My friend Stevphen asked me to contribute some definitions to the glossary of a book he worked on called Constituent Imagination. Among the terms I wrote definitions for, precarity and social factory. I have strong opinions about these terms. I tried to be diplomatic in the definitions.
Precarity : Precarity is currently the subject of growing debate and political mobilization in Europe at the time of this writing, partly in response to changes in the regimes of labor and welfare policy as well as labor practices. Precarity has several related meanings. With regard to work, precarity refers to a variety of so-called ‘nonstandard’ work arrangements: times of work (night and weekend work), quantities of work time (flexible or variable hours, part-time work, demands for overtime), and durations of work assignments (temporary work, non-contract work, freelance work). Precarity also refers to the legal status of work: whether work is legal or illegal, and which customary labor rights do and do not apply to which workers. Precarity also refers to instability of income, linked to precarious work arrangements, and to access to needed services such as healthcare and housing. All of these meanings of precarity indicate a general unpredictability of access to needed goods and services whether via a welfare state or private sector and a lack of control of work which in turn imposes less control over the rest of one’s life. In this sense precarity has historically been the general condition of the proletariat globally with moments of relatively less precarity being exceptions resulting from a number of political factors.
Social factory : The social factory is a term developed within the operaismo tradition of Marxism in Italy. There is an ambivalence in the term, between being a conceptual optic and being a narrative of historical periodization. The social factory as a conceptual optic argues that the techniques and practices of power deployed within the factory also impact life outside the factory, and vice versa. In other words the walls of the factory are a semi-permeable membrane across which passages take place and across which lines of force operate. The basic point of the concept is that value production and resistance to value production do not occur only in determinate and recognized workplaces and in activity by waged workers. This concept of the social factory has a polemical force against the factory-ist political and organizational model that centers on workplaces and waged work. As a type of historical periodization the social factory is a narrative in which the inside and the outside of the factory become contiguous over a period of time such that capitalist command now comes to reach across the inside and outside of the factory. See also real subsumption.
I’ve been rereading v1 of Capital (I set out, naively, to speed read it. Sigh.) and some passages in the chapter on machinery support my claims about these terms, I think - mainly that they’re not novel.
In contrast with the manufacturing period, the division of labour is thenceforth based, wherever possible, on the mployment of women, of children of all ages, and of unskilled labourers, in one word, on cheap labour, as it is characteristically called in England. This is the case not only with all production on a large scale, whether employing machinery or not, but also with the so-called domestic industry, whether carried on in the houses of the workpeople or in small workshops. This modern so-called domestic industry has nothing, except the name, in common with the old-fashioned domestic industry, the existence of which pre-supposes independent urban handicrafts, independent peasant farming, and above all, a dwelling-house for the labourer and his family. That old-fashioned industry has now been converted into an outside department of the factory, the manufactory, or the warehouse. Besides the factory operatives, the manufacturing workmen and the handicraftsman, whom it concentrates in large masses at one spot, and directly commands, capital also sets in motion, by means, of invisible threads, another army; that of the workers in the domestic industries, who dwell in the large towns and -are also scattered over the face of the country.
(…)
The exploitation of cheap and immature labour-power is carried out in a more shameless manner in modern Manufacture than in the factory proper. This is because the technical foundation of the factory system, namely, the substitution of machines for muscular power, and the light character of the labour, is almost entirely absent in Manufacture, and at the same time women and over-young children are subjected, in a most unconscionable way, to the influence of poisonous or injurious substances. This exploitation is more shameless in the so-called domestic industry than in manufactures, and that because the power of resistance in the labourers decreases with their dissemination; because a whole series of plundering parasites insinuate themselves between the employer and the workman; because a domestic industry has always to compete either with the factory system, or with manufacturing in the same branch of production; because poverty robs the workman of the conditions most essential to his labour, of space, light and ventilation; because employment becomes more and more irregular; and, finally, because in these the last resorts of the masses made “redundant” by Modern Industry and Agriculture, competition for work attains its maximum. (590-591 in the Penguin edition)
*
More notes. Or quotes. There’s a chapter in Thoburn’s book called ‘The Social Factory’ I though it was online but can’t find.
“As the co-operative character of the labour-process becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our notion of productive labour, and of its agent the productive labourer, become extended. In order to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of its subordinate functions.” (643-644.)
“If the hour’s wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind himself to pay a day’s or a week’s wage, but only to pay wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, or the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is determined by the ratio ‘daily value of labour-power / working-day of a given number of hours’ it, of course, loses all meaning as soon as the working-day ceases to contain a definite number of hours. The connection between the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capitalist can now wring from the labour a certain quantity of surplus-labour without allowing him the labour-time necessary for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all regularity of employment, and according to his own convenience, caprice, and the interest of the moment, make the most enormous over-work alternate with relative or absolute cessation of work. ” (686.)
“Since, before entering on the process, [the worker’s] own labour has already been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power, has been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capital, it must, during the process, be realised in a product that does not belong to him. Since the process of production is also the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power, the product of the labourer is incessantly converted, not only into commodities, but into capital, into value that sucks up the value-creating power, into means of subsistence that buy the person of the labourer, into means of production that command the producers. The labourer therefore constantly produces material, objective wealth, but in the form of capital, of an alien power that dominates and exploits him: and the capitalist as constantly produces labour-power, but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated from the objects in and by which it can alone be realised; in short he produces the labourer, but as a wage-labourer. This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine quâ non of capitalist production.
The labourer consumes in a two-told way. While producing he consumes by his labour the means of production, and converts them into products with a higher value than that of the capital advanced This is his productive consumption. It is at the same time consumption of his labour-power by the capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means of subsistence: this is his individual consumption. The labourer’s productive consumption, and his individual consumption, are therefore totally distinct. In the former, he acts as the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist. In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary vital functions outside the process of production. The result of the one is, that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the labourer lives. When treating of the working-day, we saw that the labourer is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain his labour-power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine and oil to the wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the mere means of consumption required by a means of production; his individual consumption is directly productive consumption. This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially appertaining to capitalist production.
The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate, not the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the capitalist class and the labouring class, not an isolated process of production, but capitalist production in full swing, and on its actual social scale. By converting part of his capital into labour-power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not only by what he receives from but by what be gives to, the labourer. The capital given in exchange for labour-power is converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the limits of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the working-class is, therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer’s instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the labourer’s individual consumption as far as possible to what is strictly necessary, and he is far away from imitating those brutal South Americans, who force their labourers to take the more substantial, rather than the less substantial, kind of food.
Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative, the political economist, consider that part alone of the labourer’s individual consumption to be productive, which is requisite for the perpetuation of the class, and which therefore must take place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure beyond that part, is unproductive consumption. If the accumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an increase in the abourer’s consumption, unaccompanied by increase in the consumption of labour-power by capital, the additional capital would be consumed unproductively. In reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unproductive as regards himself, for it reproduces nothing but the needy individual; it is productive to the capitalist and to the State, since it is the production of the power that creates their wealth.
From a social point of view, therefore, the working-class, even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of production. (…) The reproduction of the working-class carries with it the accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one generation to another.” (716-720.) Marx adds in a footnote, “individual consumption by the labourer becomes consumption on behalf of capital-or productive consumption” (724).
Is it a common claim that precarity etc are novel? It seems to me, and I take it that this is where you’re going too, that the most remarkable feature of neoliberalism is how it essentially identical to liberalism a hundred years ago.
Comment by Mark — July 16, 2007 @ 1:06 am
hey Mark,
I think it’s not particularly common to say “precarity is new.” It’s more common to make claims that entail that claim, like “we are in an absolutely new political conjuncture” or claims that universalize the recent precaritization of this or that strata - “labor is becoming precarious.” Essentially, I think the precarity-talk is often sloppy from what I’ve seen of it. I’ve also stopped following it so closely.
Oh yeah - I agree with you, that’s the same direction I want to go in.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 17, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
Hmm. I seems to me that these claims about there being a new situation are more to do with ‘post-Fordism’, if often allied to the stuff about precarity, so we have post-Fordist precarity which is new, but only insofar as its post-Fordist. I’m dubious about this too, but it has a clear basis both historically and theoretically.
Comment by Mark — July 17, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
hi Nate,
this looks like a good post, i’m going to take time for it later. I’ve been looking for a while for articles that flesh out the concept of the social factorty in more detail, but i haven’t found much. I have some doubts about the entry you wrote, because the wording makes it seem like it’s the forms of power from inside the factory that radiate outwards to the rest; still a concept in which the power relations of the factory are prioritized. I thought the idea was to analyse the productivity-for-capital of work beyond the factory, or the overspilling of unpaid/surplus labour beyond the official spaces and times of formal, waged work. I’ll read it more closely later on.
The book by Nicholas Thoburn, btw, is on libcom.org:
http://libcom.org/library/deleuze-marx-politics-nicholas-thoburn-intro
regards, thijs
Comment by thijs — July 21, 2007 @ 7:38 am
The labourer therefore constantly produces material, objective wealth, but in the form of capital, of an alien power that dominates and exploits him: and the capitalist as constantly produces labour-power, but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated from the objects in and by which it can alone be realised; in short he produces the labourer, but as a wage-labourer. This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine quâ non of capitalist production.
This is interesting, but the writer includes many half-truths and assumptions with his critique; it looks pretty close to communist Praxis really. Yes, capitalism does have a definite relation to industry, business, factories–the workplace. But the old-school labor/management model–communist model?– while relevant to some situations, doesn’t really account for ALL the problems of the workplace. Moreover, unions have succeeded in creating better conditions for many workers. Many leftist writers fail to note that socialist policies ARE in force–in California for instance (–”regionalism” always a problem, as is, let’s be honest, ethnicity, gender,age, etc.).
There are all sorts of other issues—labor solidarity does not seem inherently “good” (perhaps a type of populism, really); the Teamsters or the tradesmen unions are not exactly replete with leftist hepcats or literatteurs. Unionist “seniority” also questionable (as many bright rookies on the job discover). I mean, what sort of labor is the gent addressing? Manual labor, ag workers, assemblers, or tradesmen–plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, electricians, etc.? Marx was, I contend, generally siding with tradesmen, skilled labor, the technicians of his time, and not so much with unskilled, manual labor. Yet most marxists are not discussing better conditions or profit-sharing for electricians, say: besides, once the skilled worker becomes a full contractor, he often becomes one of the community’s wealthier citizens—-the vatos with the nicest houses, coolest SUVs, and prettiest ho’s are generally big-time contractors, tradesmen, not the petit bourgeois. Really, the workers’ mafias are often as powerful as the financier/management mafias (strong-arm guys hate thieves and bunko-forgers). There is also a certain hint of utopianism to this writing—the worker’s paradise awaits us!–which I find troubling as well. Life’s shit for most humans, workers included (putting a .45 in most pretty boy financiers, lawyers, and managers and other white collar swine (of any race) ain’t the worst idea), but then most humans are shit.
Comment by Perezoso — July 22, 2007 @ 9:50 am
hey nate. have you read the micro-politics of capital by Reed? There is some stuff in his book i don’t quite dig on, especially when he gets to the point about gender/abstract labour etc, but he has some good stuff on the social factory and its relation to ‘real subsumption’ and ‘the fagment on the machine’ - im still reading it, and probably need to go back over it, but i quite liked how he linked the ‘moving to the side of people’ in production (or humans becoming ‘conscious organs’ of the machine) to the dispersal of production thoughout the social body - the factory then being not so much the locus of production or the model, but a metaphor for productive activity in general. He also talks of it in terms of Deleuze’s de/reterritorialisation, which i find useful. That the older codes and mores that governed the socius get decoded, then re positied in accrodance with capitalist axioms to produce value for capital.
Comment by nic — July 23, 2007 @ 5:17 am
hey all,
Thijs, I’m not interested in making a claim about the direction of power - from factory outward or vice versa though the operaist version of the concept implies that kind of motion. The important point is that on the job and off the job are part of a web of power relations, they’re contiguous so to speak.
Nic, yeah Read’s book is great. I disagree with him in his more Negrian moments, though - social factory as historical narrative. What I don’t like about that version of the idea is that it fails in, as Thijs put it, the analysis of “the productivity-for-capital of work beyond the factory, or the overspilling of unpaid/surplus labour beyond the official spaces and times of formal, waged work” prior the era of real subsumption.
Per, I think we’ve talked about this. I’m not convinced Marx has as much to do so called ‘actually existing communism’ as you are, and if he did so much the worse for him that we can still read him against those forms. I see those as of a piece with capitalism - societies of command over labor.
take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 23, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
I find some of the normative assumptions ( or perhaps crypto-normative, in BlogSpeak) assumptions of much Marxist analysis problematic. Class struggle has its built-in “value hierarchy” of course, regardless if the more empirical sorts of leftists claim marxist analysis is merely descriptive. Marx does a sort of ethics, even if done by proxy. And that of course continues.
While we might agree that various Silicon valley software barons should be ripped out of their chateaus and strung up on streetlights, one might hesitate doing that to all of the baron’s neighbors–the People might need doctors, and even some programmers, techs, etc. “Bourgeois” is not some well-defined set. And were the W.I.T.H. vanguard to reach the slums, do all the peeps escape the Gulag bus? Unlikely. Being’ po’–or even part of the working class– does not equal being good or useful or whatever. That may seem obvious, but I believe that many quite sophisticated leftists routinely make that assumption: that mere penury, or poverty or membership in the proletariat does entitle one to something, and that membership in the bourgeois implies a corresponding guilt, if not “historical crimes.” The descendants of Hermann Goering are not themselves guilty of anything, however hard that is to accept for some PC leftists. Moreover, Zhukov’s crimes are not to be forgiven simply because he was given a hero’s welcome by the Peoples for years.
Comment by Perezoso — July 29, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
I dunno Per, I think it’s pretty simple. Some people get money by the sale of labor power. Others get money by the purchase of labor power. The communist project (lowercase, capital C Communism is another matter, just as the Democrats aren’t democrats and the Republicans aren’t republicans — and it’s communism that matters, marxism’s value is derived from communism and marxism’s contributions to communism) as I understand it is to get rid of the social system where the latter takes place. As part of that, that means no more of the jobs involved in managing the purchase of labor power and use of it (the shopfloor equivalent of cops). The assumptions here are minimal: society can exist without the sale and purchase of labor power and such a society can be produced like that from out of (via a series of steps starting from) our current society. The moral assumption is that such a society would be better and that, since society would be better that way, it’s morally better to bring that society about and morally worse not do so. What the working class is ‘entitled’ to (or, justified in doing) is ending the sale of labor power. This doesn’t involve a further claim about the actually existing working class, which is more diverse and less (but in another way more) romantic up close and personal than it appears in some marxist treatments.
take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 29, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
oh yeah, Per, you made reference to the whatinthehell vanguard — I’m anti-vanguards. Both vanguard organizations like the bolshevik party, and the idea of vanguard sectors of the class, as discussed well here: http://galmuri.co.kr/published/zap/monty5.html
Comment by Nate — July 30, 2007 @ 1:35 am
I am not sure the economy may be easily divided into labor and management. Marxists who define “labor” strictly in the manual labor or industrial worker sense leave out a great deal of the modern economy. However unappealing technology, automation, professionalism might be to old-school marxists or wobblies, those sorts of specialized, technical types of work have replaced the old factory or industrial labor to a large extent. I mean, are you suggesting making more “professionals” work in the fields, or having more laborers work in offices, or be programmers, etc? The problems are overwhelming obviously. I DO agree, as I have indicated previously, with a more even distribution of goods, resources, etc. but that doesn’t necessarily imply some pure egalitarianism across the board, or making manual laborers middle class, nor does it imply that marxism remains the only solution to the problem of distribution.
Additionally, I don’t think “entitlement” however we define it should just be considered “liberal” or naive or whatever. I enjoy reading Galbraith on occasion and find his criticisms of various economic (and econo-political) oligarchies still seem rather “spot on” (in LongSundaySpeak). I am not sure one should be attempting to empower Les Miz (tho’ that’s one tactic), but instead taking on Le Biz, the IT barons, high-powered financiers, speculators, entertainment moguls, and wannabe Rothschilds of all sorts etc.
Some of Zizek’s journalism impresses me because he does engage the oligarchies; he denounces the swine, at least on occasion. Old school anarchists obviously were more than willing to do that–think of Bakunin, who often appears to be advocating criminal acts (i.e. robbing a Bill Gates) in the service of freedom and economic-justice, for lack of a better term. Cactus Ed Abbey, now mostly forgotten in blogland, possessed a similar spirit. Not just the Idea, but the Deed, comrade.
Comment by Perezoso — July 30, 2007 @ 10:35 am
heya Per,
I disagree. I think labor and management are simple and easily applicable categories. Someone with the power to hire and fire is a boss. Someone without that power is not. Someone who gets money from selling labor power is a worker (this includes the dependents of sellers of labor power because those dependents get the things and money the need via the sale). Someone who gets money from selling goods/services they produced with their own labor is self employed. Someone who gets money from selling (or paying someone else to sell) goods/services produced by another is a capitalist of some size or another. Technicians and doctors and so on fit into one of those categories. Of course there are occasional fuzzy cases - the doctor with her own practice who employs a secretary. In that case the doctor is a boss and exploits the secretary. But the doctor doesn’t live off the purchase of the secretary’s labor (just like people who pay nannies to care for their kids and landscapers do do their yardwork aren’t living off those labors even though those are still power laden relationships).
The stuff you’re talking about with technicians and so on are for the most part stratifications within the working class. Those are tremendously important, but they’re internal to labor. The answer to those is not take things away from this or that section of the working class, but increase the standing of the sections which are less privileged, an increase to come at the expense of capitalists.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 30, 2007 @ 10:54 am
“”"”The answer to those is not take things away from this or that section of the working class, but increase the standing of the sections which are less privileged, an increase to come at the expense of capitalists. “”"”
OK, Sir. Well-stated, yet that has happened to a large extent, at least in California. Custodians for instance have a large and powerful union. In some school districts the custodians, maintenance, etc. are earning at least as much as teachers and admins. And teachers, or new teachers are struggling. Another complex situation (”stratified,” I guess), but I wager some people might take issue with custodians making the same as educators (or nurses paid the same as doctors). This relates back to that noble marxist concept of “socially necessary labor.” The math teacher’s work, I assert, produces more social value than does the custodian’s work, however bleak that might sound. Building good bridges, or even good computer programs requires more real work, intellectual speaking, than does cleaning the bathrooms or cooking the burgers at Squeaky Fromme HS. So some type of compensation or meritocracy system would seem to be required (and it was with soviets as well: engineers had nice dachas or better cars compared to assemblers, etc.). Complete egalitarianism seems more maoist than marxist; implementing that sort of maoist communism cost millions of lives, however admirable the comrades’ intentions were. Regardless I agree, that capitalists should pay in a sense, but would limit that to upper-middle class and very wealthy. But that “retaliation” could be enacted via radical reforms, sort of economic distribution laws, instead of, well, riots: it’s just that few have the spine to say hold a gat to Harry Reid and Co……….
Comment by Perezoso — July 30, 2007 @ 11:16 am
I don’t agree about the more work thing - manual vs mental etc - and about meritocracy. I will concede that some labor is more important than other labor, though. For instance, I think people who work in hospitals (the people who do direct care and facilitate care, I’d include janitors in this, but not the people in billing etc) do some of the most important and good work there is.
Also, FWIW for Marx ’socially necessary labor’ isn’t the labor that’s … necessary for producing a society. It’s the remunerated labor against which surplus value is measured. The capitalist wants to reduce (what counts as) that labor by cutting wages/making work unpaid/making labor more productive so as to get a higher product to wages cost ratio etc.
I will say that I recognize that greater unionization in one sector may well raise costs to consumers of products from that sector, which is a genuine difficulty that has to be navigated and is why support for organizing across unions and sectors is important. The thing is, it’s not the unions but the bosses that do that, pass that cost along in order to maintain profits. In the longterm eliminating bosses (the social position of bosses) will eliminate that happening. In the short term, it’s all a matter of power really. The janitors have decent pay because they organized and they fought their employers and they won. It’s management that decides pay and conditions and benefits, with the collective power of labor being something that shapes that decision-making process. If management’s paying the teachers poorly the fault is management’s, not the fault of the janitors who fought to make management pay them better.
take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 30, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
Like other non-marxist readers of Marx, I believe there is a normative or at least evaluative aspect to “social necessary labor.” The term itself suggests a type of aggregation, as the econ. boys say. Marx hisself does not provide any clear and distinct definition of SN Labor. My own sense is that he was saying that under capitalism, some forms of labor were necessary to society—but that the market results in situations that create various parasitical sorts of work or exploitation (perhaps “hedonistic,” say like liquor, shopping malls, or entertainment, etc.) or the making of vanities (luxury items, etc) for the wealthy and bourgeois consumer. Under real socialism, many of these parasitical forms of labor would be removed, as would the parasites of finance, and various management related occupations. S.N. labor thus has some relation to the division of labor issues. At the very least socially necessary labor needs some definition .
Comment by Perezoso — July 30, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
Ciao Per,
I don’t think that’s what Marx means at least in v1 of Capital. I think he means “for the capitalist, here’s what matters,” because in v1 as I read him Marx is trying to hold up a sort of ideal type of capitalism, one where there are no problems that are incidental (incompetent manager, etc), in order to argue that there are problems inherent to capitalism, problems which can only be eliminated by ending capitalism. That ‘necessary’ labor is only that labor that is functional for profit - that is, that ‘necessary’ labor for the capitalists is not actually what is necessary to produce society - is one such problem. I think that a good society would probably have to deal with questions like that. I don’t think Marx did very much (again not in v1 of Capital anyhow).
take care,
Nate
ps- on a different matter entirely, you read much Rorty? I imagine you won’t agree with some of his main axes he likes to grind, but I think he’s a skilled writer and argue-er. I just got his Philosophical Papers v4, I haven’t read the first third but the latter two sections are quite good.
Comment by Nate — July 31, 2007 @ 11:53 am
I have concluded that I am anti-pragmatism, and that anti-pragmatism includes being opposed to the complex, leftist PC pragmatism of Rorty (tho’ I need to study a bit more RR). Dewey may have been a decent gent, but the general trend of that school seems to be towards a sort of bureaucratic, touchy-feely behaviorism, though, yeah, better some Deweyans than Xtian-capitalists (or muslims, or jewish financiers for that matter). I would think that even moderate socialists would take issue with relativistic aspects of pragmatism, and Rorty’s ideas, though in some circumstances pragmatic utility might be an important consideration (any examples I can think of right now would seem banal probably—medicines, or cures, for example.)
I have Rorty’s “The Linguistic Turn” (written a bit before his Pragmatic Turn), and it’s a nice collection of …gasp….analytical and language-related essays. Rorty was sort of a Carnapian early on, and I am one who still finds Carnapian ideas sort of interesting and applicable (as well as physicalist and secularist to the core), even if the “anti-normative” aspects of his writing might offend some PoMo’s. RC’s politics were quite progressive as well, supposedly, and he was not as snooty and conservative as most of the positivists.
Comment by Perezoso — August 3, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
I don’t know enough about pragmatism, though I’m favorably disposed toward it. The thing with Rorty is that when he does philosophical work it’s solidly argued and I think generally correct. I’m much less taken with his politics. His Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is excellent as are the non-culture/politics essays in the four volumes of his Philosophical Papers. Rorty’s pragmatism is well-founded in terms of arguments and addressing counter-arguments. I think he’s definitely worth taking seriously. (Among other things he’s an avid reader of Quine and Sellar.)
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 4, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
I don’t see Rorty’s programme so conducive to progressive politics, or, egads, intelligent anarchism. Methinx he was a bit more literatteur than philosophe (and really Quine’s Two Dogmas, however powerful and cogently argued, serves opportunists of all stripes). And Rorty seemed to relish the Ivy League sage role. Rorty’s for the bureaucratic liberals, really; and even to the right of someone like Berty Russell, I believe.
I think there are good grounds for arresting the entire faculty of Steinford (maybe the Biffs and Bunnies too): they Steinfordians are sort of the Cali vichy to the UC apparatchiks (with more than a few real nazis out in the sticks): and I don’t think one has to be some wild-eyed marxist to understand that. What happened to Nate the appreciative reader of Malatesta, Bakunin, Makhno? (Makhno not my fave, but interesting and tragic figure). The Deed as well as the Idea, comrade.
Comment by Perezoso — August 6, 2007 @ 11:44 am
I don’t see Rorty’s programme so conducive to progressive politics, or, egads, intelligent anarchism. Methinx he was a bit more literatteur than philosophe (and really Quine’s Two Dogmas, however powerful and cogently argued, serves opportunists of all stripes). And Rorty seemed to relish the Ivy League sage role. Rorty’s for the bureaucratic liberals, really; and even to the right of someone like Berty Russell, I believe.
I think there are good grounds for arresting the entire faculty of Steinford (maybe the Biffs and Bunnies too): they Steinfordians are sort of the Cali vichy to the UC apparatchiks (with more than a few real nazis out in the sticks): and I don’t think one has to be some wild-eyed marxist to understand that. What happened to Nate the appreciative reader of Malatesta, Bakunin, Makhno? (Makhno not my fave, but interesting and tragic figure). The Deed as well as the Idea, comrade.
Comment by Perezoso — August 6, 2007 @ 11:44 am
hey there Per,
I agree about the politics of Rorty’s philosophical work. I think his politics and his philosophical work are separable. One of the funny things reading him is that I think he’s at his best when he’s basically saying “people say X therefore Y but Y is not entailed by X, people make this conversational move all the time and even if we’re pro-Y that doesn’t mean the move really holds up.” But then he says basically “pragmatism therefore social democracy”, which is precisely a case of what he always talks about in his philosophical work. Put differently, I find his deflationary moves highly compelling and his positive assertions less than thrilling, to say the least. And I think his positive assertions are not entailed by his deflationary moves.
I still read that other stuff. I have many hobbies.
The deeds I’m involved in aren’t what I want to blog about. First off cuz they’re often slow paced and not very gripping, and second because some of them are connected to workplace organizing which is not yet public so that if I talk much about it folk could possibly get fired. Third off cuz this blog is mostly designed to help me jot down notes about what I’ve been reading lately, to get my brainjuices flowing a bit more than they would otherwise.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 6, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
“The deeds I’m involved in are (…) often slow paced and not very gripping”
As opposed to what I read, which is fast paced and totally gripping… *sigh*
Nothing I’ve read recently could be called either.
Except the newest Harry Potter. That was both. Ron dies, by the way.
Just kidding about Ron.
Deadwood, now that’s exciting and gripping. I don’t read it though, I watch it on TV.
Seriously though, Ron dies. It’s very sad. Also very impressive on Rowling’s part, killing off a major character like that.
Comment by Nate — August 6, 2007 @ 6:33 pm