that rests on 'us' [hard workers] v 'them' [slackers]. how did this work? whe i was in the biz, my boss had a penchant for hiring college students on vaca from Cornell. she believed they'd be more than warm bodies b/c, on her view, people who went to college (as she had) had a work ethic. this, funnily enough, wasn't generally true. she even knew this. yet, something worked in this scenario. the hostility toward 'slackers' was about the fact that they could resist the demand to realize their labor power for their employers. they had freedom in the eyes of the reg staff. moreover, they didn't suffer the indignities of judgment b/c future college degrees protected them, both internally and externally. whereas the label 'slacker' might work on someone who has no other choice than to demonstrate solidarity with others hard workers b/c, like them, you have no choice, the label 'slacker' and the public ridicule they were subjected to meant little to them for their response was, "i don't have to do this work; i just need some cash for ____." i've pointed out here before that this sort of service work also has important implications for mgmt/worker solidarity and why, i think, it's difficult to organize unions: the enemy is more readily seen as clients, customers, patrons who you are continually told you work *for*. to me, this is important with regard to this new management rhetoric about team work and taking care of customers, particularly as the "who" you are producing for becomes more visible in these industries [see also, larry hirschhorn's altogether too optimistic reearch]. another structural factor that's makes resistance difficult: service work is notoriously understaffed. if someone doesn't show up everyone else must work harder. you screw over your mates, not your boss. solidarity is crucial here yet works in mgmt's favor. of course, we need to look at the structural context, too: how is labor extracted from the regular workers? my boss was also openly uncomfortable about this b/c to do so she had to lie w/ the 'promise' of pay raises/promotions. there was a well-known glass ceiling. once a cook, for ex, reached $8/hr they would often be summarily fired as examples. not all, but some: if you wanted to work your way up, then you'd best not get too cocky about pay raises and you'd best earn them continually. that was the stick. there was also a carrot: the 'work you way up' ethos that is part of this industry overall. somewhat peculiar to this company, but nonetheless i think instructive be/c it is *so* obvious. the CEO and all exec level mgmt, would don aprons, wait on tables, take orders from cranky Cornellians, and slide their arms into piles of leftover food and dirty dishes. people often noted how hard these folks worked: "look at that Mr. M working so hard in front of even his own neighbor, that rich s.o.b. _____." [do note that Mr. M made it a point to work hard in front of rich s.o.b.'s at elite functions well-covered in local press. this was for him, for his well-to-do buds and for us. Mr. M, who started out with the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, had something to prove to himself, the upstart from working class background, and to those with inherited wealth.] indeed, it seemed to reg. staff that exec mgt put to shame the clerical & administrative staff pressed into service as wait staff every weekend. [exacerbating hostilities b/t food service workers and clerical/admin staff, b/t clean and dirty work; b/t those ruled by the clock and those not]. the majority of the folks at the top levels of the corp. had started out at the lower rungs so their message was: we may make lots of money but we're not ashamed to do the same work and if you want to get where we are then do the same. works quite nicely since my ex-husband is at work by 4 a.m.to do the work a cook might normally do, at 7 works in his capacity as "manager" of the uni cafeteria, often delivering breakfasts and luncheons to the chancellor and prez who insist on being taken care of by the "manager" [no lowly staff for them!]. he doesn't get home til 6-7 p.m., does inventory, the books, and catering on Sat/Sun. he has no dream of advancement, he's just hoping to keep his salaried managerial job. he sure as heck doesn't feel that he's really made 'progress' insofar as he's really quite aware that wearing a tie to work instead of a cook's uniform hasn't brought him any increase in freedom or dignity. he cannot point to mgmt who have the 'freedom' and 'dignity' of not doing 'dirty' work b/c they symbolically demonstrate that even they don't find such work beneath them. this has all been exacerbated by a wider structural context. first, there is the reality of corporate buyouts & mergers with this particular company, which i'd argue is a trend as successful small companies become part of chains like marriot who are expanding into other aspects of the hospitality industry. last i worked in this industry, there was intense competition in this regard. second, there is the widespread deployment of this fear of downsizing in the popular media, which the corp used to their advantage during a 6 month test of who would get weeded out during the merger. as a somewhat personal side note: it's likely that there's more than a slight correlation between the onslaught of this test and my ex's growing concerns about becoming closer to his children, which manifested itself in a child custody battle that was extremely expensive for him. it would seem irrational on the face of it; but one way, as S&C note, to shore up one's identity--sense of dignity and freedom--under these conditions is to turn toward the haven of the family as some sort of sphere divorced from these competitive ethos. [then again, the ex could just be an asshole. a redundant tautology, i know!] still, as kathleen gerson has shown, the cultural turn toward "new fatherhood" and the personal concern with it as an alternative source of identity tends to coincide with fathers' realizations that their avenues for advancement have been blocked. there's no doubt that the father's rights movement has something to do with this, in my view. the food service industry is very much like this all over, since it's built on this work your way up ethos. while there's been an explosion in employment, it has been a step ahead of the credentialization infrastructure necessary to create a firm hierarchy b/t professional v. practical knowledge. there is an old and well-cultivated ethos which suggests that no one can *really* know how to do anything unless they've spent time in the trenches. in this sense, tho, it is also somewhat peculiar and to be differentiated from other service industries, tho i'm not certain in precisely what ways. so max, your daughter may well be put through some severe degradation rituals--especially b/c she's a she--if she wants to prove to anyone that her CIA training is any match for the heat of the kitchen. and you'd best teach her how to use the word fuck as a verb, noun, and adjective because there's a difference between a whisk and a fucking whisk. a fucking whisk produces the best she-she sauces and no ordinary, non-fucking whisk will do. she'll need to stick with the she-she restaurants if she wants to avoid this for they do pride themselves on maintaining that professional training is superior. also, this is by way of suggesting that i'm not sure about the claim that college education, in the states, alters class distinctions simply by virtue of the fact that more folks attend college. while 50% go to college, the number who graduate [25%] hasn't changed since the 50-60s. and, as we can imagine, the burden of 'dropping out' is generally internalized as a personal failure. the 25%, too, was an increase from the 10% in earlier decades b/c the gov't invested heavily in the expansion of the uni system with public uni's which served several purposes. also, these numbers include two-year community colleges which were actually instituted by elite uni's as a way of diverting the unwashed masses who were demanding college educations-- not, however, because they wanted technical knowledge which community colleges are generally mandated to provide. rather, it was for the reasons that frank rissaro seems to suggest. as brint and karabel note in _the diverted dream_ the working class "desire" for vocational training was purposefully imposed on them. liberal arts educations were to be reserved for the elite; vocational training in the expanding service and knowledge industries was for the rest. the point here, too, is that the uni system in the US is in an extremely competitive situation. they *need* to advance this rhetoric of continual training and advancement thru higher education just to keep up with the purported demands of the job market. in the late 80s and 90s, there was heavy competition over a dwindling student market, compared to the baby boom yrs. randall collins calls this credential inflation, though he hasn't explored this aspect of it. for a time, with the explosion in college attendance, there was some leveling in terms of the prestige hierarchy of uni's. but the uni hierarchy is reasserting itself quickly and people are starting to recognize differences between a private and public uni, between a community college and a four year college, between the big three/ivy's and other uni's. though, i must say the common sense understandings still rest on who has the best sports team. so, a bit of a riff on what you'd said, chris, but more anon.... kelley =<><<>><>=  heresy, why I support vouchers k.m. asks > Especially as your comment about things being worse "when teachers >are only seen as workers" would seem to rule out the unions as a likely >agent? =<><<>><>=  no. i would want revitalized unions--see _teaching in america_ for suggestions that i may or may not agree with given what i know to be jerry's thinking. but it's a start. when i say 'workers' i mean that are merely cogs in the system, asked to pump out a product. it's no different than being asked as a prof to focus on the goal of getting good evals, whatever that means, and the right bell curve distribution of grades. so i'd want unions and professional education changed, fundamentally. =<><<>><>= And what will keep the current goofuses (I assume you refer to the >administrators) from being replaced within the current structures, where, >as you say about private schools, " the tendency toward corporate >bureaucratization in the name of efficiency and profit " could and is being >enforced? ------------ eh? --------- >I'll look forward to hearing what more you pick up from your mentor or >elsewhere. =<><<>><>=  ahhhh well i forgot he's vacationing in new england. used to lounge about with jk galbraith himself, even! so there's a hint as to the likely politics of _teaching_ but otherwise, k.m. this is the deal. public schooling needs to remain public. schools--children, ALL children--are our responsibility. that means dealing with all the messiness and unpleasantness b/c there are no easy fixes here. schools suck now. they're not going to get any better under a market model of schooling whether charters or vouchers b/c it's easy to see that we don't get what we need and want in the market and so that's not any reason to think it'll work for schools. the deal is, and brown v. b.o.e. recognized this, that WE are responsible for other people's kids because those kids live in this society and we depend on them--yes, we depend on people we will never know. OTHER people's children. being responsible for schooling means keeping it public. even adam smith knew that the moral logic of "let me keep my own and i will become, without ever thinking about it, my brother's keeper" was an ethos that ought to friggin stay in the market. why import and encourage such an ethos into the dang school system? schooling is supposed to educate for a vocation AND for citizenship. sure, it's a hollowed out, empty notion of what it ought to be--education for a calling and education for real, substantive democratic participation. but i don't see how we're going to get from here, capitalism, to there, socialism or what have you, by turning our schools into damn for profit corporations or NGOs. kelley =<><<>><>= K.M. > >Oh, yeah, mbs was: > >>surprized nobody else blew up at my remarks about >>parents. Guess few bothered to read.  =<><<>><>= I read, but didn't find the remarks remarkable. There are a lot of parents >who don't get involved with schooling -- always have been. =<><<>><>=  if our goal, and it may not be yours, is to move toward socialism, then i do not see how encouraging market competition in the public school system is going to get us to our goal. it simply extends to a new realm the logic of rational choice individualism: we are nothing but consumption machines with knapsacks full of preferences that we whip out every time we're at the market--however that's conceived. that seems to me a way of thinking that will never ever put us on any path toward socialism because socialism, to work well, requires a whole different way of thinking about ourselves and others, particularly if you we're talking more anarchistic forms of socialism. schools stink for reasons that are so complex that there's no way on earth that a voucher system--even for the rather pragmatic reasons max offered for opposing them--is going to work. there are cultural contradictions regarding our attitutudes toward teaching that need to be addressed, there are problems with the fetishization of ever new pedagogies, the problem of deprofessionalization, and so forth. vouchers and charters don't address those problems. your fundamental gripe, it seems to me is that you don't like the schools. so, this is not about marxism or people taking control, it's about how to fix the schools. well i'm all for that, but i'm also for socialism. the privatization and mcdonaldization of schooling isn't going to get us there by any means. as i said elsewhere, there's plenty of money to fix some of these problems. though money isn't all the silver bullet. money is distributed extremely unfairly because of the property tax system. this inequity is just plain wrong--and doesn't even meet USers standards of what constitutes formal, procedural equality of opportunity. vouchers barely make a dent in those inequities. charters schools avoid the problem in the name of some heroic entrepreneurial ethos. we should strive for equity--fairness. not some procedural notion of justice as embodied in either equality of opportunity or in the rational choice model of economic man. kelley  =<><<>><>= CONCLUSION CHAPTER OF WHO CHOOSES? WHO LOOSES? by Richard F. Elmore and Bruce Fuller - These ambiguous findings about the relationship among choice, school innovation, and student performance lead us to the conclusion that introducing choice will not, by itself, result in large changes in educational programs or student performance. It does make sense, however, to think about choice policies operating in tandem with other educational improvement initiatives to foster variation in educational programs and to focus school leaders on student performance. Knowledgeable designers of public school choice programs have, for a long time, argued that choice plans need to be combined with policies that reinforce high expectations that all students will achieve and that pro mote the systematic development of alternative instructional strategies, rather than simply relabeling existing strategies (Fliegel, 1990). The evidence on differences between the bureaucratic environments of public and private schools also suggests that dramatically streamlining and focusing central school bureaucracies on supporting high-quality instruction in schools could result in more attention to student learning.  =<><<>><>= you forgot, "i'm looking for someone greater than myself: an equal." deliciously, kelley  =<><<>><>=  ken wrote: >Excellent! Lacan's lamella, the Alien as pure appearance qua >appearance, Kant's indefinite judgement, Zizek's theory of >vampirism / sublime object of ideology, Schellings beginning >before the beginning, Hegel's retroactive positing of the >presuppositions, Marx's materialist subject without >susbtance, Salecl's "I love something in you more than you" >and Laclau and Mouffe's empty pluralistic democracy... > >ken ????????????? =<><<>><>= excerpt from a post spiked with facts on suicide: http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/9908/0518.html a better way of thinking about the issue would be to ask if the suicides rates have always been 'high' in sweden and other countries whch have high rates. if so, then we can pretty much guess that socialism isn't the problem. turns out that sweden's suicide rate has been pretty steady at around 15-20/1000 throughout 20th c., with an upsurge in the 60s and 70s where it got it's rep. for having the highest suicide rate. hungary holds that position now, having achieved a rate in the 40s/1000 in the mid seventies, steadily rising from a rate that was about the same as sweden's and the USA's 50 yrs ago. it seems to me that the rise in rates during the 60s and 70s probably had something to do with sweden's age demographics. =<><<>><>=  Oh, Kelley, you ask such a difficult & profound question that concerns biology, philosophy, and aesthetics all at once! Well, let's see, I say it all depends on the man's diet, but I humbly submit it as a proposition only, to be corroborated or falsified by the collective inquiry of the more learned. I'll say it's a perfect cavil if some see it fit to infer from it my secret allegiance to Nietzsche.  =<><<>><>=  well, i can only say, mmmm mmmm good --in reponse to yoshie's comments, that is--since i certainly am getting my very own taste of vintage yoshie lately. god, i hope this is likewise good for my complexion. certainly save on the expense associated w/ creams and lotions for staving off crow's feet. as for making alternative desposits at branch banks which you speak of below, now there's a case for the positive aspects of the money shot! ken might have some comments about fondue and how to come and still have fun! or maybe a commentary on raw, baked and boiled. ken? now mebbe you 'n' frances can do the dominatrix routine and rilly rilly give doug a heart attack. kelley  =<><<>><>= Speaking of oral enjoyment, I should like to take this occasion to advise those men who think fertilization makes an egg sacred of the wisdom of keeping their respective amoral appendage away from the vicinity of any cunt whose owner is not desirous of a pregnancy. I may be justified in further declaiming the superiority of oral clitoral stimulation to vaginal penetration from many a woman's point of view, even when the morality of the possesser of an amoral appendage does not give off a particularly offensive smell. Yoshie =<><<>><>=  no brainer: abortion is killing. so what? related subject threads: Every Sperm is Sacred"  "Federal Unborn Victims Bill ------ this is the deal. i think abortion is killing a potential life. i've had one and i've been a long time activist for abortion rights, arguing for the absolute unconditional need for abortion. i was almost aborted [drat! huh carrol?] back when it was illegal and yet i still absolutely support legalized abortion. in the spirit of max's initial murmurings and auto-generated, auto-erotic postings on this topic i would say that, as abortion rights advocates, we don't do ourselves any favors by running about telling everyone that having an abortion is like having an appendectomy. not a lot of people agree with this and yet most people still think abortion ought to remain legal. that is, i think we ought to respect the fact that people think this way right now. there's not a whole lot you can do about that and having them read arguments about the history of abortion doesn't make much of a dent. people think what they think right now. in this case, the dominant tendency in the US is for people to think of the issue as a personal, private moral dilemma and that the state ought not be part of it. out and in yer face about it among folks other than the folks at pro-choice rallies is likely to backfire in our faces. one thing we have on our sides is this: the RTLers are in yer face assholes that alienate a lot of people by their actions. i think it's probably wise to keep that sentiment in our favor by not engaging in similarly stupid actions. i liked michael's suggestions about boycotting businesses that support RTL, but terribly in your face stuff will make us look as bad as them. there's a time an place for those activities; this isn't one of them. in that sense, i'd be pragmatic about using the "I'm here, I've had an abortion, get used to it" strategy. I'll use it here on LBO because i suspect my audience can deal with it and be persuaded, perhaps. I wouldn't use it at a welfare rights meetings necessarily, particularly since, at those meetings, there are plenty of women of color who tend not to support abortion. i don't know about you yoshie, but when i used to do the petition thing, women of color slammed the door in my face pretty quick. *none* of them were willing to have their names printed in the local paper in an ad supporting abortion rights as part of our response to RTLers staged their friggin' protests every spring. they didn't go to our counter demonstrations either, though they might privately support and contribute to abortion rights activities. how to defend oneself against the right-to-lifers and the "abortion is murder" argument? it's a no brainer. abortion is killing but it's not murder. in the first place, we already make distinctions about killing v. murder do we not? that is, the legal system recognizes differences in first degree murder, manslaughter, accidents, crimes of passion, self defense, property defense, and so forth. when someone is convicted of killing someone else, they are penalized differently according to the crime and the degree to which the crime was rational, pre-planned [in cold blood], the result of criminal negligence, the result of supposed irrationality/passion, etc. if it is completely an accident or in self-defense then it's not considered actionable as a form of murder or manslaughter or even involuntary manslaughter. given the logic already embedded in the legal system, some forms of killing aren't actionable [e.g., suicide one was punishable whereas now it's generally not]. it is really not much of a leap to argue that abortion is justified and ought not be punishable or considered that big a deal even if you killed another potential life. if it is okay to kill someone out of self-defense, then it is surely okay to have an abortion for absolutely any reason a woman might choose. the person who killed for reasons of self-defense will likely have all sorts of moral quandaries about that act or not. that's okay and we allow that, don't we? then it's okay and we should allow and respect different understandings of what abortion is or isn't. it's rather unfair to impose one's moral beliefs on others by telling them that their thinking about abortion, even if they are staunch pro-choicers, is somehow wrongheaded. the point is that abortion, however understood, is not a moral act for "the state" to punish by making it illegal, even though individuals consider it moral. everything we do or don't do is about moral decision-making. the point is whether the state ought to be involved. in this case, abortion is killing, not murder. as for whether this argument feeds into the RTLers arguments against public funding for abortions, well the orig point of this thread was about making concessions for the sake of coalition building. that's a concession i'm willing to make since it's already the case that there isn't public funding for abortions. as for the issue max raised--political platforms or deal making/negotiations regarding public health care provisions among leftist parties--well it's pretty clear to me that, were such a thing ever to come about, the abortion docs and the medical community would surely want to get a piece of that action. it will be in their interest to make abortions part of a socialized health care delivery system and to keep it legal. so, it seems to me that prioritizing might not be such a bad thing. first, fight for unconditional access to abortion whenever possible second, fight like hell against attempts to undermine abortion access. third, concede on the public funding issue in order to get socialized health care delivery in the first place __IF that's what is necessary. fourth, when that magic day comes [and even before] start working with the medical community to get them on board with the idea that abortion should be part of publicly subsidized health care. that's a no-brainer and it will be easy, for the most part, to get such a powerful community on board with that one. fifth, abortion rights activists, right now, ought to work toward getting the ratfucker HMOs to push for maintaining and expanding abortion services and access too, since their damn logic is all about preventative health care. ps., the whole woman rights vs. child's rights is a big fat duh. the issue isn't about that, it's about a woman's right vs. the *STATE's* interest in protecting a potential life. the state has no interest in protecting an unborn child's life. the viability issue is a canard that would be pretty much meaningless under a different set of social conditions. pps., bullshit blahbedeblah about moralism is it's own godamed moralism in which you simply impose your own "you should think this way and act that way" on others in order to condemn their arguments by exposing them as not good enough marxists. iow, there's a question about how to do or think about something and, as such, it's a moral fucking issue. get over it already. that's why aristotle and plato called it "the ethical-political". so, yes it's really about struggle, but denying that it's about the ethical doesn't get you very far because when you say struggle and political you also say ethical./moral. kelley =<><<>><>= marta wrote >I don't like having the RTLs on this side of the issue, believe me, it is not >my cup of tea. One problem we have is distinguishing the disability >perspective from the RTL (who by the way are always eager to portray us as >RTL). I agree with you that abortion is a serious matter not like having an >organ removed. =<><<>><>= yeah, agreed that i wouldn't be happy about that either! but pramatically, it is true that this would make an argument like singer's dead in the water, even were we to have different views about infantacide.  =<><<>><>=  I support abortion but take the Adrienne Asche's position that it crosses the >line when one aborts because one does not like the characteristic of the fetus >(sex, disability, hair color, whatever else they will know about us in the >womb) rather than having the abortion because the conditions in one's life >makes that choice necessary to abort ANY fetus. This way I challenge >assumptions about disablement as one would challenge the assumption that having >a boy is more desirable than having a girl. I realize many many people view >disability as a primary reason to abort. Trouble is the more market oriented >our society becomes, the less willing parents are to have a non "perfect" baby. -------------i do understand where you are coming from. as i stated at the outset of my entry into this, my mother almost had an abortion with me. so i've had to think carefully about this. the thought doesn't loom large in my mind--at least not the way the rtlers would like to believe it does! but nonetheless. now, she felt she couldn't have me because of public judgment not really because of economic circumstances. she was working three jobs, living at home and could continue to live at home, had no thought of going to college, though she completed her training as a beautician at the local beauty school and so had a skill that would support both of us at the time. the biggest trouble was illegitimacy and fear of judgment. she was so fearful that she never told anyone, save for one friend, and hid it til labor day and i was born 20 day later. amazing , huh? my point for teling this story is that attitudes toward what is and isn't desirable change. and another point is that there may be reasons for having an abortion that have nothing to do with economic constraints. a woman should be able to have one even if she's a wealthy 25 yr. old. which leads me to my concern about asche's argument is that, while i think it's wrong to abort simply because one is unhappy with the looks of a child, such views question the motives of an individual and judge them rather than viewing it as a social problem that is produced systematically by the capitalist, sexist, racist social relations in this society. in other words, the *cause* of those feelings and attitudes lies elsewhere. individuals are reponsible for producing them, yes. but changing those attitudes, i don't think, will come about by constraining access to abortion in the months after it might be possible to find out eye color, hair color and i think what you want to say is, whether or not the child has a disability. that's really the most important issue for us, right? as i recall, you worry that devaluing the disabled by allowing abortions because parents don't want to raised disabled children is a problem because it contributes to and strengthens the kinds of attitudes we'd like to eradicate. but, i just can't see why constraining access to abortion will necessarily promote the oppression of the disabled. it seems to me that this oppression is rooted in many other places and is primarily and fundamentally located w/in capitalism though not entirely so insofar as it is a form of cultural imperialism. so i would say that perhaps it isn't so much a tradeoff b/t women's rights and the rts of the disabled. if you say that aborting because of eye color is a problem b/c it's frivilous does that open the door to say that a healthy, married, employed women with a husband who does half the housework, and with plenty of money to hire help, who owns her own business and won't suffer from the mommy track is therefore frivilous for not wanting to have a child? people have thought that my abortions were frivilous because we could have raised children. it would have been hard but i would have finished my phd, gotten a job and things would have a-ok. and, they're right. i just didn't, ultimately, want to raise a child at that point in my life, even though my partner was really pretty good about housework and the like. also, what about, and there are plenty of people i know who say this, they don't want children because they don't like children that much? does aborting b/c you don't like children encourage anti-child sentiments which some think are pretty darn real in this country given what we allow to happen to a lot of them? i guess i'd want to take a two pronged approach to the concerns you've raised here before. 1. changing the perception of bodily, physical perfection through education, media criticism and the like. 2. changing the conditions which make it diff for those who may not be so much concerned with 1 as they are concered about the difficulty in raising a disabled child. i'm sure i don't have to lay them out for you, but i will for others reading: better services, better education, new forms of parenting that don't lay the entire burden on the parents, obviously adequate incomes, sexism that means that women bear the burden of the mommy track and bear the burden of primary care more often than not. kelley >Disability activists have only recently inserted ourselves into the issue >whereas before the "professionals" always spoke ABOUT US WITHOUT US. There is >still lots of confusion about how best to get our message out there without >seeming RTL. And as within any identity group, (as with women) there will be >some people with disabilities who do not favor abortion under any >circumstances, but I am not one of those and neither are most advocates I know. > >Marta =<><<>><>= Charles: I'll agree to that if you agree that it is an imperfect kind of perfect knowledge.  =<><<>><>= Yoshie: I think that a non-Hegelian view of knowledge and reality, as advanced by Roy Bhaskar (and Marx himself for that matter), obviates an alleged equation of planning with the presumption of "complete or perfect" knowledge (which I don't think Charles is presuming in any case, I may add). =<><<>><>= well apparently so given charles reversion to perfect knowledge in the above. i'm a fan of bhaskar and critical realism. but, having sparred with ange recently, i'm guessing that this isn't quite the same thing here. simply acknowleding, as Bhaskar does, that we create objects that become for us objects of investigation does not actually obviate the problem angela is raising which i'd guess is the dream of deliverance that is nestled in here: simply acknowledging that knowledge is incomplete isn't the same thing as a lacanian formulation of subjectivity and the consequences that has for us. bhaskar, then, is something akin to a humanist psycholgoy which says, oh yeah, human desires change and we don't always know what we want nor is what we want always predictable. so grow with the flow by trying to be as knowledgeable about ourselves as possible even while recognizing that complete knowledge isn't possible. this is quite different from a lacanian formulation in which the very process of trying to be as knowledgeable about ourselves as possible is the very process in which those desires are generated and which obscures to us the political character of those desires because it must. =<><<>><>= hey brett, take a look at the archives and the parecon thread last fall we started out on this one! sick ain't it? anyhoo i shall post which means maxhunkhoney will have to wait for my response. but i do want to say to max that i realize i came off a bit cantankerous. so thanks for cutting us some slack on that one.  =<><<>><>= 1) Permanent hierarchy must be avoided. Ideally the process will be mechanical at the top, i.e., the planning process will follow a set of pre-defined rules  =<><<>><>=  Either I'm really lousy at explaining my position, or people read their >preconceptions into my words. Probably some of both going on. ------- yep. ----- >Where did I say anything about technocratic administration? If anything I >said this should be avoided. > >These rules should most emphatically _NOT_ be pre-defined, unquestioned and >depoliticised. This was an assumption you made, not a position I stated. >In fact, I support exactly the opposite - the rules should be subject to >implementation and change through the (democratic) political process. =<><<>><>= there is where you said yourself that rules are pre=defined. yes, they may have been democratically decided on and they may be open to change. this does not, tho, necessarily prevent them from become instantiated in such a way as to be naturalized. moreover, this is exactly the technocratic logic of bureaucracy. bureaucracy operates according to a set of pre=defined rules that have either been politically or scientifically determined as the best and/or objective means for achieving a given end. authority is in the rules. they, as you say yourself, ------------>>>must be adhered to in order to take the human >>>factor (and thus authority) out of the planning process. ------------ that is exactly why bureaucracy emerged in the first place: to take the power of charismatic leadership which operates according to power as embodied in a person or persons to one in which authority is embodied in the rules. both are forms of authority. charismatic leadership is authority embodied in a person who's rule is seen a natural because of birth or class position or family. as with aristocracy, authority passed from god to king to nobility. bureacracy emerged w/ enlightenment thought as an ostensibly more democratic means of legitimating such authority thru the supposed objectivity of science which, as you must know, itself operates according to pre-defined rules which must be assumed and taken for granted if we are ever to get the work of science done rather than standing in a corner gazing at the lint in our navels and just-a-wonderin about it all. the mistake is to assume that the political is in the human and it's absent in 'the rules'. it's not absent at all. so, it all may be solved by the qualifications you offer as to what you meant to say. weber's work others suggest that it's not. now, anyone who paid attn to my convo w/ ken on bernstein and habermas will recognize that i took your position in that debate and said what you say. as i said, i'm pressing for clarifications and answers ---------- I don't know anything about Weber or Lacan, so I don't know what you're >referring to. However, eliminating private property will certainly not >eliminate the need for administrative duties of one sort or another. It >doesn't even have to make things more equitable. But, you can't keep >private property and achieve an egalitarian system. The hope lies in >finding institutions which, after private ownership of the means of >production is eliminated, do produce an egalitarian society. ---------- yes, and this is where i try to make my escape as well. i said at the tail end of some other thread and referred to comments you'd made on a similar topic re workplace democracy that i think that the issue is changing institutional imperatives. one thing i think we need to worry about is the idea of individualistic, rational choice decision making. how to accomplish that is another problem. ------------>How is this a critique of democratic planning? People behave in their >self-interest. Everyone wants to better their situation. So what? ---------- that is a dangerous assumption. that is assuming a human nature that is historically constituted and particular to capitalism. it hasn't always been the case and is not now the case that people only ever operate in their self interest. adam smith even argued this and wrote his treatise, _a theory of moral sentiments_ arguing that rational choice decision making in pursuit of one's self interest was a logic --a set of rules--that worked best in the cap. market but not elsewhere. he offered a kind of tripartite system of checks and balances, very much a part of scottish enlightenment thought in which there were different spheres operating according to different moral logics, the state, the market, civil society. as for an empirical example that feminist offer to counter your claim that people act in their self interest: do we think that, ideally, family and friendship relationships should operate according to the pursuit of self-interest? chicago school economists argue that it should and they set about trying to explain how people do operate in this way and yet they always run up against a steel wall because it turns out, much to their consternation, that people don't. so why is that? ------------- This >will be true in a socialist society just as it is in a capitalist one. >This is in no way an argument against socialism or an argument for the >market, it is simply a statement of how people behave. ----------but that statement rests on a whole set of assumptions that can't be empirically proven and do not accurately reflect how people do in fact behave. that's where chicago schoolers had to come up with the concept of optimizing rather than fully satisfying and achieving one's self-interest. apparently, not even complete and full understanding of all information at hand leads ppl to maximize their self interest, they merely optimize it. the trouble i have is that i don't think that it's private property alone that is the problem. it is precisely the notion of self interest, the language of incentives and so forth that are problems. why are people incented to do one thing and not another? what are the hidden and very political assumptions that undergird these claims. one reason why this is a concern is that there as long been a feminist and marxist critique, among others, regarding the language of self-interest, choice, and incentives. moreover, one need only look at the way self interest operates in the polity to see that this isn't exactly a great system since what we so often decry is interest group plurilism dominated by single interest groups pursuing singular self interests. indeed, peter kilander, if you're reading, you might want to jump in here w/ regard to the author you interviewed not too long ago. i'd be interested in how you make connections between what he had to say wrt to political life and citizenship and what i gathered from your convo with him was a bit of a rejection of the idea that democratic participation needed to rest on something other than self-interest. [to those familiar w/ this line of thought: uh huh, i'm also aware of the drawbacks of my competing concerns here.] ----------------- >I wish I could have a conversation about this, as opposed to email - it is >much easier to flesh things out that way. Its too difficult to explain and >discuss the whole idea on this list. ------------ frankly, over beers and various types of hard liquor and a mimosa or two would be even better. [right rob!!] but alas.... i don't mean to frustrate you. it's just a topic that i'm interested in and one, in fact, that ken and i wrangled over a bit more abstractly but there i offered an account of workplace dem'y not much different from yours. i'm taking a different tack here because this is such a stumper and i've gone back and forth for many years trying to figure out how it's possible to put these ideas into practice. i can't put it all into one post either. so i guess patience is in order eh? but if i get to be too much of a pest i'll stop. deal? kelley > --------------- >I predict that in about three weeks, a certain Brit named Mark Jones >will >experience some modest pangs of embarrassment. The first person who >can remember why will be awarded some of the spoils of war, assuming >Cmde. Jones is a honorable man and there are some spoils to be had. > >Nostradamus -------------- > i know this one! i know this one! coz i had been subbed to this friggin list for a month and it was the first sign of humorous life i stumbled over. an entire month i whined to doug daddy that i was running out of toothpicks to keep the lids from drooping. and you, max, were cracking me up b/c all these wanker economists were going ga ga over the possibility of world revolution b/c some wall streeters might lose a few pair of their $100 socks! i'm O-L and at the risk of pissing doug off yet again i must get in on this one. the bet was over whether the world would crumble over the market crash and a case of some sort of scotch rested on it as i recall. laguvian or something far too rich for my blood i think. that's when, max dearest, i just knew you was the man for me! too bad you're taken. i think i should get a bonus for remembering that it was a case of scotch. kelley =<><<>><>= Well, if this is what Adam Smith said, then I agree with him. Classical economics isn't completely wrong. People do respond to incentives, and people do want to improve their lives. I'm not offering proof, just speaking from (just barely) 30 years of experience. This is my opinion, but everything I've seen supports this hypothesis. And I don't see how this notion is somehow incompatible with socialism. Brett =<><<>><>= alex: Well, if this is what Adam Smith said, then I agree with him. Classical economics isn't completely wrong. People do respond to incentives, and people do want to improve their lives. I'm not offering proof, just speaking from (just barely) 30 years of experience. This is my opinion, but everything I've seen supports this hypothesis. And I don't see how this notion is somehow incompatible with socialism. my family immigrated from the soviet union back in 1980, so whenever i discuss this stuff with them i always hear about how the problem with communism (soviet style) was that lots and lots of people had no incentive to do or be anything more than drunk. whenever talking about socialism they point to that experience to tell me why it would not work. the argument that i see always bandied about when discussing socialism is that it will kill the human impulse for self improvement and growth. socialism needs to be reframed to mean that it will promote people's incentive to do and be more and to lead more fulfilling lives. =<><<>><>= concrete example of a permutation of the planning/chaos bizzo ange has been ranting about. it's a doozy so WATCH OUT. snit is in a mood. well if everyone pursues their self interest, then who the hell is going to attend to their self interest? b/c presumably everyone else is looking for their piece of the action too, no? oh wait wait wait. there will be people that get satisfaction out of fulfilling other people's self-interest b/c its in their self interest. dandy. i mean women scrub the fucking floor because they enjoy it right? they get a sense of satisfaction out of keeping that floor spic and span. and slaves, well we all know they're dumb and they like pleasing massuh. ---------- jesusgodamnchristalmighty. how should we divide up the housework? or any shitwork for that matter? well you do what you like and what you're best suited for. hel-lo. these parecon people want to build an entire social structure on people calculating their self-interest. not only that, the idea is that all organizational structures have a self interest to pursue as well. everything! including --and whathefuck this is scary--whether art is in the interest of the community b/c why should the community support [dist resources to] an artist who produces art the community doesn't like or want. well hallelujah!! i wanna live in a world like that? no fuckin way. imagine that community full of mostly people that you don't particularly admire. weeeooooo. i'm in a cranky mood today so take it with a grain of salt coz most of the time i think people are better than that and i actually trust people to get it right most of the time. but not today and not the way people have been behaving like on this ratfucking list lately. let me just rant some more. dlete now coz it's more o the same o same o. i do not want people to support abortion coz it's in their self interest to do so [eg., 1967 abortion act in britain was passed because middle class thought it was in their self interest to stop the working class from having babies w/o being properly ties tot he ole ball and chain]. i don't want men to support abortion because it's in their self interest to do so--that is, responsibility free sex for them [which only means that responsibility is on women for getting the abortion, taking care of the bc, and of course nothing has necess changed re the madonna/whore complex in this society which means a woman who has sex is, in the end, a slut] no no no. and i don't want my partner to do their fair share of the housework because she realizes that it's in her self interest to do so. like my father who does it merely to avoid the haranguing and not because he truly understands why and what needs to be taken care of. does anyone get the difference here? this is the problem. this is what ange has been talking about. these are very concrete examples of what she means. this idea--this assumption of a binary between self-interest/altruism-- is exactly the kind of dualism that ange was talking about that gets produced here when you posit a natural human nature. is self interest such a fucking good thing when it comes to choosing whether you'll have a disabled child or not? is self interest a good thing when it used to meant that people sold babies for a buck? if you have a partner, would you like to constantly think about all the ways s/he might have chosen you in order to please whatever self interest s/he might have had. i mean do you sit around and say to yourself, my partner loves me because of my wallet, or my nice ass, or my between the sheets manner, or good looks or perhaps even my plain looks, or because of what you do for her or tell her or make him feel or whatever? you want a world completely ruled by self interest so that it's acceptable to think of everything that way: what the hell do I get out of it? won't you just be a little bit ticked if you'd invested quite some time in that rel. only to learn that his self interests had changed and someone or something else meets those needs now? say you have children and it meets your self interest when its an infant b/c you like infants and it pleases you to be a proud papa. but 5 yrs down the line its not so fun anymore, they're not so cute and it's in your way coz you want to spend some time developing your talents at learning to play the piano and you just don't have time for a kid and you've got new friends who don't like kids. so dump the kid cause its in your self interest. why not? your friends don't like kids what would they care. no one's going to judge you really. i'm off to have a few beers which i probably should have had two days ago. --------------------- sorry to overpost--and i'm not going to be around much longer anyway so chill and i'll be outta everyone's hair soon enough-- but i just had to jump on this one: read adam smith. he said the same dang thing. i think it all quite "classical" bourg economics to think this way. i'll post more later b/c some of this ties into civil society and the binary opposition of state/market, individual/society an' all that. [and do note that i did say the economy operated according to a "moral logic" so i don't mean self-interest in quite the way you think. but here's a thought to chew on: "To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency and approbation" are the driving force of "all the toil and bustle of the world...the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth" so adam smith was the first chicago school economist. btw, did i get that optimizing v. satisficing or whatevA the hell it is right? i can never recall all that./ kelley =<><<>><>= 1) Permanent hierarchy must be avoided. Ideally the process will be >mechanical at the top, i.e., the planning process will follow a set of >pre-defined rules which must be adhered to in order to take the human >factor (and thus authority) out of the planning process.=<><<>><>=  yes, and this is where it all breaks down. technocratic administration, the naturalization of the rules which are pre-defined, unquestioned, depoliticized. it is right here where the fantasy erupts to obscure from us the fact that authority asserts itself in the pre=defined rules as much as it asserts itself elsewhere. i don't know how to get around this either brett but everyone into planning ought to take a great big huge dose of weber if you can't stomach lacan. will getting rid of private property really rid us of the insidiousness of technocratic administration? all of the below looks suspiciously like the market with inputs, outputs, checks and balances and even appeal to pre=defined rules which is none other than the pre-defined and naturalized rules of the market: everyone operates according to individualized, rational self interest. this was, i'm afraid, max's critique not too long ago. i'm pushing it here because i want to press people, not because i'm an enemy, but because having had to try to explain this when i talk to students/family/friends, the questions i'm raising have come up in my own mind. so i'm pressing the issue in hopes of collaborating here, not trashing the entire project. oh and interesting that planning is predictable but now some forms of planning and even the planning of planning are unpredictable. weeeeeooooo. i have very much enjoyed the very retro parody of the Sonny and Cher Variety hour lately though. kelley =<><<>><>= That is, local >groups provide inputs as to what they want and so forth, but the output >(the plan itself) is generated based on pre-defined rules. There might be >multiple iterations before a final plan is reached. The danger is having >an elite group dominate the planning process with the attendant >inequalities in income, prestige, and social position which will result. > >2) Planning should be as decentralized as possible. Small groups and >communities should be given as much latitude as possible. Of course they >will have to operate under some constraints, but within those constraints >there should be wide freedom to choose how to tailor their economic >activity. There should be little or no orders from the top of the "You >will get X and like it" variety. > >3) everyone should have roughly equal input into the planning process > >Some of the things you address are impossible to answer without going >through the planning process itself. For example, how many resources to >devote to health care depends on the general level of health and the >relative importance people place on health care vs. other possible uses of >the same resources. > >Brett > >