Justin wrote:
>I am rather inclined to agree with you, Louis, that a middle-class,
>suburban American lifestyle is not sustainable for six or ten
>billion people, and that a sustaianble set of needs will have to be
>rather different from those we now have. I certainly disagree with
>Jim H's SUV socialism, a Suburban Assault Vehicle (or two) in every
>garage. But my point was just that even this is to say something
>different from saying that we have all the needs we ought, too many
>in fact, and that we ought to all cut back, live simply, etc.
>
>I also think that we will not get anywhere with first world workers
>telling them that they must sacrifice; rather, the needs that
>motivate them will have to arise rom a lived experience of common
>struggle, so that reording of priorities will not be experienced as
>sacrifice or renunciation of privilege. Workers in the advanced
>countries don't feel particularly privileged, even if they are
>better off than workers and peasants in poorer nations, and so
>guilt-tripping them will produce resentment rather than solidarity
>with those people in other countries.
I agree with Justin here (for the moment setting aside the question
of exactly how old & new needs can be satisfied under socialism).
There are few things that are more politically ridiculous than the
spectacle of assorted professors & computer programmers on left-wing
e-lists like PEN-l, LBO-talk, & Lou's list preaching the virtues of
sacrifice & simple living to American workers who on average enjoy
much less material comforts than many who post on the lists do. It's
a job of the Boss Man -- definitely not Marxists' -- to tell workers
not to be "greedy." A couple of years ago, Lou was much more
sensible on the subject, and I recall him (rightly) criticizing David
Harvey for being ambivalent (due to ecological reasons) about
defending workers protesting automobile manufacturing plant closures:
***** David Harvey's anomie, part 2
Wed, 29 Apr 1998 11:59:51 -0400
Louis Proyect ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
I find myself increasingly drawn into the existential-political
subtext of David Harvey's "Justice, Nature & the Geography of
Difference."
Although I began reading the book in order to prepare a rebuttal on
the American Indian/ecology question, I find myself deeply fascinated
with the self-portrait that is developing. Harvey wears his heart on
his sleeve and is fetchingly open about his foibles. If only all
academics maintained this posture, the world would be a better place.
What interests me in particular is his odyssey for a grass roots
social base which will allow his theorizing to connect to some living
struggle. He is a prestigious mandarin with enormous feelings of
insecurity about his ability to make a difference in some mass
movement. I, on the other hand, have been connected to some mass
movement or another since 1967 but aspire for the sort of credibility
he has achieved in academia. I always curse myself for having spent
much too much time in the Trotskyist movement, when I should have
been enrolled in some graduate school getting a Ph.D. With the proper
credentials, I could be writing for Science and Society or Rethinking
Marxism, couldn't I? But is that what I really want?
Returning to the angst-ridden Harvey, we discover in the chapter on
"Militant Particularism and Global Ambition" that back in 1988 he had
been invited to participate in a research project in Oxford
concerning the fate of the local Rover auto plant. The union was
fighting to keep the factory open in the face of a threat from
Thatcher to shut it down. This was after a painful series of
downsizings that had cut the workforce from 27,000 to 5,000. It
invited Harvey and a number of other left-wing activists to prepare a
report on the economic impact of a plant closing.
By his own admission, for "personal reasons" Harvey was not "active
in the campaign" and did not "engage much with the initial research."
A key figure in the research project was Teresa Hayter, who received
a research fellowship from St. Peter's College in 1989 to put out a
book on the history of the auto workers' struggle. For purposes of
"making the book more attractive to prospective publishers," Harvey
agreed to be co-editor. This is another way of saying that his fame
could open doors.
Pretty soon Hayter and Harvey began to clash. It reached the point
where he proposed that the book have two conclusions, one by her and
one by him. This idea was rejected and an attempt was made to
synthesize the two points of view, but the political differences were
intractable. Harvey says, "Matters became extremely tense, difficult,
and sometimes hostile between Hayter and me..."
What was the problem?
Harvey says that in a showdown with Hayter, she challenged him to
define his loyalties. "She was very clear about hers. They lay with
the militant shop-stewards in the plant, who were not only staying on
and laboring under the most appalling conditions but daily struggling
to win back control from a reactionary union leadership so as to
build a better basis for socialism. By contrast, she saw me as a
free-floating Marxist intellectual who had no particular loyalties to
anyone. So where did my loyalties lie?"
Harvey admits, "It was a stunning question and I have had to think
about it a great deal since." I t turned out that Harvey had been
ambivalent about the whole notion of keeping the plant open. As one
can imagine, this would have caused strains working in a research
group dedicated to that task. Harvey found himself scrutinizing and
analyzing and criticizing every aspect of the struggle. Deteriorating
working conditions made it hard for him to argue for the preservation
of "shit-jobs." Perhaps it is a little difficult for a full tenured
professor making $75,000 a year to appreciate the worth of such
factory jobs?
He was also worried about the ecological impact of automobiles. This
was very enlightened of him, needless to say. But what I found
extremely troubling was his questioning of the need for automobile
production in a context of overcapacity world-wide. He writes, "I
found myself arguing for at least a European-wide perspective on
adjustments in automobile production capacity, but found it hard to
justify stopping at that scale when pressed."
What a startling formulation! Harvey the great Marxist, author of
"Limits to Capital" is arguing for a "European-wide perspective?"
What in god's name can this mean but a perspective based on the
long-term interests of the bourgeoisie? Workers have completely
different interests. From the point of view of the capitalist class,
overcapacity can only be dealt with through downsizing. For the
affected workers, this means permanent ruin. The only position worth
defending is one that strengthens the self-confidence of the workers.
In the face of Thatcher's attack, the only response that made sense
was keeping the plant open.
Harvey decided to write "Justice, Nature & the Geography of
Difference" in order to subsume the dubious economic demands of the
auto-workers into a grand abstraction that addressed injustice on a
global scale. Oddly enough, the most concrete expression of this
grand schema is the need to keep a distance between the workers
movement and issues of sustainable growth and eco-limits, the sort of
issues posed by Marx himself in V. 3 of Capital. When you combine
this with poor Harvey's inability to understand the class priority of
defending the Rover workers unambiguously, one can only conclude that
there is a deep malaise in academic Marxism.
Louis Proyect
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/apr98/0794.html *****
Whatever has happened to Lou since then? Where is class priority?
Yoshie
