Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id575710775
the traditional Marxist view that capitalist development was creating the material preconditions of socialism, with a working class that could take over the existing means of production from the capitalists
✏️ We start here, with Marxist view that the working class could potentially take over and usher in socialism 🔗 View Highlight
id575711029
it had been a particular layer of skilled workers who were able to think of gaining control over the capitalist factory:
The idea of a subject-class of united producers capable of seizing power has been specific to these skilled workers proud of their trade. To them, power was not something abstract but a matter of daily experience: on the factory floor, power was theirs, they ruled over production. Their irreplaceable skills and practical know-how placed them at the top of a factory hierarchy that was the inverse of the social hierarchy. The boss, the chief engineer and the inspectors alike depended upon the know-how of the skilled worker, which was complementary and often superior to theirs. They had to rely on the workers’ cooperation and advice, to win their respect and loyalty, whereas the skilled workers themselves needed neither the boss nor the “officers of production” to perform work.
✏️ To achieve that takeover, we need this type of working class, which had existed once. 🔗 View Highlight
id575711059
Taylorism and automation had gradually reduced the size and influence of this layer of workers. Gorz noted the advent of what we now call neoliberalism, which liquidated the Fordist-style large factory and broke the back of the trade unions, weakening the working class in both political and sociological terms. The years that followed saw relentless waves of automation, subcontracting, offshoring, and privatization, combined with the rollback of the welfare state, the growth of services, and the financialization of the economy.
✏️ Capitalists depowered that class using many tactics. 🔗 View Highlight
id575711357
This showed workers that they had no control over production or the goals that capitalism was pursuing on a global scale.
id575713213
It is no longer possible to regard the factory as an economic unit. It has become a productive unit integrated with other productive units often long distances away, dependent upon a centralised management coordinating dozens of productive units for its supplies, outlets, product lines etc. In other words, the sites of production are no longer the sites of decision-making and economic power. The social process of production has become opaque, and this opacity has come to affect the work process in every technical unit. The final destination and even the very nature of what is produced remains unknown. Apart from management, nobody knows exactly what the things being produced are for — and in any event nobody gives a toss.
id575713749
what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello dubbed “the new spirit of capitalism” was put into effect, notably with the introduction of a new, more individualized approach to labor relations, supposedly geared toward greater involvement and autonomy for workers. We now know that these managerial practices, far from liberating workers, have enslaved them even more. They find themselves exposed to the stress of individualized performance appraisal and burnout. “Autonomy” can involve bogus self-employment with no rights or benefits while remaining subject to the tyranny of the company’s deadlines, or even to algorithmic management surveillance.
✏️ Need to read more about new spirit of capitalism I think, and the two people mentioned. followup 🔗 View Highlight
id575715487
we have to get rid of the productivist ideology of work, which is promoted by employers but also by an important part of the Left, leading us to believe that work is a natural thing with its own inherent value, regardless of its economic purpose and environmental impact.
id575715468
we have to move away from the injunction, promoted through advertising, to consume anything and everything, regardless of our needs or the ecological quality of the product.
id575716138
They present any growth in output and purchasing as a rise in national wealth, even if it includes the growing quantity of throw-away packaging, gadgets and metal thrown on the refuse-tips, paper burnt along with rubbish, non-repairable household goods; it even includes artificial limbs and medical care required by victims of industrial or road accidents. Destruction officially appears as a source of wealth since the replacement of everything broken, thrown out or lost gives rise to new production, sales, monetary flows, and profits. The more quickly things are broken, worn out, made obsolete or thrown away, the larger the GNP will be and the wealthier the national statistics will say we are. Even illness and physical injury are presented as sources of wealth, for they swell the consumption of drugs and health-care facilities.
✏️ Deserves more thought, because yes, at face value it does seem about right that any and all growth in purchasing and output means more wealth. And the cynical followup thought to that is, yes, even illness and injury are a source of wealth because they lead to extra consumption of drugs and healthcare facilities. This leads to the common stereotypical comments about:
- Pharmaceutical companies focus on treatments, not cures, because that’s where profit is.
- Any technologies should break down faster because that’ll lead to buying replacements more and increasing profit. 🔗 View Highlight
id575716993
These activities must merge with the very movement of life itself, be the time of life, have as their end not the production of external things but the self-fulfillment of each individual. They are essentially relational activities, creating, beyond and through their material object, rich human relationships, experiences, and exchanges … salaried professional work will increasingly tend to become secondary, while self-determined activities must be able to transcend the family and private sphere to create an ever-denser web of social relations.
✏️ The ideal view of what would happen and what people would work on if they didn’t have to “work to survive”, and actually had time again. #addto/quote maybe (and the next highlight as well) 🔗 View Highlight
id575717124
A socialist policy can only exist in the future if it sets itself this objective, which is above all cultural. If we do not want people to become primarily consumers of industrialized, computerized entertainment and leisure, autonomous educational, artistic, craft, micro-industrial and cooperative activities must become the stuff of life. Mutual aid, emotional exchanges, raising children, taking care of one’s own health, managing the commune and maintaining, equipping, and shaping one’s own space, self-production — including of food — and repair, using equipment that doesn’t always have to be individual … all this is part of the non-economic, non-market activities of liberated time.
✏️ What socialist policy and world would look like. 🔗 View Highlight