Sunday, April 17, 2011

rough draft Article II of "On Wage Slavery and Notions of Socialism"

”The expansionist imperialism of capitalism, the expression of its highest stage of development and its last phase of existence, produces the [following] economic tendencies: it transforms the entire world into the capitalist mode of production; all outmoded, pre-capitalist forms of production and society are swept away; it converts all the world's riches and means of production into capital, the working masses of all zones into wage slaves. In Africa and Asia, from the northernmost shores to the tip of South America and the South Seas, the remnant of ancient primitive communist associations, feudal systems of domination, patriarchal peasant economies, traditional forms of craftsmanship are annihilated, crushed by capital; whole peoples are destroyed and ancient cultures flattened. All are supplanted by profit mongering in its most modern form.”

– Rosa Luxembourg, The War and the Workers

Article II

As Peter Decker and Konrad Hecker ask in Das Proletariat, “why do wage laborers put up with a community that systematically degrades them into maneuverable masses of capitalistic property and the omnipresent state force apparatus?” The answer is something that has been called “false consciousness” (by Marx) or “corporate conscience” (by Luther Gulick). Whatever we call it, it could be described as a sort of apathy about one’s condition and the world around it, at least inasmuch as a worker simply goes about his day working and neglects often to even imagine that he has an alternative. Gulick suggests in Play on Democracy that this “corporate conscience” is “rendered necessary by the complex interdependence of modern life.” And, those in power would have it no other way.

Of course, the common worker cannot even fathom that he might escape this system. Decker and Konrad suggest that common workers operate under the assumption that “they have no other means,” that they have a sense that “nothing different probably remains for them than to resign themselves to it and make peace with their alternativeless situation in life.” This is the necessary condition of life in the modern civilization. As long as workers are separated from their products (as discussed in Article I), as long as the food is locked up and we must take part in our modern consumer capitalist society by becoming wage slaves, we must be alienated from the processes that are larger than us (although we must also have the illusion of participation).

In the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society, it is argued that “the apathy here is, first subjective—the felt powerlessness of ordinary people, the resignation before the enormity of events.” It is further suggested that “subjective apathy is encouraged by the objective American situation—the actual structural separation of people from power, from relevant knowledge, from pinnacles of decision-making… The very isolation of the individual—from power and community and ability to aspire—means the rise of a democracy without publics.” Cross apply this situation to all developed countries around the world. And, “with the great mass of people structurally remote and psychologically hesitant with respect to democratic institutions, those institutions themselves attenuate and become, in the fashion of the vicious circle, progressively less accessible to those few who aspire to serious participation in social affairs. The vital democratic connection between community and leadership, between the mass and the several elites, has been so wrenched an perverted that disastrous politics go unchallenged time and again.” What begins as a separation in the workplace leads to detachment in all realms of modern life. As Dr. Erich Fromm once said, “our contemporary western society… tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness…”

The exact definition of this sickness is a matter for a separate debate. At this time, we must instead focus on how the workers’ position is sustained in this system. Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet argued that “it has always been necessary for the majority of men to continue to live in the pay of and in dependence on the minority which has appropriated to itself all wealth.” He suggested that this meant “slavery has therefore been perpetuated on the earth, but under a sweeter name. Among us now it is adorned with the title of service.” And, in order to maintain this system, to keep us all in “service,” those in power must distract the masses from the larger reality. As Paulo Freire suggests in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “as the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.”

The methodology to this can be varied, of course. We might find ourselves being told about terrorists on the other side of the world bent on destroying us. We might find ourselves caught up in wars abroad that have no direct link to our nation and especially not to our everyday lives. We could be distracted by partisan politics and partisan news pulling us back and forth (or more likely, reinforcing our position farther and farther to one side or the other). But, it doesn’t have to be social or cultural upheaval that distracts us. We might simply find ourselves distracted by the latest reality show on television, or in more “innocent” times, we could find ourselves distracted by amusements like freak or carnival shows. Whatever the distraction is, “it is in the interest of the oppressor to weaken the oppressed still further, to isolate them, to create and deepen rifts among them…the more alienated people are, the easier it is to divide them and keep them divided” (Freire, 141-2).

As far as the more innocent distraction goes, amusement parks and the like, one could look back to the early days of Coney Island. Maxim Gorky, in response to middle and working class folk escaping their humdrum lives at Coney Island, “pronounced it a ‘marsh of glittering boredom,’ particularly pernicious because it stupefied the working people, poisoned their souls, and reinforced their subjection… In an age of mass culture, amusement emerged as the new opiate of the people.” (Kasson 108-9). A Russian revolutionary, Marxist terminology again, yes. But, such things are necessary when discussing matters of workers and the distraction that keeps us from even noticing the false consciousness that keeps us from noticing the alternativeless conditions of our lives…

This is as good a place as any to discuss, albeit briefly, the simplest terms of Marxism for the lay person reading this. Marxism is a methodology for study, an approach to historiography that focuses on class warfare, i.e. disputes between the various classes that are inherent to the existence of those classes as separate entities. In a capitalist system, the bourgeoisie as a class must maintain position over the proletariat class. Again, in simpler terms, the employer has to keep the worker down. There is simply no other way to profit but to pay the worker less than his output is worth or (alternatively) to charge a consumer more for said output than it is worth. In terms of the current discussion, the existence of amusements or distractions allow for the lower classes to remain beneath the upper classes. The occasional amusement, nightly lulling doses of television, the occasional film or theater outing, carnival rides, music… these things raise the spirit of the worker long enough that he doesn’t mind so much when he has to return to his daily labor.

Outside of amusement, there is the distraction of purported terrorism or war. As Freire’s argument continues, “for the oppressors to keep the oppressed from perceiving their strategy… the former must convince the latter that they are being ‘defended’ against the demonic action of ‘marginals, rowdies, and enemies of God’” (146). Whether it is the new immigrant, which in American history for example has been from various places depending on the decade. Lately, the fear is of the Muslim, “creeping shariah” and the like. Middle America is not simply afraid of terrorists out to kill us but Muslim immigrants who are out to alter our culture. For that matter, there is plenty of fear to go around regarding our own President and his attempts to undermine our Constitution, to destroy our very way of life.

But, it has always been like this; the new and unknown scares us. And, it’s not always the immigrants; After World War I (or II for that matter) redefined gender roles horrified American men. And, regarding the aforementioned Coney Island, James Gibbons Huneker was disturbed by the surrender of reason that went hand in hand with attending such amusements. He suggested that the “unreality” of such an experience was “greedily craved by the mob as alcohol by the dipsomaniac.” In modern terms, that’s essentially alcoholism. Huneker feared this unruly mob, out for amusement as opposed to the self-improvement of old genteel culture. Notably, he suggested in New Cosmopolis that “once en masse, humanity sheds its civilization and becomes half child, half savage… It will lynch an innocent man or glorify a scamp politician with equal facility.” And, in what situation does history give us lynchings but when one group hated or feared another, a perfect example of the necessary division within the lower classes.

If not the opportunity of temporary amusement apart from the workday, there might be an increase in wages. Decker and Konrad suggest this is a case of “a bit more wages [that] is supposed to compel appreciative docility” toward employers. And, of course, there’s the idea, especially in America, that any of us can advance further in our careers, that any one of us can be rich and successful if we just work hard enough. There is a distinct Protestant ethic in play here that will be discussed further in Article III. For now, it is well enough to establish the notion that a worker given the idea that he might advance is more likely to continue working rather than to sabotage his factory or office or strike en masse with his fellow workers. If amusement and distraction are not enough for him to return to work when it comes time for that, then the possibility that he might one day be a higher class of worker will be enough.

And, this would all be a workable system as long as no worker ever noticed, as long as the false consciousness is perfectly maintained. But, in no society has this ever been the case. And, secondary to that, there is the matter of there being enough employment for every individual who needs it. When one is out of work, one is less likely (perhaps) to be docile, to simply go along to get along. Absent government assistance, the unemployed have a far greater struggle in everyday life than can be distracted from with simple amusements or illusory distractions. Arguably, wage labor loses to the practice of slavery here in caring for the worker rather than simply employing him. Though, it comes from a racist perspective and supports a position that should be long left behind by enlightened society, James Henry Hammond’s Mudsill Theory speech contains an interesting distinction between slavery and wage labor. He says:

“…the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns.”

The capitalist wage labor system, even if it succeeds with a false consciousness, still results in unemployment, in homelessness, hunger. In short, there is inevitable discontent whether the system succeeds or not. Marx and Engels suggests that “the modern worker… sinks ever deeper beneath the circumstances of his own class.

“The worker becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more quickly than population and wealth. It should not be obvious that the bourgeoisie is incapable of continuing as the ruling class of society and of enforcing its own conditions of life on society as sovereign law. It is incapable of ruling because it is incapable of assuring its slave any kind of existence within his slavery, because it is forced to let him sink into a condition where it must feed him, instead of being fed by him.”

And, brining all of this back into politics, choosing our governmental officials still is not enough to alter the system. Lenin, in State and Revolution, suggests that “Marx splendidly grasped this essence of capitalist democracy, when, in analysing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed were allowed, once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and repress them!”

A Representative government will not get the necessary work done. Only pure democracy (or, practically speaking, as national populations tend to be too large for such a thing to work, whatever system we can find that is close to it, Participation Democracy, Participatory Politics and Economics (Parpolity and Parecon), just to name a couple) can take into account the needs of the proletariat sufficiently.

The original SDS sought “the establishment of a democracy of individual participation governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation” (Port Huron Statement). Is the possibility of participation in life-changing decision making such a horrible thing to have in the common man? Is independence?

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

an addendum to article I of "on wage slavery and notions of socialism"

An important notion as to the use of language on “equality” is missing from the early part of Article I, so the following will serve as a second draft of the beginning of said Article:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Declaration of Independence
Article I
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (Article 1). The Declaration also recognizes “the inherent dignity and… equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” suggesting such things are “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (preamble). Our own Declaration of Independence here in America as asserts that “all men are created equal” or at least suggests that we believe as much. But, it is important to note that in utilizing such language, Thomas Jefferson, a noted slaveholder, did not mean to suggest that, literally, all men are created equal. Rather, in the parlance of the Old World, the landed gentry were created equal, or more precisely, the white, property-owning males were created equal, and some more equal than others. But, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the United States is an adoptee, has no such limitation. Indeed, even here, we have moved past the intention of the language in our Declaration of Independence to a more cosmopolitan understanding; with our 14th Amendment, with Supreme Court decisions like that in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, with the Civil Rights Act, we have progressed beyond the presumption in that little word “all” and have come to a place where, perhaps, we can actually mean it literally.
John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government described the state of nature as one of “equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.” He does go on to limit his notions of who should be equal in specifically dismissing the atheist, but, again, as with our Declaration of Independence, let us assume that the original intent and the theoretical basis of the language have separated as we have advanced. Locke suggested that we are all “born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties” and that we “should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.” With the existence of the State, we come easily to the point where such lack of subordination or subjection is inherently impossible. Not because of racist or propertied-favoring or classist (necessarily) distinctions, but because the very notion of civilization—taken as constructed under Locke’s idea of the Social Construct or taken as something perhaps more sinister (even a warlord requires administrators and organization having undertaken charge of a population with enough numbers)—requires that some be subordinated by others, that some be in charge, some make the decisions and some simply follow along to get along.
The rest shall remain as it for now, though of course when all these pieces are done, there will be much editing necessary to produce a cohesive whole.

Monday, April 11, 2011

rough draft Article I of "On Wage Slavery and Notions of Socialism"

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Declaration of Independence
Article I
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (Article 1). The Declaration also recognizes “the inherent dignity and… equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” suggesting such things are “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (preamble).
John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government described the state of nature as one of “equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.” He suggested that we are all “born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties” and that we “should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.” With the existence of the State, we come easily to the point where such lack of subordination or subjection is inherently impossible. The very notion of civilization—taken as constructed under Locke’s idea of the Social Construct or taken as something perhaps more sinister (even a warlord requires administrators and organization having undertaken charge of a population with enough numbers)—requires that some be subordinated by others, that some be in charge, some make the decisions and some simply follow along to get along.
Now, in indigenous peoples around the world—those few who have been allowed to remain inasmuch as they can—we can see various versions of this, some more controlling than others, some leaning toward complexity like our own industrialized, capitalistic society, some depending only on temporary reigns (if that is even the word to use) of a “big man” who is little more than an arbiter of disputes. Societies around the world and throughout history range, of course, from despotic to utopian, from Takers to Leavers (to borrow the parlance of Daniel Quinn). Inevitably, as civilization takes on more complexity, takes on more numbers, there is found inequality. Unfortunately, it is, arguably, an inherently human trait to want more, to want more food, to want more influence… to want more money in the modern age. The truth of this trait’s inherency is the subject for a separate tract; for now, let us assume that this impulse toward increasing consumption is natural. In Marxist terms, let us assume then that “the essential condition or the existence and for the rule of the bourgeois class is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of private individuals, the formation and expansion of capital” (emphasis mine). The world has the resources, but there are some of us (whether it be the natural condition or not; more on that in Article III) who choose to use more of those resources than others do. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “the Earth provides enough resources for everyone’s need, but not for some people’s greed.” Is is this greed that gives us capitalism, and that, quite unrestrained, has brought us to an era of conspicuous consumption by the richer folk of the world, the Core (taking into account the terminology of World Systems Theory) conspiring unconsciously (and far too often consciously) to keep down the Periphery, the poor peoples of the world who work in our factories, who farm our staple products, who serve as cannon fodder for political leaders and religious ideologues.
Natural or not, at a certain point, capitalist development became inevitable. Even Marxist notions allow for, nay, require capitalist development. As John Isbister puts it, “Marx himself believed that capitalism was a necessary stage in social evolution, for although it was exploitative, it was the only mode capable of developing the productive resources of a country… Socialism, he believed, would follow the self-destruction of the mature capitalist system… Marx was a student of capitalism, not of communism.” It is inherent in the theoretical construct of Marxism that a society progresses (with all the positive notions that word entails, but of course with some negative connotations as well, given reality) toward capitalism. At some point, at or around that point we would call the beginning of civilization, when the agricultural revolution rears its head and we decide we need surplus and we need to lock up our food, power settles into the hands of the priests and the politicians, those who hold the key to the food stores and open the chutes only when the rest of us work for our “share.” But, it isn’t a “fair” share. Earlier, before the agricultural revolution, or on small communes around world today, or among certain indigenous tribes today, there might be such a thing as a “fair” share. But, in a capitalist world, or in the world slouching toward capitalism, fairness was gradually and consistently eroded. Vandana Shiva refers to the closing of the Commons, the point in a society’s development in which common land, common property is appropriated for government-dictated use. She suggests in Earth Democracy that “the transformation of common property rights into private property rights implicitly denies the right to survival for large sections of society.” She further argues that “the globalized free market economy, which dominates our lives, is based on rules that extinguish and deny access to life and livelihoods by generating scarcity.”
To understand this, one must realize that the sustenance economy has been throughout human history the primary means of survival. Only, as civilization developed, this became an still becomes less and less true. As Shiva puts it, “nature shrinks as capital grows.”  But, capitalism must have more fuel to expand. This fuel comes in an increasing amount of resources consumed, the increasing amount of wage laborers employed or enslaved (the negligible difference between those two options in the face of Global Capitalism will be discussed more fully in Article II). And, perhaps an even greater human toll than enslavement—resources depletion, when the more powerful nations have the infrastructure to redistribute to themselves the resources of those they can push around, leads to food shortages, to starving peoples around the world, to political unrest… and not necessarily to the Marxist revolution that is supposed to be the natural response to this capitalist accumulation. Capitalism may lift some up—and under the guise of the American Dream, or whatever version thereof so many other capitalist States must have, there is a sense that it can lift anyone up if one just puts in the work—but it must also put others down. Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet argued that it was “ the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm laborers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live.” He went on to further suggest that it is “ want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them.  It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him.” This easy comparison between wage slavery, wage labor, and chattel slavery will be discussed further in Article II, but it is necessary to hint at it now in order to understand that equality is simply not possible in our modern world because we have adopted systems and practices that mandate inequality to operate.
We have locked away the food (to borrow from Quinn) and closed the Commons (to borrow from Shiva). And, as a result, “the more the poor [have been] dispossessed of their means to provide their own sustenance, the more they [have] had to turn to the market to buy what they had formerly produced themselves” (Shiva). Now, if wages were sufficient enough that every worker could readily afford the same supplies, the same foodstuffs, the same shelter, the same healthcare… or if not the same then at least sufficient amounts of these things, then this would not necessarily be a negative thing. But, wages are not equal. Too many live in poverty, even those who have work. And, this leads not toward some increased effort to achieve and rise up out of poverty—though, logically, that is a possibility—but more often dire consequences. Poverty.com says:
About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.
Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.
One has to wonder why more people are not enraged by the notion that there is food enough for everyone—in fact, there is arguably a limited amount of biomatter, making it impossible for the world to sustain more life than it can feed, as tautological as that should sound—and yet some go hungry. And, while a lot of the rest of us get to eat, we deplete the world of vital resources in order to have surplus that gets, at least in part, wasted. We find comfort in the notion that our modern agriculture is efficient—and, given the aforementioned supply of food enough to feed everyone, it would seem that we need only advance our means of distribution, except then State borders get in the way, varied local politics get in the way, and again, greed rears its head as well. Vandana Shiva describes how in 2002, 47% of children’s deaths in India were the result of a lack of food even as 65 million tons sat rotting in storage containers. She says: “we now have a world where the grain giants take our food at half the price that the poor pay for it and dump it on someone else’s market.”
But, it is worth mentioning that modern industrial agriculture wears a misleading mask. “The efficiency and productivity of industrial agriculture hides the costs of depletion of soils, exploitation of groundwater, erosion, and extinction of biodiversity” (Shiva). And, our “better” use of modern agriculture in developed nations supplies us with our choice of food in the grocery aisle, leading us to ignore the exploitation and disenfranchisement of farmers around the world who in the past could have has a successful sustenance farming livelihood. And, in 2004, 16,000 farmers committed suicide in India. Shiva suggests this suicide epidemic amounts to “the genocide of small farmers through the rules of globalization.”
Basic Marxist terminology must be understood to continue. Essentially, as Marx put it in his Theories of Surplus Value, “the rich have taken possession of all the conditions of production; [hence] the alienation of the conditions of production, which in their simplest form are the natural elements themselves.” Taken further, John Isbister has this to say in Promises Not Kept:
 The feudal classes were transformed into capitalist classes by the process of ‘alienation’ of labor… They ‘enclosed’ the commons—that is, they fenced off the land and drove the serfs from it. This was the alienation, or separation, of labor from the means of production. In feudalism, workers had assured access to land and to tools; it was their birthright. Capitalism arose when the workers lost this access and were left with nothing but their own hands.
Thus arose the two fundamental capitalist classes: the working class, which did not own or have access to any of the means of production and therefore had to enter into a wage contract with the capitalists, and the capitalist class, which owned the means of production and hired the workers for wages. Capitalist exploitation occurred through the wage, which represented much less than the full value of what the workers produced.
The alienation of the worker from his product is essential to modern capitalism. Further complicating things, as I wrote a few years back,
…social relationships are defined by the values placed on commodities. Labor is traded for money which is traded for commodities. The social nature of society is destroyed by the abstraction of commodities--the separation of use-value and exchange-value (e.g. a pearl of no use worth more than a wrench of practical use). The purchaser of an item is alienated from a social relationship with the maker of said item, creating a "false consciousness" as to the nature of capitalism and the value of material goods and human life (or the social or societal value thereof).
Producers are separated from what they produce, and the true value of a given thing is lost. “When markets are replaced by the market, society is replaced by capital and the market becomes the anonymous face of corporations, real people, exchanging what they create and what they need, are replaced by the abstract and invisible hand of the market” (Shiva). And, we trust blindly in this hand that is already invisible and pretend that inequality is the result of inefficiency, the result of simple human failings instead of grand human schemes.