There was a useful article by Noam Chomsky published in the Nation recently, and now available at http://www.solidarityeconomy.net/2012/05/08/noam-chomsky-on-the-tasks-ahead/
Of particular interest is the following paragraph: **** So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still "Saint Alan"-hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible)-was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called "growing worker insecurity." If working people are insecure, if they're part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they're not going to make demands, they're not going to try to get better wages, they won't get improved benefits. We can kick 'em out, if we don't need 'em. And that's what's called a "healthy" economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired.*** Chomsky has here written what is close to a paraphrase of some powerful passages in the last chapter of _Wages, Price, & Profit_. It was the following passage I had particularly in mind when I wrote my response to Lou's post (my emphasis): ---- These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, ***they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation.*** [1] I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By ***cowardly giving way*** in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.[2] ---- [1] We must hope that Marx's "past salvation" is an exaggeration, but both Lou's post and Chomsky's article point to the substantial failure of the U.S. working class to resist the capitalist offensive which began in the '70s and is still intensifying in the present. (Joanna in a post about a year ago described the demoralization of teachers in Oakland. And recent polls have suggested that demoralization is nationwide. Chicago is an exception, and the struggle of public employees there is of immense importance.) [2] "Disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement" make's the same point I made in using Mao's phrase .(Only his phrase; my posts are not "Maoist" manifestoes. They are intended to reflect Rosa Luxemburge). Chomsky's article underlines the _political_ intentions of the long assault on the working class: it is intended not only to increase profits but to break the spirit of the "precariat" (which includes higher paid workers as well). That is my point in suggesting that the Times article is in an important sense a defense of capitalism, and in any case should give no cheer to anti-capitalists. Carrol P.S. Doug's talk in Berkeley a couple years ago, published in MRZINE, gives an excellent account of the long capitalist offensive from its beginnings in the '70s. Edward Morgan's _What Really Happened to [sic] the 1960s_ traces the cultural and ideological campaign corresponding to that offensive. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
