here is the entirety of John Berger's Ways of Seeing. You can also see it on youtube.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Two Cities
In a talk given by anthropologist AbouMaliq Simone given a couple of years ago, Simone distinguished between the experience of the city in the cities of the periphery that he was focused on and the cities of the core. The chief difference that he discussed was the ability of the people living in the cities to change the physical structure of the cities they lived in, to place their mark on the city space. I've been thinking about this recently because of the differences in living in the Twin Cities as opposed to Irvine. While one may not have the ability to radically transform the city in the ways that Simone discussed, there is still a difference between the ability to transform the city space of Minneapolis as opposed to Irvine. The former is marked by the small and minute everyday transformations of those who live there, as opposed to Irvine, which is very difficult to change, because of its building codes, its high rents, and the privatized structures that define the space. For me, the limitations of the later continually make the experience of living their deeply alienating, and perhaps more specifically, hostile. I may not have had the change to deeply impact the terrain of the Twin Cities, but I can still see the collective transformations of the space created by others. There's something about that experience that allows me to feel at home in a way that I have never felt at home in Irvine. I don't want to transform Minneapolis and Saint Paul into some sort of utopian space. Throughout the city, the kind of structures that I hate so much in Irvine can be seen in much of the recent construction in the cities, gesturing towards a similar logic. Downtown, in particular, has become a fairly reprehensible collection of expensive bars, restaurants, and shopping areas.
The difference between the two cities seems to be defined by the intensity at which the logic of capital has managed to colonize the logic of each of the cities. The Twin Cities ties back to a long history of class struggle that is linked back to a set of struggles in the 1930's, most notably defined by the Minneapolis General Strike of 1934, while Irvine has no such history, allowing for the privatizing logic of late capitalism. I think that we can link these three points, connecting our ability to feel at home in the city both with our ability to transform that city and with the modes of resistance to the colonization of the logic of capital. We can link both the particularity and the multiplicity of these actions to the concept of use value itself, and it's worth noting that these acts of making use are not outside of the commercial logic of late capitalism. Indeed, the first examples that come to mind are the decorations in small shops such as children's drawings or the store cat of a book store, although one can point to public structures such as parks and libraries to gesture towards a broader logic of the public. (Irvine technically has public parks, but those parks feel remarkably privatized.) Use-value is simultaneously embedded within the structures of accumulation that define contemporary capitalism and gestures towards a logic exterior to the the logic that defines capital.
At the same time, one can see the slow collapse of the social democratic project throughout the city through the loss of services and public resources. The state is currently closed due to a budget conflict between the Republican legislature and the Democratic governor, which can be tied to a long refusal to continue the social contract produced in the crisis of capital of the 1930's. In this sense, the experience of the city has a strain of tragedy contained in it. If the city has value, the qualities that give it that value are being slowly consumed in acts of gentrification and suburbanization. With very few exceptions, change is defined as change for the worse.
The difference between the two cities seems to be defined by the intensity at which the logic of capital has managed to colonize the logic of each of the cities. The Twin Cities ties back to a long history of class struggle that is linked back to a set of struggles in the 1930's, most notably defined by the Minneapolis General Strike of 1934, while Irvine has no such history, allowing for the privatizing logic of late capitalism. I think that we can link these three points, connecting our ability to feel at home in the city both with our ability to transform that city and with the modes of resistance to the colonization of the logic of capital. We can link both the particularity and the multiplicity of these actions to the concept of use value itself, and it's worth noting that these acts of making use are not outside of the commercial logic of late capitalism. Indeed, the first examples that come to mind are the decorations in small shops such as children's drawings or the store cat of a book store, although one can point to public structures such as parks and libraries to gesture towards a broader logic of the public. (Irvine technically has public parks, but those parks feel remarkably privatized.) Use-value is simultaneously embedded within the structures of accumulation that define contemporary capitalism and gestures towards a logic exterior to the the logic that defines capital.
At the same time, one can see the slow collapse of the social democratic project throughout the city through the loss of services and public resources. The state is currently closed due to a budget conflict between the Republican legislature and the Democratic governor, which can be tied to a long refusal to continue the social contract produced in the crisis of capital of the 1930's. In this sense, the experience of the city has a strain of tragedy contained in it. If the city has value, the qualities that give it that value are being slowly consumed in acts of gentrification and suburbanization. With very few exceptions, change is defined as change for the worse.
question about critical theory....
I find myself in the fairly good position of having my first formal academic publication out today. Admittedly, it's limited to a short review of a recent book of literary criticism on contemporary science fiction, but I'm still excited. For those who have access to academic servers, the review is contained in the latest edition of Postmodern Culture. Another aside, it's nice to be back in Minneapolis, even if briefly, particularly when you can order a mock duck pizza at midnight.
I've been thinking about academic writing, or perhaps more specifically, about the academic writing produced within the context of critical theory. Most of the contemporary material that has been produced in the past couple years has struck me as remarkably unimpressive. I am particularly uninterested in the work produced by perhaps the most popular academic leftist thinkers, Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou. Zizek strikes me as neither a radical nor a rigorous thinker, and has always seemed like a bit of a charlatan. Badiou, on the other hand, doesn't slip into Zizek's obvious faults. At the same time, his work strikes me as an abandonment of the historical materialist tradition, in its commitment to philosophical idealism and the strange reversion to an obsession with universalism. Aside from those two figures, there is a larger tendency to refuse the overdetermination of the historical materialist tradition, returning to modes of expressivist causality. Although it hasn't worked before, I would be curious if there are any contemporary theorists working within the broad historical materialist tradition that are worth exploring. I'm looking for material that is more contemporary than the material from the 1970's and 1980's that I have been reading. Please make some suggestions, and also bring up blog suggestions as well....
I've been thinking about academic writing, or perhaps more specifically, about the academic writing produced within the context of critical theory. Most of the contemporary material that has been produced in the past couple years has struck me as remarkably unimpressive. I am particularly uninterested in the work produced by perhaps the most popular academic leftist thinkers, Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou. Zizek strikes me as neither a radical nor a rigorous thinker, and has always seemed like a bit of a charlatan. Badiou, on the other hand, doesn't slip into Zizek's obvious faults. At the same time, his work strikes me as an abandonment of the historical materialist tradition, in its commitment to philosophical idealism and the strange reversion to an obsession with universalism. Aside from those two figures, there is a larger tendency to refuse the overdetermination of the historical materialist tradition, returning to modes of expressivist causality. Although it hasn't worked before, I would be curious if there are any contemporary theorists working within the broad historical materialist tradition that are worth exploring. I'm looking for material that is more contemporary than the material from the 1970's and 1980's that I have been reading. Please make some suggestions, and also bring up blog suggestions as well....
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain, opened with a couple other thoughts
I've been caught up with the second of my reviews for more formal publication. Hopefully, it will get accepted without much in the way of revision. I feel a curious lack of focus right now concerning the blog. I have a set of formal issues that relate to the dissertation, but not much that can translate into a set of interesting short postings. Additionally, my current readings are focused on material for the upcoming budget cuts fights, which might translate into future posting, but the entire topic feels extremely distant despite the fact we will be entering into this fight in less than three months. Finally, the factional conflicts that defined a lot of my focus on the blog over the past couple months have reduced significantly without getting rid of the basic dimensions of the post-election stalemate, nor leading to the substantial transformation of the parties involved. There might be something to write about after the next Joint Council meeting, but until that date later in the month, there isn't much to discuss on that front either... despite the fact that we still need to put a great deal of intellectual energy as well as ground work before we begin the school year.
Perhaps the only other thing worth mentioning despite this long series of negatives is the recent alternative history that I just read. Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain was originally published in 1988, and recently republished by leftist publishers, PM Press. Bisson's alternative history operates on the premise that John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry succeeded because of the aid given to him by Harriet Tubman, who missed the actual raid due to illness. The success of the raid radically transforms the history of the country leading to a series of revolution that begins with the formation of the south as a separate history, Nova Africa, and the eventual transformation of it and the rest of the country into a set of socialist republics. Reminiscent of the two alternative histories constructed by Steven Barnes, Lion's Blood and Zulu Heart, the novel offers an alternative Afrocentric history of the nation, defined by living shoes, structures of collectivization, and fast Egyptian cars, albeit with a far more utopian tone than the Barnes novels.
The narrative is divided between the time period of 1959, where the socialist nation of Nova Africa is about to launch a successful space flight to Mars, and the twin narratives of a young slave who joined Brown in the insurrection as a memoir later in life, and the letters of a northern doctor who joins the struggle due to his abolitionist views. The two narratives are stitched together by the journey made by the great-granddaughter of the former in order to deliver the papers to a museum of the relatively recently formed USSA. The split narrative allows for the exploration of the complexities and ambiguities of the revolutionary process, gesturing to a long history of conflict, continued issues of sexism, as well as the ordinary issues of loss and alienation. The recently formed second socialist nation is still haunted by the poverty created by the long revolutionary struggle, and the revolutionaries are still negotiating the long legacy of white supremacy that defined the earlier era. In this sense, despite its later publication, the novel strongly aligns with the 'ambiguous utopias' of the 1970's such as The Female Man and The Dispossessed.
In spite of that, the narrative is more deeply haunted by the double catastrophe contained in the collapse of the project of the reconstruction, as well as the implicit second reconstruction of the civil rights era. The narrative imagines a radical alliance of abolitionists, Jacobins, Haitian and Italian revolutionaries, as well as the red republican supporters of Marx. If this gestures to the ability to resist the historical collapse of the revolutionary movement of the mid-19th century, which Marx sees the fight against slavery as central to that narrative, it also gestures towards a different future for the New Left coalitions that had recently collapsed under the weight of neo-liberalism, backlash, as well as their own contradictions. Which was, it should be noted, a movement that Bisson played a role in. The act of mourning contained in the novel becomes most evident within the description of the underground white supremacist and dystopian novel, John Brown's Body. The narrative of our present is returned to us as a grotesque and unrealistic fantasy, a cheap and despicable reactionary pulp novel. The utopian narrative reminds us more the catastrophe of our present, defined by the domination and exploitation of imperialism and capitalism, and perhaps more bluntly, the driving force of white supremacy a contributing structural factor for both.
In this sense, Bisson's novel sits comfortably besides the historical novels of Luther Blissett and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, novels that invert the historical teleology of the historical novels explored by Georg Luxacs. These novels explore the transition of history, not as progress, but as catastrophe. The narratives attempt to explore the revolutionary trace contained within that wreckage, a trace always contained in the failed possibilities of those times.
Perhaps the only other thing worth mentioning despite this long series of negatives is the recent alternative history that I just read. Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain was originally published in 1988, and recently republished by leftist publishers, PM Press. Bisson's alternative history operates on the premise that John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry succeeded because of the aid given to him by Harriet Tubman, who missed the actual raid due to illness. The success of the raid radically transforms the history of the country leading to a series of revolution that begins with the formation of the south as a separate history, Nova Africa, and the eventual transformation of it and the rest of the country into a set of socialist republics. Reminiscent of the two alternative histories constructed by Steven Barnes, Lion's Blood and Zulu Heart, the novel offers an alternative Afrocentric history of the nation, defined by living shoes, structures of collectivization, and fast Egyptian cars, albeit with a far more utopian tone than the Barnes novels.
The narrative is divided between the time period of 1959, where the socialist nation of Nova Africa is about to launch a successful space flight to Mars, and the twin narratives of a young slave who joined Brown in the insurrection as a memoir later in life, and the letters of a northern doctor who joins the struggle due to his abolitionist views. The two narratives are stitched together by the journey made by the great-granddaughter of the former in order to deliver the papers to a museum of the relatively recently formed USSA. The split narrative allows for the exploration of the complexities and ambiguities of the revolutionary process, gesturing to a long history of conflict, continued issues of sexism, as well as the ordinary issues of loss and alienation. The recently formed second socialist nation is still haunted by the poverty created by the long revolutionary struggle, and the revolutionaries are still negotiating the long legacy of white supremacy that defined the earlier era. In this sense, despite its later publication, the novel strongly aligns with the 'ambiguous utopias' of the 1970's such as The Female Man and The Dispossessed.
In spite of that, the narrative is more deeply haunted by the double catastrophe contained in the collapse of the project of the reconstruction, as well as the implicit second reconstruction of the civil rights era. The narrative imagines a radical alliance of abolitionists, Jacobins, Haitian and Italian revolutionaries, as well as the red republican supporters of Marx. If this gestures to the ability to resist the historical collapse of the revolutionary movement of the mid-19th century, which Marx sees the fight against slavery as central to that narrative, it also gestures towards a different future for the New Left coalitions that had recently collapsed under the weight of neo-liberalism, backlash, as well as their own contradictions. Which was, it should be noted, a movement that Bisson played a role in. The act of mourning contained in the novel becomes most evident within the description of the underground white supremacist and dystopian novel, John Brown's Body. The narrative of our present is returned to us as a grotesque and unrealistic fantasy, a cheap and despicable reactionary pulp novel. The utopian narrative reminds us more the catastrophe of our present, defined by the domination and exploitation of imperialism and capitalism, and perhaps more bluntly, the driving force of white supremacy a contributing structural factor for both.
In this sense, Bisson's novel sits comfortably besides the historical novels of Luther Blissett and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, novels that invert the historical teleology of the historical novels explored by Georg Luxacs. These novels explore the transition of history, not as progress, but as catastrophe. The narratives attempt to explore the revolutionary trace contained within that wreckage, a trace always contained in the failed possibilities of those times.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
More on Freud
I'm caught up in reading the secondary literature on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland right now, which is significant for my dissertation chapter, but doesn't necessarily inspire much in the way of material for blog postings. Additionally, I've been reading Adorno's Minima Moralia, along with Capital, and, not surprisingly, my prose quality doesn't quite match up to Adorno's. In any case, I'm bringing up some earlier work on Psychoanalysis.
Freud’s analysis of the symbolic system of dreams is heavily dependent upon contingency. This is clear in one of the comments he makes earlier in the book, “I, on the contrary, am prepared to find that the same piece of content may conceal a different meaning when it occurs in various people or in various contexts.” (Freud 137) Later in the book in Chapter 6, “The Dream-Work”, Freud begins to work out a way of analyzing this highly complex and contingent system by introducing the concepts of condensation, displacement, and overdetermination. Although this system is vague at times, it seems that the concepts of condensation and displacement make up the material for over-determination, so I will begin by explaining the way that the two systems work to constitute dreams. I will then look at the way that these two systems produce a complex system of over-determination.
Condensation operates by combining a whole myriad of images into a smaller group of more comprehensible images. As Freud points out, “Dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of dream-thoughts.” (Freud 313) In looking at any particular dream image, we find “the multiplicity connections arising from the former [the dream-image]. (Freud 326) Throughout his various examples, Freud points out that the way that these images combine are not innocent ones. Instead throughout his dreams he shows that the way that images combine act to avoid the direct implications of a wish, by either hiding it in a series of parallel images, or expressing it in a more subtle form, in the combination of the images themselves.[1]
Displacement operates in complicity with condensation. A point of condensation will frequently occur at a moment of displacement. An image that represents a desire that is clearly repulsive to the dreamer will be replaced by a related image that will be “divorced from its context and consequently transformed into something extraneous.” (Freud 340). In doing this, “Dream-displacement is one of the chief methods by which that distortion is achieved… We may assume, then, that dream-displacement comes about through the influence of the same censorship—that is, the censorship of endopsychic defence.” (Freud 343)
These two systems come together to, in effect, form a system of overdetermination. Freud at times describes this as a third separate system that operates beside the other two, but it seems to me that it is in fact the guiding principle of the other two. Dreams become overdetermined by the system of condensation and displacement that occur within them. The dream “must escape the censorship imposed by resistance”, and it does this by means of displacement. Displacement in turn depends on condensation to displace that image with a complex series of images of lower psychical values. This transforms the dream into a complex terrain of images, sometimes apparent, sometimes submerged that describe another series of dream-thoughts.
This is not a simple system. Freud describes it in the following manner, “Not only are the elements of a dream determined by the dream-thoughts many times over, but the individual dream-thoughts are represented in the dream by several elements. Associative paths lead from one element of the dream to several dream-thoughts, and from one dream-thought to several elements of the dream. Thus a dream is not constructed by each individual dream-thought, or group of dream-thoughts finding (in abbreviated form) separate representation in the content in the dream—in the kind of way in which an electorate chooses parliamentary representatives; a dream is constructed, rather, by the whole mass of dream-thoughts being submitted to a sort of manipulative process in which those elements which have the most numerous and strongest supports acquire the right to entry into the dream-content—in a manner analogous to election by scrutin de liste. In the case of every dream which I have submitted to an analysis of this kind I have invariably found these same fundamental principles confirmed: the elements of the dream are constructed out of the whole mass of dream-thoughts and each one of those elements is shown to have been determined many times over in relation to the dream-thoughts.” (Freud 318)
In effect, the dream is not constructed on the basis on a simple one on one system of representation. Instead, one finds complex knots of representation, where an element can tie into a series of dream-thoughts, and a dream thought can tie into a series of images. What’s more, Freud notes early on, “I have already had on occasion to point out that it is in fact never possible to be sure that a dream has been completely interpreted. Even if the solution seems satisfactory and without gaps, the possibility always remains that the dream may have yet another meaning. (Freud 313)
What’s more, it also necessary to take the dream into context with other dreams, which are in themselves as complex as the dream itself. It is possible that there may be homologies, analogies, or parallels between these dreams that must be taken into account. In short, the process of overdetermination quickly spills over any discrete boundaries, and puts us into the realm of continuous production.
However Freud introduces some tactical ideas to deals with the wealth of material. “What appears in dreams, we might suppose, is not what is important in the dream-thoughts but what occurs in them several times over… The ideas which are most important among the dream-thoughts will almost certainly be those which occur most often in them, since the different dream thoughts will, as it were, radiate out from them.” It seems that Freud is, to borrow a term from Althusser, introducing a certain notion of fusion within the understanding of dreams. The more an idea will be touched on within the dream, or series of dreams, the more significance it undoubtedly it has. The manner that these knots of fusion are revealed is, needless to say, complex, but it is a way to begin analysis.
It is important to point out that within this discussion of the production of the dream, a number of important ideas have not been discussed. The most significant of those the process of identification, and the way that the ego can be highly diffuse within the dream-work. I should also note that Freud’s emphasis on censorship, and the production of contradictions based on the unconscious’ desire and preconscious’ censorship of those desires. However, the complexity of the dream-work can say something complexity of the production of the subject itself. The subject is always incomplete, always in the process of production, and never self-contained. Within this process, Freud emphasizes the conflict that this productive process has conscious state of mind. This I am not sure, but even if we reject the notion of an essentially repressive outside, the process overdetermination is still of value.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
References to Biology: Some Initial Notes (Marx, Social Movements, and Historical Formations)
I'm involved in a couple intellectual projects at this point. The first is an exploration into the history of Social Darwinism, Reform Darwinism, and what historian Ian McKay calls Socialist Darwinism in his analysis, Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920. In effect, these overlapping categories reflected the attempts on the part of social scientists to respond to the theoretical break created by Darwin's concept of natural selection. No substantial thinker of the late 19th century, conservative, liberal, or radical, escaped the influence of this new framework. Perhaps more significantly, one cannot easily escape the influence of the conservative Social Darwinism through the opposing camps of Reform and Socialist Darwinism. Noted Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer was not only read by industrialists and their lackeys, but by radicals and Marxists as well. As Ian McKay notes, radical Wobblies and and socialists were as or more likely to have copies of Spencer and Jack London as Marx. In effect, social darwinism acted as a kind of hegemonic field for the class struggle of the late 19th century and early 20th century in the United States.
The fact that counter-systemic forces such as the IWW were equally invested in the Social Darwinian imagination shouldn't be surprising to any student of Foucault's. As he notes, "Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power." As Foucault indicated in his provocative final lecture of Society Must Be Defended, which implicated a number of radical tendencies in the racist implications of biopolitics, the counter-systemic movements of the turn of the century are caught up in this logic, offering a sort of structural limitation to the anti-racism of these movements. At the same time, the reference to innovations in the field of biology legitimated a materialist analysis of society, legitimating and grounding an analysis of social structures as complex, overdetermined, and continually in flux. If the counter-systemic movements are implicated in the former issue, they also gesture towards the latter interpretation, a sort of nightmare that haunts the social darwinist imaginary.
Is there a way of negotiating this relationship? If we think about this in the terms of literary criticism, the reference to the biological operates as a sort of reified analogy, transforming a productive epistemological engagement into an engagement that collapses the two discourses together. This process, of course, starts before Darwin's engagement, with Malthus' theory of population... a notable influence on the work of Darwin. As Richard Hofstadter notes in his analysis of Social Darwinism, this analysis is then used to legitimate the structures of domination within late 19th century capitalism, grounding it in the metaphor of the survival of the fittest. In effect, these modes of analysis ground their transhistorical claims in the biological, stripping it of the disturbing implications of social transformation. In effect, the belief operates as a sort of fully secularized Calvinism, wealth no longer indicating the grace of god, but the fact that those who control wealth are the fittest for survival.
This, at last, leads me to my second project, the rereading of Capital, which was the impetus of this project. Within the Postface to the Second German Edition, Marx quotes a positive critical engagement of the book, an engagement that Marx feels captures the essence of his methodology. The critic states,
“The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilization the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilization, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx’s book has.”
Marx's critic does what so many of the other people involved in the discussion seemingly cannot, that is, to hold onto the dynamic tension of the analogy. Social and economic life must be studied scientifically, but that analysis cannot slip into the kind of ahistoricism that defined the other forms of scientific study at the time. Instead, 'stages of development' or economic structures contain the own structural logics, their own 'laws.' Just as significantly, these structures are never stable. They contain the contradictions that will gesture towards other potential forms of social structure within them. Or, to put it in negative terms, they contain the seeds of their downfall. This dynamic is most fully worked out in Marx's critique of Malthus' theory of population. Marx argues that the forms of surplus population are a result of the particular forms of exploitation contained in capitalism, rather than a transhistorical law. Effectively, Marx both rejects the fatalism of the apologists of capital and a set of volunteerist fantasies that posit society could be transformed by some demiurgic act of will. Transformations in society are always collective and are dependent on the complex social forces in play, which always implicates any observer and analyst. Lenin, who occasionally fell into his own volunteerist fantasies, captured this best, when he noted to an anarchist acquaintance. 'Your determination to rely on yourselves,' Lenin finally replied, is very important. Every man must rely on himself. Yet he should also listen to what informed people have to say. I don't know how radical you are, or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough. One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself". Perhaps I could say more, but I'll leave it there for now....
The fact that counter-systemic forces such as the IWW were equally invested in the Social Darwinian imagination shouldn't be surprising to any student of Foucault's. As he notes, "Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power." As Foucault indicated in his provocative final lecture of Society Must Be Defended, which implicated a number of radical tendencies in the racist implications of biopolitics, the counter-systemic movements of the turn of the century are caught up in this logic, offering a sort of structural limitation to the anti-racism of these movements. At the same time, the reference to innovations in the field of biology legitimated a materialist analysis of society, legitimating and grounding an analysis of social structures as complex, overdetermined, and continually in flux. If the counter-systemic movements are implicated in the former issue, they also gesture towards the latter interpretation, a sort of nightmare that haunts the social darwinist imaginary.
Is there a way of negotiating this relationship? If we think about this in the terms of literary criticism, the reference to the biological operates as a sort of reified analogy, transforming a productive epistemological engagement into an engagement that collapses the two discourses together. This process, of course, starts before Darwin's engagement, with Malthus' theory of population... a notable influence on the work of Darwin. As Richard Hofstadter notes in his analysis of Social Darwinism, this analysis is then used to legitimate the structures of domination within late 19th century capitalism, grounding it in the metaphor of the survival of the fittest. In effect, these modes of analysis ground their transhistorical claims in the biological, stripping it of the disturbing implications of social transformation. In effect, the belief operates as a sort of fully secularized Calvinism, wealth no longer indicating the grace of god, but the fact that those who control wealth are the fittest for survival.
This, at last, leads me to my second project, the rereading of Capital, which was the impetus of this project. Within the Postface to the Second German Edition, Marx quotes a positive critical engagement of the book, an engagement that Marx feels captures the essence of his methodology. The critic states,
“The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilization the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilization, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx’s book has.”
Marx's critic does what so many of the other people involved in the discussion seemingly cannot, that is, to hold onto the dynamic tension of the analogy. Social and economic life must be studied scientifically, but that analysis cannot slip into the kind of ahistoricism that defined the other forms of scientific study at the time. Instead, 'stages of development' or economic structures contain the own structural logics, their own 'laws.' Just as significantly, these structures are never stable. They contain the contradictions that will gesture towards other potential forms of social structure within them. Or, to put it in negative terms, they contain the seeds of their downfall. This dynamic is most fully worked out in Marx's critique of Malthus' theory of population. Marx argues that the forms of surplus population are a result of the particular forms of exploitation contained in capitalism, rather than a transhistorical law. Effectively, Marx both rejects the fatalism of the apologists of capital and a set of volunteerist fantasies that posit society could be transformed by some demiurgic act of will. Transformations in society are always collective and are dependent on the complex social forces in play, which always implicates any observer and analyst. Lenin, who occasionally fell into his own volunteerist fantasies, captured this best, when he noted to an anarchist acquaintance. 'Your determination to rely on yourselves,' Lenin finally replied, is very important. Every man must rely on himself. Yet he should also listen to what informed people have to say. I don't know how radical you are, or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough. One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself". Perhaps I could say more, but I'll leave it there for now....
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Background on UAW Structure and Functioning, AKA “Why Is Our Union So Messed Up?” (Barry Eidlin)
This is the first essay on this blog that I haven't written myself. This was written a couple months ago by Berkeley AWDU activist, Barry Eidlin for the internal discussions within the reform effort. Obviously, the essay was written before the recent changes to our local within the recent elections, and some of the material in the essay about campaigning is of historical interest only. But, the essay is one of the few efforts to put the recent conflict of the union within a larger context of the history of UAW, and therefore it seemed to be of continued relevance. It struck me that the conversation about the larger context of our election should be discussed outside of the small circle of activists that this was distributed to, and therefore I asked Eidlin if I could put this material on my blog. He gave me permission. In any case, here's the work, which offers an excellent analysis of the historical context of the conflict of the past year. robert wood
Barry Eidlin
Department of Sociology
University of California, Berkeley
[Note: The following was written in response to questions I received from a new union activist with extensive previous experience in campus organizing]
The historical background of the leadership culture of the UAW. Why does it seem that their biggest priority is maintaining their own power, even if it contradicts with the needs/rights of the rank-and-file? How is this non-democratic culture maintained through the meeting structure, controlling internal communications, and bringing in new recruits?
While some aspects of the structure and functioning of the UAW bureaucracy are common to union leaderships more broadly, other aspects are very particular to the UAW’s history. The key to understanding the UAW bureaucracy is understanding the role of the Administration Caucus (AC). Essentially, the AC Functions as the one party in the UAW’s one-party state. Since 1947, virtually all top UAW officials and most local union officers have been members of the AC. All major decisions regarding union leadership and policy are first vetted by the AC before being presented to the membership at conventions. The AC Controls all flows of information inside the union, and acts to defend the union leadership’s interests at all costs.
It wasn’t always this way. Prior to 1947, the UAW was actually a vibrant, rough‐and-tumble, democratic organization. Members exercised power on the shop floor, engaged in militant actions like the 1937 Flint sit--‐down strikes (factory occupations), and built the union from virtually nothing into a powerful force within a few short years. Politically, there was room for many different groups to advance their program for the union, including Communists, Socialists, and other independent radicals. However, through skilful political maneuvering, Walter Reuther, a former socialist who rose through the ranks to become the union’s GM Director, then President, was able to consolidate control over the union. He ultimately purged or otherwise neutralized all internal political opposition, cementing the Administration Caucus’ dominant position within the union. UCSB labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein lays out this story in intricate detail in his award--‐winning book The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor.
Why does the AC Act to defend the leadership’s interests at all costs? It starts with a sincere belief that they, the leadership, are the guardians of the union, and the not-unreasonable belief that the union is under constant threat of attack from all quarters. However, the problem arises from the fact that the AC/leadership comes to view itself as “the union.” Given this conflation of the leadership with the union as a whole, combined with the aforementioned fear of attack, it is not too hard to see how any proposal or action that doesn’t emanate from the leadership is viewed as an attack on the leadership, and thus by extension an attack on the union. As such, rank and file members who might have different ideas from the leadership as to how the union should be run or what the union should do are seen either as misguided members who must be properly “educated” about the issues, or, if the members persist in making their demands, as a divisive “faction” that poses a mortal threat to the future of the union, and must be crushed at all cost.
Of course, the best--‐case scenario for the leadership is one in which they are left alone to play their role as guardians of the union. This leads to tight controls over the flow of information and the establishment of strict, precisely delimited channels for involving new members. The goal is to reproduce the existing leadership as much as possible while minimizing the possibility for independent initiatives that might lead the union astray (since they don’t emanate from the leadership, which alone has the true interests of the union at heart). In terms of information, this is why we see the reluctance to make basic information about the union available in writing, whether that be executive board minutes, financial reports, etc. It also is why the union leadership is very reluctant to pursue any kind of communications strategy beyond what they call “one--‐to--‐one organizing,” where a trusted key leader, usually a paid staffer, interacts one--‐on--‐one with a specific member. To the extent that they disseminate information, they want it to be in one direction: from them to the membership, preferably in a carefully scripted form. Thus the almost exclusive preference for phone banking and department walks over leafleting, e--‐mail campaigns, or even department--‐level meetings not organized by the top leadership. We have started to see the local leadership loosen up with regard to e--‐mail and Internet communications, but this has largely been in response to the effective use of such communications strategies by reform forces in our union.
In terms of leadership recruitment, the desire to protect the leadership (i.e. the union) at all costs influences both the type of people the leadership seeks to bring into the union, as well as the way in which they go about this leadership recruitment and development. Again, the goal here is leadership/organizational stability and continuity. As such, the leadership wants to recruit people who are “team players,” and will accept the existing way of doing things without asking too many questions. The result is that they generally target for leadership recruitment people who are well--‐meaning, pro--‐union liberals, but with little prior activist or union experience. This provides them with a “blank slate” which they can then mould in their own image through careful, close, one--‐on--‐one mentoring. It also means that they actively seek to exclude from involvement people with previous activist experience, at least those who think that they can use that previous activist experience to shape how the union should be run.
The contrast between the UAW's progressive side projects (in racial justice, immigrant rights, solidarity with other workers) and inactivity on our own campus. Superficially from the e-mails and website, it seems like the UAW supports progressive causes, but then again, hardly any of the progressive activists at UCLA have been involved in our local. Why doesn't the UAW do more to organize its own members on our own campus to fight for their own rights? People at UCLA have been fed the same argument over and over by Jorge that our campus is "just too difficult to organize" but then again we saw how they somehow turned out an unprecedented number of people to vote yes for the contract vote. Why is this?
Historically, the UAW has a track record of being on the right side of social justice issues outside the labor movement. Perhaps the best example of this was the union’s consistent support for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. In the 1980s the union was also a strong voice in the struggle against South African apartheid. However, this commitment to social justice and democracy has never extended to the union itself. To go back to the example of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Reuther and the AC were quite willing to bankroll community organizers conducting voter registration drives down in Alabama. But later on in the 1960s, when African-American UAW Members started organizing themselves on the shop floor in Detroit as members of DRUM (the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement), asking why they were still the “last hired, first fired,” and why they still got stuck with the hardest, dirtiest jobs, the attitude of the UAW leadership was much less sympathetic. In response to wildcat strikes by African--‐American UAW members protesting appalling shop floor conditions, the UAW International sent armies of paid staff to the picket lines, baseball bats in hand, to break the strikes and force the UAW members back to work. This story is told in the book Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution, by Dan Georgakas And Marvin Surkin.
While the level of overt physical violence may have subsided in recent years, the same schizophrenic attitude towards movements for democracy and social justice within and outside the union remains. Our union leadership will gladly pass resolutions in favor of exploited carwash workers and farmworkers, as we saw at the recent Joint Council meeting. What they will not do is mount any sort of campaign that might involve mobilizing the union membership on a large scale. Based on the material we covered in answer to the previous question, the reason for this should be clear: any mass membership mobilization that goes beyond simply rounding up bodies to show up at rallies runs the risk of giving rank and file members the idea that they might have a say in how their union is run. This in turn might lead to members organizing independently of the leadership, thus placing the union in danger. Since It poses such a threat to organizational stability and continuity, member mobilization is generally kept to a minimum.
This is not to say that members have no role in the union—they do. However, that role is very narrowly defined: they are to be foot soldiers for the union, taking orders from the top leadership to enact the plans that the leadership has already laid out. This type of “mobilization” involves very low levels of information sharing and low levels of required commitment. The classic example of this is the strategy the leadership pursued for turning out the “yes” vote in the recent contract ratification vote: simply round up voters by placing union staffers at strategic campus “chokepoints,” give them a quick spiel about why they should vote “yes,” and direct them to the polling location. In this scenario, there is no need or desire for any further follow--‐up; the members have performed their assigned task of ratifying the leadership’s decisions, and can then go back to being disengaged, uninformed members.
Real organizing is hard, often plodding work, sustained over a long period of time. But that doesn’t mean that it is impossible, either at UCLA or at any other UC campus for that matter. It’s simply a matter of making that type of grassroots organizing a strategic priority. That’s the model that we have seen emerge at the Berkeley campus after years of inactivity, and there is no reason to believe that it can’t develop on other campuses as well.
In running for head steward and other positions, how and what chances do we have to change this culture? What is the potential of reforming and democratizing our union from within?
With the emergence of Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) over the past few months, we have a very real and concrete opportunity to change the culture of secrecy and distrust that currently pervades our local. We can do this not only by getting different leaders elected—although that certainly won’t hurt—but by showing how a different way of doing things might actually work in practice. AWDU is made up of rank and file members and officials who actually believe that the key to a stronger union is an informed, activist, and involved membership. We have been putting that belief into action in our campaigns against the contract ratification and to elect new leadership, as well as in our day--‐to--‐day union work on campuses where reform activists are currently in control. As our movement grows, we will continue to put that belief into action.
In terms of the current vacancy election, with the 26 candidates we are fielding, we have the chance to win as many as 38 Seats on the union’s Joint Council, which would give us a majority position. This in turn would give reformers a strong voice in setting the overall direction for our union. The next step will be the leadership elections in May, When the entire Joint Council and Executive Board will be up for election.
Of course, if we win, we can expect to take a lot of heat from the UAW International. It will take a lot of member education and mobilization to counter this attack. However, by mobilizing our members and creating organic connections with other unions and social justice organizations, we can build the strong organization we need both to fend off potential problems from our union leadership, as well as to participate in the movement to fight against the cuts and for a more just, more democratic University.
By trying to change our union, aren’t we in danger of playing into the right-wing critique that unions are inherently corrupt and an outdated form of collective organization?
Absolutely not. To the extent that anything about unions is outdated, it is the idea common within the UAW leadership that the way forward is to leave everything up to them. By fighting for a more open, democratic, member--‐run union, we are playing a key role in injecting new ideas and a new vibrancy into the labor movement. If we look at examples from U.S. labor history as well as examples from abroad, we see that unions are strongest when they mobilize with broader forces as a movement for social justice. As I write this, we can see how powerful that kind of organizing can be by looking at the mobilizations in the streets of Tunis and Cairo, which have been bolstered by strong support from trade union activists.
In sum, the fight for a more democratic union is the fight for a stronger union that can be a better ally in the broader struggle for social justice.
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