[PEN-L:11783] ISO: UPS Pickets
From: "Andrew J. English" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I was on a national conference call yesterday of Jobs With Justice coalitions with 2 staffers from the Teamsters international union, one of whom was Rand Wilson (communications coordinator for the IBT, former organizer of Boston JWJ, and Labor Party member). They told us that Ron Carey has called for a "National Day of Action for Good Jobs" with labor-community rallies in as many cities as possible for August 21, next week Thursday. People should check with the JWJ coalitions in their areas about details of their local actions. If there is no JWJ, check with the UPS locals and/or central labor councils. -Andy English Phoenix AZ
[PEN-L:11782] Oakland Workers Rally at UPS
Hundreds of union members from a cross-section of the local labor movement rallied outside the large UPS facility in Oakland, CA late Thursday afternoon. The rally was organized hastily by Teamsters Locals 70 and 78. The considerable turnout was organized largely by word of mouth, as there was little time for publicity. There were no flyers. Yet union members came. There were phone company workers, the building trades, teachers, hospital workers, transport workers, dockworkers, and many more. The rally was joined by a members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Despite a court injunction limiting picketing to 8 pickets at the gate, scab-managers who returned their trucks to the facility received a "lively" reception from a large crowd assembled near the gate. The Oakland Police had a token presence and remained at some distance. Local 70 set up a portable BBQ pit and served burgers; two staff members of SEIU Local 250 showed up with two huge pots of chile. Now that the strikers are settling in for the long haul, the Teamsters will have to confront the myriad of problems that any strike must address -- urgent bills, loan and mortage payments, rent payments, groceries, medical care. Strike benefits of $55 per week will not cover much more than some groceries for most families. One of the most urgent concerns is what to do when the medical coverage lapses at the end of the month. This is one problem that other unions can help solve. Unions representing workers in the healthcare industry should consider how their members and sympathetic doctors with whom they work might provide basic health services to strikers for the duration of the strike. Perhaps free screening clinics could be set up a couple times each week at Teamster halls, staffed by volunteer nurses who could then refer those who need special attention to an appropriate volunteer doctor, physical therapist or other medical worker. If you have a idea or experience to share, make it available to others. Lots of great solidarity work goes on; let's report it here so everyone else will know about it. In solidarity, Michael "UPS is definitely DOWN!"
[PEN-L:11781] OUR Families aren't Part-time: CoC on UPS
From: cdavidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OUR Families aren't Part-time: CoC on UPS WE DON'T HAVE PART TIME FAMILIES A Statement by the Committees of Correspondence on the Teamster UPS Strike August 11, 1997 The strike by 185,000 UPS Teamsters is a landmark struggle - not only because it is the largest private labor contract in the country but because the issues involved are driving a truck through the wall of corporate ballyhoo about the 1990s "boom" economy. The strike comes amidst a frenzy of corporate profit taking over the past decade. At UPS, the largest private delivery company in the world, the company raked in more than one billion dollars in profits last year alone. Its riches accrued on the backs of a mostly part time workforce which is paid less than half the full time rate, most with no benefits. This fight goes far beyond UPS. It is a struggle that goes to the heart of corporate power and arrogance today. In the name of competition, the most spectacular profits in history have been accumulated for a few on the backs of workers who more and more cannot afford to feed their families. Corporate America is worried. It knows that this fight is raising the level of awareness for all Americans. As The New York Times observed the other day, if the Teamsters are successful in curbing the use of part timers, it "could not only encourage other unions to confront managements over part-timers, but also enable the labor movement to trumpet a little louder that it is alive and kicking." A UPS striker summed it up in a nutshell: "These companies all have the formula. They don't take you on full time. They don't pay benefits. Then their profits go through the roof." Another Teamster told a strike rally, "We don't have part time families. We don't have part time children to feed and clothe, and when it's time to pay the mortgage, banks won't accept part time payment. We need full time jobs and full time pay." It's no mystery how UPS made over a billion dollars in profit last year. The company pockets $11 an hour for every worker they don't have to hire full time. It pockets even more if part timers leave the company before they qualify for benefits. No wonder that part timers make up 60% of the UPS workforce and that the definition of part time work is anything less than 40 hours a week. More than 10,000 part timers are working 35 hours or more a week. In the past four years only 20% of all new hires at UPS have been full time workers. One important reason for the high turnover rate for part timers - who labor at the most dangerous, back-breaking jobs and are most likely disproportionately African American and Latino workers - is the notorious health and safety record at UPS. Since 1990, OSHA has documented more than 1,300 violations against UPS. Of the 180,000 part time workers hired by UPS in 1996, only 40,000 remain. The union is demanding a $3.67 an hour raise over four years for part time workers, and the conversion of 10,000 part time jobs into full time positions. Also at stake is the company's threat to pull out of a multi-employer pension fund which would jeopardize the pensions of hundreds of thousands of Teamsters left in the multi-employer plans. UPS is the largest contributor to the fund. The unity of the strikers on the picket lines - part time and full time workers - is the most recent example of a rising level of trade union militancy. It follows on the heels of other significant strikes - won and lost - of the past five years in the ranks of autoworkers, steelworkers, rubber workers, agricultural implement workers, newspaper workers, and farmworkers of the strawberry and mushroom fields. Workers in the U.S. are getting fed up working harder for less. Real wages have declined a dramatic 17.5% since 1972. Health benefits cover fewer and fewer workers. Some 41 million or 15.4% of all Americans lacked health care insurance throughout 1995. More and more companies are doing what UPS has been doing, evidenced by the 19.5% of the workforce counted as part time in 1994 - up from 14 percent in 1969. The number is actually far higher since the BLS counts as full-time people who hold two part-time jobs, or a full-time and a part-time job. Teamsters are preparing themselves for a lengthy protracted struggle. We should do everything possible to build support for this strike. If you are a member of a community organization, trade union, church, block club - urge adoption of a statement of support. Call the Teamster office in your city and ask how your organization can help on picket lines, phone calling, letter writing - whatever can be helpful to broaden the fight. Teamsters are urging everyone to do the following: .. Ship with another carrier. .. Call or write your local UPS office or call toll-free 1-800-PICK-UPS (1-800-742-5877) and tell the company that our economy needs good full time jobs. .. Share this information with your coworkers, frie
[PEN-L:11780] Re: Black Male Employment
Doug Henwood wrote: > > Speaking of the incarceration of black males in the U.S., I recently came > across a factoid that shocked me, and I thought I was pretty much > un-shockable. Based on present rates of incarceration, Mills, Edwin S. and Luan Sende Lubuele. 1997. "Inner Cities." Journal of Economic Literature, 35: 2 (June): pp. 727-56. 746: For all males, those under the supervision of the criminal justice system are 6.6% of the male labor force. For males 18-34 years old, the figure is 11 percent. For all black males 18-34 years old, the figure is 59.4 percent. Freeman, Richard. 1994. "Crime and the Job Market." National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 4910. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11779] Re: Sex work and choice
On Thu, August 14, 1997 at 10:09:20 (-0700) Harry M. Cleaver writes:
>> 2. In fact, if we take the petty bourgeois morality out of the picture,
>> prostitution is work just as any other work, except that a prostitute owns
>> the means of production, and under most circumstances she is paid for the
>> "product" rather than for the time. ...
>
>Wojtek: I think the "owning of the means of production" assumes a
>dualistic and alienated relationship between prostitutes and their
>bodies/minds/personalities. I can't see any more reason for looking at
>these aspects of prostitutes as "means of production" than I can for any
>worker. These are parts of themselves, the parts they must sell the use of
>in order to earn income, just like other workers sell the use of their
>arms, hands, minds, personalities. We may not like the way these parts of
>us are used/abused but that doesn't make them "means of production". They
>are elements of our laborpower, our ability and willingness to work as
>well as parts of our being and potential for all kinds of activity, not
>just work.
Correct me if I am wrong in my reading of Marx's "Pre-Capitalist
Economic Formations" of the Grundrisse, but is it not there argued
that the "means of production" are *immanent* in the worker?
Disagreement with this, or a slight lapsus of the old calami, might
lead Wojtek to state that the prostitute "owns" the means of
production, when in fact this skill/commodity cannot be "owned" until
the "highly energetic solvent" of capital is applied to create the
"*plucked*, object-less *free workers*", as Marx puts it, with tools
and skills commodified, externalized, alienated from the worker.
As I (shakily) understand things, the defining relationship of
capitalism is that between workers and capitalists. Capitalists are
those who *own* the productive property (capital) of the community,
whereas workers own no productive property and must rent themselves to
the capitalists in return for a wage. In order to have this
relationship, labor must be "free" in Marx's term, meaning, it must be
somehow commodified (made to exchange with money) and circulate about
freely---that is, not tied to property or tradition, or owned
permanently by anyone in particular (as in, say, slavery). To achieve
this, "the separation of free labour from the objective conditions of
its realization" must occur, meaning workers must be "freed" of
productive property ("the objective conditions of its realization");
in fact property is defined by Marx to originally be "the relation of
the working (producing or self-reproducing) subject to the conditions
of his production or reproduction as his own"; it is in this sense
that workers are commonly referred to as "propertyless" in Marxist
discourse. This second step entails "dissolution of small, free
landed property as well as of communal landownership" in which the
worker "relates to himself as proprietor, as master of the conditions
of his reality" and to "others in the same way", just as would a
farmer who owned his own land and worked it to provide the "sustenance
of [himself] and of his family, as well as of the total community"
relate to other such farmers.
So, reading this, and assuming the absence of a pimp, are prostitutes
properly considered capitalists, as Wojtek would imply by his claim
that they "own" the means of production, or are they more like the
pre-capitalist peasant of Marx's comments above?
Bill
[PEN-L:11778] Re: Karl Carlisle
A tip of the hat to Michael Perelman. What a great moderator. Unobtrusive except when action is called for. And earlier when he said that the thread on prostitution was "repetitious", that's all I needed to hear. Done. Louis P. On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Michael Perelman wrote: > Sorry about bringing up the subject again. Our friend was asked to leave > the list. I removed him. He then signed up under an assumed name. > > When he posted to the list again, I removed his name -- not because of > anything he wrote on this round, but because of requests stemming from > past behavior. > > He then contacted me, questioning my sanity and my current employment with > the CIA. I would hope that this would be the end of the affair. > -- > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > Chico, CA 95929 > > Tel. 916-898-5321 > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >
[PEN-L:11777] Karl Carlisle
Sorry about bringing up the subject again. Our friend was asked to leave the list. I removed him. He then signed up under an assumed name. When he posted to the list again, I removed his name -- not because of anything he wrote on this round, but because of requests stemming from past behavior. He then contacted me, questioning my sanity and my current employment with the CIA. I would hope that this would be the end of the affair. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11776] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
Harry M. Cleaver wrote: >Historically it its. Marx used the term to talk about capital's own >expansion, the way it "valorized" itself quantitatively. Negri took the >term, obscure as it was, and turned it inside out applying it to working >class subjectivity. Instead of capital valorizing itself, workers >sometimes valorize themselves, not as moments of capital but as autonomous >subjects (building post capitalist social relations or communism). Some of >us have used in this sense to focus on the creative positive side of >struggle that goes beyond resistance and attack to constitutive power >--the founding of alternatives. All I can say is we need a lot more of this. Doug
[PEN-L:11775] Re note to pen'lrs--last post on this subject
> Dear Pen-L'rs, > > Karl Carlisle, with whom I've had absolutely no previous email contact, > wrote me today and ask that the list be informed that he has been removed > again for sending a long post on the prostitution thread. He asked me to > post the whole thing to the list, but instead I will simply quote one > sentence from the conclusion that indicates the basic argument: > > "Why should selling one's body be qualitatively any worse than selling one's > labour power to an industrial capitalist?" > > Interested parties could write him to get the whole post, I guess. > > I am not at all an interested party, just passing this on. > > cheers, > Thad > Thad Williamson > National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives > 2000 P St. #330 > Washington, DC 20036 > 202-835-1150 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > On one abstract or theoretical level perhaps there is no real difference. On the other hand, a la linking theory and practice, I suggest that all the academics who see no real differences try selling their bodies to a stranger just to "empirically verify" their ivory tower theories. Jim Craven *---* * "Those who take the most from the table,* * James Craventeach contentment. * * Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, * * Clark College demand sacrifice.* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, * * (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. * * Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, * * for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
[PEN-L:11774] The Northern Line
This was posted to [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is not clear how much is fictionalized and how much is based on actual people and events. --- From: Richard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The grayed skies were in constant motion. Drizzle then downpour then topaz blue skies then rain again. Drive to the end of town, past the airport, past the post office, to the end of the paved road. A diverse group on the shoulder, huddled under umbrella's waiting for the sun. Men, a woman, black and white, part time and full time, Pride At Work, CLUW ... a diverse group of Teamsters betting their paychecks on a fair deal. "Why?" I asked. Willie Johnston III, a black man supporting a wife and two kids is quick to answer. "I left Sears because of this (part time work) I worked more than 40 hours most weeks and still they kept me part time. Four years they strung me along. UPS is doing the same thing. I have to hold two jobs because I can't count on UPS ... they can count on me to show up for work, but I can't count on them for work." Mike Streiffert adds, "I worked full time hours for 4 years with UPS as a part time employee. Finally they made me full time, and I lost money. It is just a matter of power and control for UPS to keep us part time when they have full time work. And part time employees earn part time sick leave, vacation time, and especially pension credit. You can work full time hours and still earn part time pension credit." Streiffert continues, "And I don't trust them with the pension funds. When the investments are doing well, the trustees I elect pour the earnings back into the pension fund. UPS wants to cut the bosses contribution to the fund when investments are up. When the economy booms shouldn't the benefits go to the workers that made the economy boom?" "And I don't want them to have control," adds Mike Harney, a deeply religious man and the most senior full time UPS Teamster in town. "We have a stable board of trustees and a stable plan. UPS could take that away. Their proposal take away our security. Its about money and control. If UPS has control, a single day's interest is big money that can be taken away from us." Mike Streiffert adds, "and the wages... they are offering wages that don't keep up with inflation...only 1.5% with inflation running higher. They want me to take an annual pay cut." A cool drizzle starts and the umbrella huddle re-forms. Teamsters on the linebetting their paychecks on a fair deal for America. FORWARD FREELY Richard Seward Fairbanks Alaska August 14, 1997
[PEN-L:11773] note to pen'lrs
Dear Pen-L'rs, Karl Carlisle, with whom I've had absolutely no previous email contact, wrote me today and ask that the list be informed that he has been removed again for sending a long post on the prostitution thread. He asked me to post the whole thing to the list, but instead I will simply quote one sentence from the conclusion that indicates the basic argument: "Why should selling one's body be qualitatively any worse than selling one's labour power to an industrial capitalist?" Interested parties could write him to get the whole post, I guess. I am not at all an interested party, just passing this on. cheers, Thad Thad Williamson National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives 2000 P St. #330 Washington, DC 20036 202-835-1150 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11772] Harvard's Elaine Bernard on the Strike
Michael, Thanks for all the information you're pouring into cyberspace! I thought you might find the following of interest. A question was posted to Noam Chomsky on Znet (www.lbbs.org) and he passed it on to Elaine Bernard whose answer is below. The Teamster UPS strike is without question the most important labor dispute in a decade or more. It's large, with over 180,000 workers on strike. It's national in scope, with actions taking place in every state and major city around the country. It effects a significant section of the business community. UPS has 80% of the small package business and this volume of freight cannot easily be picked up by other carriers. It will have a noticeable effect on the economy as a whole -- though from UPS's point of view, this is the best time of year for a strike, before the heavy fall season. For Ron Carey (President of the Teamsters) this is a crucial strike, as he was a UPS employee (as was his father, so Carey has deep roots with this company), and from my knowledge of Carey, I would suggest that much of his personal reform commitment has come from his frustration over the decimation of the wages and working conditions at UPS through concession agreements signed by the teamster old guard in the 1980s. Finally, the UPS strike is the first big national dispute, by a major affiliate of the AFL-CIO under Sweeney, Trumka and Chavez-Thompson's watch, and they recognize that the whole labor movement has a big stake in the outcome of this strike. While the teamsters are not yet a model of union democracy, they've come a long way since the election of Carey and a reform slate. While the Wall Street Journal seems to think that Carey has called the UPS strike simply to take attention off recent scandals over illegal union election activities and money laundering during his re-election campaign, this is complete nonsense. It's a simple fact that no union leader could get 180,000 workers into the streets, foregoing wages, and risking everything, simply as a cover-up. These workers aren't anybody's "cannon fodder." They're angry at UPS and know that the company has been making lots of money, on their backs -- and they are demanding their share. Further, on the corruption issue, no link has been made to Carey himself or any teamsters involved in his re-election campaign. There's no question that the "Ansara/Share" affair has hurt Carey, and in my opinion, reflects poor judgement in working with outside consultants, but Carey is not a mobster, does not have connections to organized crime and has been in a long and hard battle to clean up those parts of the union that are still in the grips of "wise guys" and their friends. Carey has a tough row to hoe. He is fighting on two fronts, both inside his union (against the old regime -- now lead by James Hoffa Jr.) and with the employers. And the internal battle has clearly weakened his capacity to deal with employers and they know it and are taking advantage of it any time they can. When Carey tried to shut down UPS for a protest a few years ago around the company's directive increasing the load that drivers would be forced to accept (from 75 pounds to an incredible 150 pounds), the opposition told workers it was an "illegal strike" and not to participate. It was sabotaged from inside. The internal fight within the teamsters continues to this day, though in this current dispute, the Hoffa forces do not appear to be openly criticizing the strike -- though clearly a victory for the union in this dispute would bolster Carey's authority, so I don't expect that they will be silent for long. In my opinion, the hiring of scabs will not be an issue in this dispute. UPS is currently using their supervisory staff to try and deliver the freight currently in their system (caught by the strike), and doesn't appear to be picking up any new packages for delivery. And they probably won't for the duration of the strike. Permanently replacing such a large trained staff is tough, and its not likely to happen. One issue to watch for, however, is that UPS may try and fire activists for picket line activities after the dispute. One way you can tell who "won" a strike -- as the final agreement is often a compromise -- is if the union can prevent this type of victimization. However, a more likely termination scenario is that Clinton might intervene (he arguably has the power to do so under the Taft-Hartley Act) by determining that the strike constitutes a "national emergency." This would give him the power to force the strikers back-to-work (as he has done with Airline and Rail disputes in recent years, thought they are under different legislation). The two key issues in the dispute are pensions and full-time jobs. On pensions, the company is seeking to get out of the Teamster pension fund. This would weaken the unions multi-employer fund (with UPS the largest employer in the fund), reduce portability of the pension for members, s
[PEN-L:11771] UPS strikers in Berkeley tomorrow
UPS strikers from Teamsters Locals 315 and 70 will walk the streets of downtown Berkeley and the U.C. campus on Friday, August 15, to explain the isssues in the strike. Community supporters are welcome to join them. Meet at Berkeley BART station, Center & Shattuck, at noon. Call Roger at 548-5020 for further information. In a related development, UPS scabs were driven out of the Hs. Lordship's parking lot in the Berkeley Marina, which they had been using as an illegal loading dock, by the Berkeley Police on the initiative of the city government. UPS insisted that it was a "public lot" and refused to leave until Hs. Lordship's management called the BPD. (The lot is reserved for Hs. Lordship's customers only.) See front page of today's _Berkeley Voice_ for more details.
[PEN-L:11770] recycling prostitution
Are we getting a bit repetitive here? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11769] A Flashback
This discussion on prostitution brought back a flashback. Years ago I was driving a Taxi and it was about 3 am in the morning in Seattle and I was coming back after dropping someone off in an area (14th and Yesler for those who know Seattle) that is occupied mostly by poor African-Americans. As I was at a stop light, an African-American woman jumped into my cab. I asked her where she wanted to go and she said "Please mister, I need to feed my children, I'll do whatever you want just $5.00 or $10.00 if you can spare it. You can come to my house and see that I have children, this isn't for dope--honest." She didn't know if I had some disease, she obviously couldn't afford even a condom and didn't ask if I had one or would use one. She was desperate, pure and simple. I gave her some money and she said "what do you want?" I said right now, I'd like to see you off the street at home with your children. She just couldn't believe that somebody didn't want something except that she and her children would be out of a dangerous situation and as I tell my daughter your job is to grow up "healthy and happy and strong". When I read this disgusting crap about "voluntary exchanges", "alternative work arrangements", "just another kind of whoring" or whatever--typical libertarian crap--I am forced to relive that night. This woman was not the exception, her situation was the rule--and not only for women of color or women in the "Third World" but prostitutes in many cases--they get used, abused and then thrown away just liike any commodity. It is not "petit-bourgeois morality" to call for an end to such abuse, it is rank petit-bourgeois metality--and worse--to be inpervious to such pain and exploitation, all in the name of carving up facts to fit some bullshit--and publishable--theory. BTW, since it has been asserted that "We are all whores" I suggest we all create a kind of list of the week titled "My Tricks for the Week." Should be interesting reading. Jim Craven *---* * "Those who take the most from the table,* * James Craventeach contentment. * * Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, * * Clark College demand sacrifice.* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, * * (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. * * Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, * * for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
[PEN-L:11768] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: > So I guess this autonomic Marxism is something I have to learn more about. > My only reaction to Harry's post is that anything that coincides with the > thinking of the dreadful Karl Carlile must be re-examined. But what do I know. Louis: Although Franco has explained some things already, let me just add a couple of things. First, I think you will find, upon examination, that neither my arguments nor those of the people I associate with "autonomist Marxism" have much in common with the thinking of Carlile. Indeed, we have spoken past each other before and his vehement attacks on autonomist Marxist thought resemble Craven's rants more than anything else. > > On the question of prostitution itself, I tend to think that one of the > great things about the Cuban and Chinese revolutions is that they put a > stop to the "sex industry" right away. Louis: If I remember the history correctly, the unhelpful thing they did was to outlaw it, the good thing was to provide some alternative employment to prostitutes. I have no idea of what > "self-valorization" under capitalism means. This sounds like a > contradiction in terms. Louis: Historically it its. Marx used the term to talk about capital's own expansion, the way it "valorized" itself quantitatively. Negri took the term, obscure as it was, and turned it inside out applying it to working class subjectivity. Instead of capital valorizing itself, workers sometimes valorize themselves, not as moments of capital but as autonomous subjects (building post capitalist social relations or communism). Some of us have used in this sense to focus on the creative positive side of struggle that goes beyond resistance and attack to constitutive power --the founding of alternatives. I do think that the re-emergence of prostitution in > Cuba is an awful symptom of what is being lost there. > Louis: I suspect you are quite right, but don't know enough to be sure. I guess we all fear that Cuba will slide back into the hands of the sugar kings and casino lords that ran it before --regardless of how differently we may view workers struggles in Cuba today. > At any rate I suppose I will have to find out more about this autonomic > Marxism stuff at some point and render my untutored and autodidactic > opinion here. > > Louis Proyect > Louis: there is an incomplete course outline with partially annotated bibliography for a course I teach on the subject at url: gopher://mundo.eco.utexas.edu:70/00/fac/hmcleave/Class%20Materials/Eco%20387L%20Autonomist%20Marxism/Syllabus which can be reached through my home page whose url is given below. Harry Harry Cleaver Department of Economics University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1173 USA Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 478-8427 (off) (512) 475-8535 Fax:(512) 471-3510 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cleaver homepage: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index.html Chiapas95 homepage: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html Accion Zapatista homepage: http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
[PEN-L:11767] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > > To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing > sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But that > does not mean that sex work work should be abolished (as they did in Cuba or > China which -- I strongly suspect-- was an expression of patriarchal petty > bourgeois morality than anything else), just as the dismal conditions in the > "Satanic Mills" did not justify abolishing textile industry altogether. It > means that sex work should be treated and protected in the same way as any > other kind of work. > This seems nuts to me. After Castro took over, the government was faced with the appalling legacy of Cuba as the fleshpot of the United States. It was used for sex tours the way that the Philippines is used today by American or Japanese tourists. In the current issue of the Village Voice there is an article on a Queens travel agency that takes men to a 10-night sex tour of the Philippines. The article states: "But if Big Apple is withering, the sex-tour industry is thriving.Fueled by giant disparities in the global economy and the ever increasing ease of travel, international gender exploitation has blossomed into what may be as much as a billion-dollar industry, according to ECPAT, an international children's rights group that says its name stands for End Child Prostitution Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. A growing number of companies organize trolling expeditions of the sex industry, which group up around Western military men in poor Asian countries. Advertising in magazines such as Asia File and Soldier of Fortune, most will also happily send you videos and related merchandise... But the draw is not just plentiful cheap sex, but also the chance to feel desirable. Filipina 'ladies are interested in all American men regardless of age, weight, or looks,' promises Bushwhackers, a Nevada-based tour company. 'It's like being an attractive woman in America,' one satisified customer has been quoted as saying. 'You look like Tom Cruise and you're that rich!' Sex-tour leaders also tap into plain old hostility toward 'American bitches who won't give you the time of day,' as one brochure puts it. Tales of toe kissing, hand laundering, and other forms of Asian-female subservience are juxtaposed with nasty swipes at feminist foes of sex tourism, whom Alan Gaynor of Philippine Adventure Tours has called 'a bunch of jealous, frustrated trouble-makers who don't know the truth.'" My guess is that the Philippine revolutionary movement calls for the end of such sex-tours and would probably ban prostitution on taking power. This sort of goal has nothing to do with the movement in the United States to legalize prostitution. Many women in the United States who are in the sex industry put forward arguments that we are hearing here and should be judged on their own merits. The question of prostitution in countries like pre-revolutionary China and Cuba and the Philippines of today involves all sorts of issues related to colonial oppression and require a different approach. It would be foolhardy for Western Marxists to rationalize what is going on in Thailand, India or the Philippines. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:11766] Re: Query for Harry Cleaver
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, James Michael Craven wrote:
> Harry,
>
> Since you assert that my assertions about the nature and effects of
> prostitution are mere a priori assertions, please answer the
> following: 1) How many prostitutes have you personally spoken with at
> length about these issues? 2) How many prostitutes has your graduate
> student spoken with? 3) Under what conditions? (e.g. a Japanese
> person interviewing prostitutes in Japan might have a real problem
> because of the pervasive and brutal influences of the Yakuza and
> prostitutes might fear reprisals); 4) What empirical work have you
> done/published in this area?; 5) How many activists dealing with mail-
> order-brides, prostitution etc in Asia and elsewhere have you spoken
> with?
Jim: THIS kind of argument, I think, is called "appeal to authority". I
haven't done ANY formal field research in the sex industry, nor have I
pretended to. What I know has come from informal interaction and
investigatiang the results of others research. You sound like a Pentagon
spokesperson back in the 1960s to anti-war dissidents: "If you haven't
been in the battlefields in Vietnam, then you don't know what you're
talking about and should shut up and believe the authorities!" This kind
of argument assumes that we disagree about facts and that you can one-up
me because you have "been there". Our arguments here have never been about
"facts" Mr Gradgrind, but about what we make of various situations we have
seen, heard and read about. Indeed, you have never disputed the examples I
have pointed to, only thrown up evidence of other situations as an excuse
for dismissing the former. You have been so intent on laying out
evidence from your experience and waving your revolutionary fervor that a
real dialog has never happened. (As to Satoko's work, I've already given
the url for her proposal and she can speak for her self when she returns
from the field. What I can tell you is that she has been living and
working in the red-light district of a major Japanese industrial city and
keeping a detailed journal on her experiences and what she has learned
from her sex-worker friends.)
>
> If anyone is interested, I can make copies of my work (in Spanish)
> in Puerto Rico ("Dimensions, Impacts and Dynamics of Some Industries
> of the Underground Economy of Puerto Rico") including some of my raw
> notes and informant reports available.
>
Jim: Like I said, although I might disagree with your interpretations if I
had been with you, given our different perspectives, I have not disputed
your experience. Your research has not been challenged and there is no
need to offers your notebooks as proof.
> Here we go back to an old debate. When any and all forms of rebellion
> or counter-culture are framed as progressive and characterized as
> "self-valorization", "individualistic empowerment" etc, then it
> becomes very easy to legitimate--even commodify--narcissistic self-
> indulgence as "revolution."
Jim: Here you go again. Please cite, concretely, where I have "framed"
"all forms of rebellion or counter-culture" as "progressive" or called
them "self-valorization"?? I have not. You rave and rant, raise up straw
men and burn them to the ground. You convince, I dare say, no one, of
anything except your own intemperateness.
The libertarians and other anarchists
> love this stuff because it allows them to indulge in their own
> individualistic acts and self-indulgent life styles (that really do
> nothing for anybody except themselves and a few followers) and handle
> the congnitive dissonance problem by framing any and all acts of
> ultra-individualism as "rebellion" and therefore "revolutionary."
>
Jim:Ah, ha! So now you flail away at "libertarians and other anarchists"
and try to tar me in the process, just like you did with Satoko and
Japanese racists. You don't come right out and attack me directly, you do
so through loose association. Tsk,tisk! You may think that all
libertarians and anarchists "indulge" themselves and rationalize it as
revolutionary, but if you do, it just shows you don't know many of them.
> They can say "we are all whores" in some way so therefore what the
> hell, one kind of whoring is the same as another.
Jim: Show me some anarchist writing where this is done. You won't find it
in Emma Goldmann's work, or any other that I have seen. In as much as I
have said "we are all prostitutes" you are clearing trying to smear me
indirectly. But I have never said "therefore what the hell"! That's your
fantasy, conjured up because, I guess, you can't see what to do with the
arguments that I have suggested to you.
On one level I can
> see the argument, and certainly academics who do Faustian bargains
> for tenure, promotions, publish-or-perish etc have no business
> "looking down" on prostitutes; on the other hand, I just can't forget
> the pain and devastation I have seen in Asia and elsewhere. I'm
> sorry, but this crap
Jim: "Cra
[PEN-L:11765] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, James Michael Craven wrote: > I > did not find these women and men seeing themselves as "self- > valorizing" themselves or practicing a form of "self-determination" > or "empowered" in any meaningful way. Sure some would mock the tricks > and take delite in getting over on them but there was always a look > of sadness and expression of marginal pleasure out of a situation of > desperation and hopelessness. > Jim:Once again since I have no idea what you mean by "self-valorization" and I'm convinced you have had no idea what I mean by it, I hardly know how to evaluate your "evidence". Since I rather doubt on the basis of your last post that we might agree about what "meaningful" empowerment or self-detrmination might be, I can wonder if I might come to the same conclusions from the same interviews. Given what I do mean by self-valorization (which I spelled out briefly in my last response) I would hope that things are not as bleak in Puerto Rico as you paint them, but they may well be. I'm willing to assume that there are any number of very desperate situations in the world of prostitution, as there are in so many other domains of work. > Prostitutes by virtue of their conditions of work, atomization > (atomization is consciously designed to keep them powerless and > unorganized) and isolation, attitudes (many were extremely anti- > communist and anti-socialist eventhough they sometimes had a hard > time articulating what it was about communism and socialism they > opposed) typically belong more in the lumpenproletariat than in the > classical proletariat. Of course there are many in the > lumpenproletariat who have progressive sympathies and have played > progressive roles while there are also some in the proletariat who > are reactionary and have inhibited progressive struggles. I think > that much of Franz Fanon's work helped to break down some of the anti- > lumpenproletariat biases and stereotypes common in the left and that > he was right on in suggesting that the potentially progressive > sympathies and roles played among some in the lumpenproletariat have > been grossly underestimated. > Jim: 1.Certainly those that seek to control prostitutes try (and often succeed) in keeping them seperated from each other, atomized as it were. On the other hand, clearly in some places at some times, prostitutes have been able to organize themselves and have fought for and won better working conditions, etc. What is needed is an analysis of the conditions under which and the means through which some have succeeded and others failed to do this, not just a focus on failure and a dismissal of success. 2.I don't think the "classical proletariat" - "lumpenproletariat" dichotomy is very useful, especially not now, perhaps not ever. I certainly don't see what we gain in understanding of the exploitation and struggles of prostitutes through the use of these terms. Recent Marxist studies of 18th C England have shown how the "criminal class" usually lumped in with the lumpen was actually made up of ordinary workers. (See Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged, and also Albion's Fatal Tree by Linebaugh and other Thompson ex-students.) At any rate all you have done is label them, not used the concept to reveal anything. > On the other hand, it was not because of petit-bourgeois morality > that the Chinese and Cuban revolutions de jure abolished prostitution > as one of the first official acts and worked to abolish it de facto. > They understood that prostitution is about much more than the > "exchange of use of genitals"; it is about commodification, which > under capitalism is more about degradation and depreciation than > "self-valorization" and "empowerment"; it can cause all sorts of > problems in families (imagine the husband goes home and after giving > his wife STDs from a visit to a prostitute says "But honey, I was > only aiding in the empowerment and self-valorization of a fellow > worker who just happens to be selling a different kind of product but > essentially doing what I do at work"), for the families of > prostitutes as well as prostitutes themselves (drug addiction, > pimps). Jim:Pretending that I think prostitution is just about fucking and then making fun of it is not a convincing way of arguing. Concocting a ridiculous scene and then making fun of it does not consistute a serious argument either, however entertaining. Obviously prostitution is about "commodification","degradation" and "depreciation", as is every other sale of labor power. Self-valorization and empowerment are things people sometimes manage to accomplish despite and against these things. What I don't understand about the whole trend of your comments is your continual tendency to ridicule or dismiss the possibility that such accomplishment CAN happen. Why are you so determined to deny the possibility of sucessful struggle? Further, in the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, there was an > und
[PEN-L:11764] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, James Michael Craven wrote: > Response (Jim C): I agree with your notion that there are many forms > and levels of prostitution and indeed many forms and levels of > brutality and degradation under capitalism. But another way of > interpreting your comments above--about sex workers hiring others for > their own "pleasure" is that it is analogous to abused becoming > abusers; further, the glowing descriptions of the "power" their > sexual competence gives them could also be interpreted as a typical > reaction of the powerless seeking some marginal form of power in > their own lives. Jim:What's with you? Why is it that in each argument your mind leaps to the worst possible interpretation and ignores any other? Why can you not imagine that sex workers hire other prostitutes for real pleasure? Why do you jump to the intepretation that they just want someone to abuse? Why do you keep repeating horror stories or dreaming up possible horror stories instead of accepting the possibility that there are attitudes and behaviors different from those you have encountered. If you refuse to accept any evidence that differs from your own, then there is no point to discussion --and your own understanding will stagnate. > I see no a priori reason to dismiss all this as mere delusion > > by perhaps once abused individuals. Just as other workers can subvert > > their work for their own purposes and empowerment, so can some sex > > workers. "Detournement" as the situationists called it, is a common > > element of subversion in many jobs. Why not this one? > > > > Response (Jim C): My reasons are not "a priori". I once worked as an > Analista de Planificacion for the government of Puerto Rico. My work > involved analysis and estimation of linkages/leakages of the > underground economy in P.R (drugs, prostitution, bolitos etc) from > the ground up. In the course of that work, I interviewed literally > hundreds of prostitutes (always in confidence and not one was ever > turned in and they knew it). I never met even one "sex worker" who > looked forward to going to work or who did not have dreams of using > the money "to get out of the business." Yes, workers have various > ways of suberting the power relations and brutality in the work place > but real empowerment comes through collective action which may or may > not come about or be enhanced through individualistic reactions and > forms of subversion in the workplace; sometimes these individualistic > reactions and attempts at "empowerment" through individual acts of > subversion--not coupled with collective action--may even set back the > forms and levels of collective action necessary. > Jim: Straw man and belittlement. I never said that all, or even most, prostitutes "like going to work", so why are you arguing against the idea that they might. I have no doubt that many don't. I never said that all, or even most, prostitutes wouldn't like to "get out of the business", so why are you arguing that many do. I wouldn't be surprised; most of us would like to change jobs to better working conditions, more control and higher income. "Real empowerment"? Why do you attack "individual acts of empowerment" because they "may" not lead to collective empowerment. How about analysing how they they sometimes do "lead to collective empowerment". How are we to differentiate if we don't examine both situations. How do you think people get to the point of acting collectively? They come to it through their own self-activity, which is always social, always connected to others. This individual/collective dichotomy is both old and misleading because of this. Only individuals act. They may act collectively but individuals are doing the acting. Ignore what motivates them to do so and you fail to understand even collective action. And don't tell me about the fallacy of composition. I'm NOT arguing that collective action is some summation of indiviual action neoclassical style. How do you think organized of groups of prostitutes, like PONY in New York, got organized? > that they regard sex > > > as a business and that housewives and girlfriends are essentially in > > > the same business they are in, > > > > Jim: And they are all too often right, I would say. More frequently than > > many would like to admit a marriage is just a long term contract to > > provide sexual and other services in exchange for income and job tenure. > > (Jane Austin wrote about his in her novels, without calling a > > spade a spade but the lesson is spelled out clear as day.) Prostitutes > > negotiate short-term contracts, spouses negotiate long term > > ones (often with legal documents these days). In general I think one of > > the best descriptions of capitalism is a society of generalized > > prostitution. We are all prostitutes, the only choice we have is which > > part of our selves are we going to make available for work. Some make > > their genitals available
[PEN-L:11763] Prostitution
At the time of liberation in China in 1949 there were over 100,000 child (under 14 years old) "prostitutes" in Shanghai alone. And those nasty "petit-bourgeois" and "patriarchical" fighters, who had seen and suffered so much, just couldn't get it. They just couldn't see how these children were merely engaging in "alternative forms of work", "free voluntary exchanges". They had some crazy "petit-bourgois" and "patriarchical" notions that these "prostitutes"--often kept through opium addiction-- were not providing some kind of real service. They had these "petit-bourgeois" notions that along with prostitution came other ills (drugs, criminal organizations like the Triads) that not only degraded women but also caused desperately-need resources to be diverted away from the business of building a new China. The same with the Cubans; they just didn't appreciate all of the positive multiplier effects that came with Cuba being turned into one big whorehouse prior to the Revolution. Again, for all of you guys who think that prostitution is simply some kind of alternative life and work arrangement, I suggest you try it-- just so you won't be accused of "a priori" reasoning of course. Jim Craven *---* * "Those who take the most from the table,* * James Craventeach contentment. * * Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, * * Clark College demand sacrifice.* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, * * (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. * * Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, * * for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
[PEN-L:11762] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
Response (Jim C) I have a suggestion for all those males online--and any females--who think that prostitution is just like any other job: Try it for yourself. Try having a stranger's penis in you wherever he wants it. Try going out with some freak in a car not knowing whether or not you're coming back or what kind of freak scene awaits you. Try going for regular check-ups (if you can afford it) wondering if you have just contracted a fatal disease. Try having a pimp beat the shit out of you because you didn't turn enough tricks. Try having cops shake you down--for money or sex. Petit-bourgeois morality? No petit-bourgeois morality is a bunch of isolated, self-indulgent, know-it-all "House Marxists" and "House progressives" attempting to justify their own elitist petit- bourgeois notions by summarily dismissing away some real pain and suffering with bullshit theories in search of anecdotes and exceptions to some brutal rules. Patriarchy is the foundation of prostitution: take her when you need her, how you need her, for as long as you need her, no commitment, just like buying liver at the Safeway. This, in my opinion is absolutely sick and disgusting. "House Marxists of the World Unite; You Have Nothing to Lose Except Your Pet Theories Rationalizing Your Comfortable Isolated Existences." Jim Craven > Jim C: > > On the pain of repeating of what has already been said in this discussion: > > Work conditions vary enormously in the sex industry. Without denying the > validity of your Puerto Rico observations, the conditions you describe are > general working conditons in underdeveloped countries, rather than specific > to sex industry. I suspect that the way people are treated in sweatshops > are no different from the treatment of sex workers in those countries. Do > you think that sweatshop workers are not desperate, look forward to do their > work, and do not want to use their money to get out of the sweatshop? > > But what is true of the developing countries, is not necessarily true of the > developed ones. While I was a grad student at Rutgers, some of my > colleagues did ethnographies of sex work (not all of it involved genital or > oral sex, there was also "exotic" dancing, or phone sex) -- and what clearly > transpired form those enthnographies (based on the reports I heard) was that > women who did it, often reported choosing that occupation over other options > mainly for two reasons: higher pay and greater occupational autonomy that > included the ability to set their own work schedules and the ability to > accept or refuse work. > > OTOH, most of these informants were white women working in suburban New > Jersey. I suspect that a Black or Latina sex worker working, say, in the > Bronx would report a somewhat different experience. > > The bottom line is that sex workers tend to be viewed (including by > themselves) through the lenses of the social status of their occupation > rather than through the objective conditions of their work. That social > status, in turn, is rooted in the patriarchal petty bourgeois morality that, > as some argue, resents the fact that women have a choice of their sex > partners (a choice that women in bourgeois marriages typically do not have) > -- and thus stigmatizes these women to ostracize them from the mainstream > society. From that standpoint, the social status of sex work is an attempt > to prevent a "dangerous example" (women choosing to have sex with men rather > than the other way around) from influencing "respectable" women in > patriarchal bourgeois society. > > We should put aside the petty bourgeois notion that "sex for money" is > abhorrent, and focus on work conditions in the sex industry. Much if not > most of the negative effects of sex work you mention -- disease, drug > addiction, abuse, emotional strain -- result not from the "sexual" nature of > the industry, but from unsafe or exploitative work conditions. > > As far as "degradation" or "depreciation" that you mention are concerned, > some of it is surely related to work conditions, but I suspect that people > tend to confuse it it with role playing that is the main commodity, if not > the essence, of the sex industry. Playing a "submissive" role in the sex > business is not much different from playing, say, the role of a servant in a > theatrical play: both involve a symbolic enactment of unequal power > relations for the enjoyment of the audience. Everything else (meaning > occupational safety standards) being equal, a sex worker playing a > submissive role is no more degraded than an actress playing a maid or a > servant in a theatre -- provided that both are remunerated adequately for > their performances. > > To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing > sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But that > does not mean that sex work work should be abolished
[PEN-L:11761] Re: (Fwd) Re: Towards a resuscitation of post keynesian
At 10:29 AM 8/14/97 -0700, Max forwarded a message from Per Gunnar Berglund saying: > Many thanks for an extremely interesting post. I am stunned and >flattered by your interest and knowledge about Swedish detail, including the >names of a couple of the worst crooks behind our disaster. etc. My, my, the Swedes do not like welfare state anymore. Well, what can I say? I can only wish we have a Swedish-style disaster here, in the US. I would not mind paying higher taxes for that -- it would certainly be much less than interest on my educational, medical and auto debt -- which by the fiat of the invisible hand (or perhaps an invisible fist for people in my social class) is not considered the same burden as tax. cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
[PEN-L:11760] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
Jim C: On the pain of repeating of what has already been said in this discussion: Work conditions vary enormously in the sex industry. Without denying the validity of your Puerto Rico observations, the conditions you describe are general working conditons in underdeveloped countries, rather than specific to sex industry. I suspect that the way people are treated in sweatshops are no different from the treatment of sex workers in those countries. Do you think that sweatshop workers are not desperate, look forward to do their work, and do not want to use their money to get out of the sweatshop? But what is true of the developing countries, is not necessarily true of the developed ones. While I was a grad student at Rutgers, some of my colleagues did ethnographies of sex work (not all of it involved genital or oral sex, there was also "exotic" dancing, or phone sex) -- and what clearly transpired form those enthnographies (based on the reports I heard) was that women who did it, often reported choosing that occupation over other options mainly for two reasons: higher pay and greater occupational autonomy that included the ability to set their own work schedules and the ability to accept or refuse work. OTOH, most of these informants were white women working in suburban New Jersey. I suspect that a Black or Latina sex worker working, say, in the Bronx would report a somewhat different experience. The bottom line is that sex workers tend to be viewed (including by themselves) through the lenses of the social status of their occupation rather than through the objective conditions of their work. That social status, in turn, is rooted in the patriarchal petty bourgeois morality that, as some argue, resents the fact that women have a choice of their sex partners (a choice that women in bourgeois marriages typically do not have) -- and thus stigmatizes these women to ostracize them from the mainstream society. From that standpoint, the social status of sex work is an attempt to prevent a "dangerous example" (women choosing to have sex with men rather than the other way around) from influencing "respectable" women in patriarchal bourgeois society. We should put aside the petty bourgeois notion that "sex for money" is abhorrent, and focus on work conditions in the sex industry. Much if not most of the negative effects of sex work you mention -- disease, drug addiction, abuse, emotional strain -- result not from the "sexual" nature of the industry, but from unsafe or exploitative work conditions. As far as "degradation" or "depreciation" that you mention are concerned, some of it is surely related to work conditions, but I suspect that people tend to confuse it it with role playing that is the main commodity, if not the essence, of the sex industry. Playing a "submissive" role in the sex business is not much different from playing, say, the role of a servant in a theatrical play: both involve a symbolic enactment of unequal power relations for the enjoyment of the audience. Everything else (meaning occupational safety standards) being equal, a sex worker playing a submissive role is no more degraded than an actress playing a maid or a servant in a theatre -- provided that both are remunerated adequately for their performances. To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But that does not mean that sex work work should be abolished (as they did in Cuba or China which -- I strongly suspect-- was an expression of patriarchal petty bourgeois morality than anything else), just as the dismal conditions in the "Satanic Mills" did not justify abolishing textile industry altogether. It means that sex work should be treated and protected in the same way as any other kind of work. cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
[PEN-L:11759] Query for Harry Cleaver
Harry,
Since you assert that my assertions about the nature and effects of
prostitution are mere a priori assertions, please answer the
following: 1) How many prostitutes have you personally spoken with at
length about these issues? 2) How many prostitutes has your graduate
student spoken with? 3) Under what conditions? (e.g. a Japanese
person interviewing prostitutes in Japan might have a real problem
because of the pervasive and brutal influences of the Yakuza and
prostitutes might fear reprisals); 4) What empirical work have you
done/published in this area?; 5) How many activists dealing with mail-
order-brides, prostitution etc in Asia and elsewhere have you spoken
with?
If anyone is interested, I can make copies of my work (in Spanish)
in Puerto Rico ("Dimensions, Impacts and Dynamics of Some Industries
of the Underground Economy of Puerto Rico") including some of my raw
notes and informant reports available.
Here we go back to an old debate. When any and all forms of rebellion
or counter-culture are framed as progressive and characterized as
"self-valorization", "individualistic empowerment" etc, then it
becomes very easy to legitimate--even commodify--narcissistic self-
indulgence as "revolution." The libertarians and other anarchists
love this stuff because it allows them to indulge in their own
individualistic acts and self-indulgent life styles (that really do
nothing for anybody except themselves and a few followers) and handle
the congnitive dissonance problem by framing any and all acts of
ultra-individualism as "rebellion" and therefore "revolutionary."
They can say "we are all whores" in some way so therefore what the
hell, one kind of whoring is the same as another. On one level I can
see the argument, and certainly academics who do Faustian bargains
for tenure, promotions, publish-or-perish etc have no business
"looking down" on prostitutes; on the other hand, I just can't forget
the pain and devastation I have seen in Asia and elsewhere. I'm
sorry, but this crap about the voluntarism and "free exchange" and
"self-empowerment" and "self-valorization" glosses over some very
ugly and very brutal realitites. Tell all of this stuff to the young
Shan girls who are lured or even bought into brothels in thailand,
who are kept in peonage and abject slavery, who are used even after
they acquire AIDS and other diseases and then sent back to their
villages to die.
Historically the anarchists and "left"-libertarians and "bohemians"
who have infiltrated Left movements have always taken much more than
they have ever given in my opinion. By framing all ultra-
individualistic acts as "rebellion" and all "rebellion" as
"revolution" they can crank out their narcissistic self-indulgent
poetry or crank out their profitable Left-market-niche theories
(carving up reality and facts to fit real a priori theories) without
any real coommitment, discipline, focus or whatever.
Well as that other individualistic and rebellious and
counter-culture "revolutionary" Dennis Miller says: "Of course that's
my opinion, I could be wrong."
Jim Craven
*---*
* "Those who take the most from the table,*
* James Craventeach contentment. *
* Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, *
* Clark College demand sacrifice.*
* 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, *
* Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, *
* (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. *
* Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,*
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, *
* for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) *
* MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
[PEN-L:11758] FW: BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1997 RELEASED TODAY: The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods decreased 0.1 percent in July, seasonally adjusted. This followed drops of 0.1 percent in June and 0.3 percent in May and is the seventh consecutive monthly decline in the index. Prices received by domestic producers of intermediate goods decreased in July after showing no change in the previous month. The Crude Goods Price Index fell 0.1 percent after declining 3.3 percent in June __Nonfarm productivity rose 0.6 percent during the second quarter of 1997, compared with a 1.4 percent advance in the first three months of the year, BLS reports (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). __Fears of incipient inflation were not helped by a report that the nation's productivity grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 0.6 percent in the second quarter. That was a slower gain than in the first three months of this year. Productivity is closely watched by the financial markets. High productivity allows employers to raise wages without also raising prices, which tends to keep a lid on inflation (Washington Post, page D9). __Louis Uchitelle (New York Times, page D1) reports that the productivity growth rate of American workers -- measuring how much more they produce in an hour on the job -- rose at an annual rate of only 0.6 percent in the second quarter. The announcement was greeted with hoots of criticism from a growing number of economists and business people who insist that the official data greatly understate a flourishing efficiency in the workplace The new were doubly disappointing for those who hold that the boom in corporate profits and stock prices, and the low inflation rate, result chiefly from rising productivity Not only was the second-quarter number weak, but BLS revised downward the bullish first-quarter number Most of the weak productivity growth this year came from downward revisions in output without similar downward revisions to hours worked BLS is using the best available data, said Edwin Dean, chief of the bureau's productivity division. "Our methodology for computing labor productivity is widely accepted" __If the American economy has truly entered a "new era," as many analysts and executives now argue, the government numbers aren't showing it, says the Wall Street Journal (page A2) "The figures that we're looking at do not show that we've reached a sudden breakthrough in productivity growth in the last few years," said Edwin Dean, chief productivity specialist for BLS. A growing number of economists believe that the statistics are badly flawed Although the government doesn't calculate statistics for the service sector, the fact that manufacturing is doing so well while business overall isn't implies that productivity in services was either flat or even negative for the second quarter. Many analysts consider that conclusion questionable "We're doing the best job of measuring productivity that anybody knows how to do," responded Mr. Dean Although U.S. workers are largely content with their jobs, many could be easily lured away by only slight increases in pay, Aon Consulting's Loyalty Institute reports (Daily Labor Report, page A-7). For the first time in a decade, home prices are rising nearly everywhere, with 80 percent of the nation's metropolitan areas showing a rise in home prices that exceeds the inflation rate. The strength in housing, particularly at the high end of the market, is even causing some bidding wars reminiscent of the 1980s (New York Times, page A1). For grease monkeys, high tech is changing the mechanics of car repair. Fixing cars can still provide a good living for those prepared to compute (Wall Street Journal, page A DUE OUT TOMORROW: Consumer Price Index -- July 1997 Real Earnings: July 1997
[PEN-L:11757] FW: BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1997 RELEASED TODAY: Preliminary seasonally adjusted annual rates of productivity change in the second quarter were: 0.7 percent in the business sector and 0.6 percent in the nonfarm business sector. In both the business and nonfarm business sectors, productivity growth in the second quarter was slower than in the first quarter, as the increases in both output and hours slowed. In the first quarter of 1997, output per hour of all persons (as revised) rose 1.8 percent in the business sector and 1.4 percent in the nonfarm business sector. In manufacturing, productivity changes in the second quarter were: 3.2 percent in manufacturing, 5.1 percent in durable goods manufacturing, and 0.9 percent in nondurable goods manufacturing The cost of work-related fatalities and injuries increased from $119 billion in 1995 to about $121 billion in 1996, according to the National Safety Council. The figure includes lost wages and productivity as well as health care costs and administrative expenses, the safety council explains. The slight increase in costs occurred even though the total number of workplace fatalities -- as reported by BLS the same day -- declined about 2 percent to 6,112 workers in 1996. The disparity reflects an increase in health care and workers' compensation costs, which more than made up for the decline in fatalities, according to a safety council spokesman (Daily Labor Report, page A-9). The Teamsters' strike against UPS is likely to have a small impact on the overall economy, particularly if it does not drag on, say most analysts questioned by BNA. The strike, which has idled 185,000 UPS workers who walked off the job Aug. 4, is unlikely to put the brakes on U.S. economic growth, analysts say. Most economists and industry analysts interviewed voice confidence that American business is flexible and innovative enough to cope with whatever problems the strike causes If the walkout continues through next week, however, it will likely add some "noise" to government statistics, especially the employment numbers. The employment report will probably pick up the drop in jobs caused by the strike, says BNA, but analysts say this is a temporary phenomenon that will reverse itself if and when the strikers return to their jobs The potential effect of a second phase of the strike is more difficult to determine. Not only would workers lose wages and UPS lose profits, but some businesses would begin to run short of supplies. This could cause a pinch on the economy In the third phase of the strike, businesses would learn to get along without UPS. This would not have much effect on the overall economy (Daily Labor Report, page AA-2). The businesses and institutions hardest hit by the UPS strike have been schools and hospitals, catalogue companies, independent retailers, and small medical suppliers who rely heavily on UPS and are having difficulty finding alternatives The big companies seem to be faring better because their size gives them more leverage with UPS competitors and because they have enough business to make it worth their while to spread it around (Washington Post, page C1). Although the issues underlying the UPS strike differ from other labor disputes, the basic problem facing labor unions is that union membership has remained static in recent decades, giving union employers an increasing number of nonunion competitors. In a wide range of industries, such as meatpacking, construction, autos, and trucking, unions are being forced to grant contract concessions to employers to match the lower labor costs of nonunion and international rivals As a percentage of the nation's work force, union membership has declined from about 35 percent after World War II to a little more than 14 percent today -- and barely more than 10 percent of the private sector work force A graph shows waning unionization with data from 1977 to the present, the source of the statistics being BLS (Washington Post, page A1). The teamsters say their main goal is for part-time workers to gain full-time jobs that pay enough for them to live on. But the company says it cannot transform many part-time jobs to full-time ones because its day is made up of busy bursts and long lulls (New York Times, page A1). The Sunday New York Times (page A26) says that the labor unions are now attempting to organize on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Until now, almost every strike that has commanded the nation's attention has involved organized labor's high-paid elite But the walkout at the United Parcel Service is the first strike to capture the national spotlight that involves labor's lower castes, in this case, part-time parcel sorters and truck loaders who earn about $10,000 a year This new focus is, in part, a natural response to underlying changes in the work force. The number of manufacturing jobs is stagnant, and the number of s
[PEN-L:11756] (Fwd) Re: Towards a resuscitation of post keynesian thought
I know all you red-hots will love this post from PKT, so I am forwarding it. Max --- Forwarded Message Follows ---Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 19:23:45 +0200 Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "Per Gunnar Berglund" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To:POST-KEYNESIAN THOUGHT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Towards a resuscitation of post keynesian thought Geoff, Many thanks for an extremely interesting post. I am stunned and flattered by your interest and knowledge about Swedish detail, including the names of a couple of the worst crooks behind our disaster. It might be somewhat depressing to hear, if you haven't heard it already, that Kjell-Olof Feldt is now the chairman of the Riksbank board of governors! As if 9 years of fiscal wreckage (as finance minister 1982--1991) wasn't enough, the political establishment has invited him to do some monetary wreckage as well. Let me also say how surprised I am that Sweden has managed to remain its status as the pussycat of international radicals! The last 25 years of economic and social development in this country should not really be encouraging, and the last 15 years have been directly disastrous. The economic performance here has been worse in nearly all relevant aspects than in any other OECD country, with PPP-adjusted per capita GDP falling from a level of 10--15 percent over the OECD average to a level 5--10 percent below the average. Per capita total consumption is down just as much, and the private consumption today is more than 20 percent below OECD average. Even the open unemployment rate, so well combatted by the extremely voluminous labour market policies, has soared to an astonishing 11 percent by OECD standardised figures, and that figure is certainly the most "cooked" figure of the entire OECD, due to the particular Swedish system of doing everything possible to keep people out of the official unemployment statistics. I know Australia has gone through some tough times, and that New Zealand is a nightmare from a social liberal or social democratic point of view, but not even the NZ decline matches the downturn in Sweden. True the astonishing Swedish progress in the 1930--1975 period has much to do with the buildup of the corporatist social democratic welfare state. Throughout this period, government spending has been increasing as a share of GDP, eventually reaching over 30 percent. Also, pensions have been almost completely socialised, making much of the private retirement saving redundant and thus stimulating the propensity to consume. The same applies to the comprehensive social security system, with generous public unemployment and health/sickness insurance, and other contributions to fill out household cash gaps and thus reduce the need for buffer savings. Thirdly, the tax pressure increased drastically, not only overfinancing the public sector, but also constituting a major disincentive (by high marginal taxes in particular) to work and enterprise. All in all, the welfare state buildup has boosted aggregate demand and curtailed aggregate supply. During later years (1975--1990) the latter has been perceived as a problem, in that it has slowed down the economic growth and tended to create hidden unemployment and low productivity growth. During this period, inflation was chronically high. Tax reform in 1990--91 was aimed at stimulating supply, but also choked demand, thus killing inflation but at a terrible cost in lost output and employment due to lower demand. Further buildup of the welfare state would hardly gather much political support in this country. Taxes are already extremely high, the government spending large compared to most OECD countries, and households are heavily dependent on a host of contributions and transfers from government. This is no way to go on. People want some money of their own, they don't want to ask the government for every extra penny they need. People don't want to pay a half day's after-tax earnings to get a haircut that takes half an hour to complete. Government spending cannot grow much further as share of GDP, without causing a society where the State provides nearly everything for you and you are left without choices. And people don't want to be bossed around by corporatist trade unions who take 3 percent of your post-tax earnings in membership fees and then don't help you when you get into serious trouble. Those are some of the facts and sentiment in today's Sweden, and I don't think that the continuance of the winning 1930--1975 recipe would solve the problems. I don't deny that some countries, like the US, would gain a lot from more welfare state expansion, but we must realise that there might be an upper limit, if not strictly economically, then politically, to the adoption of such policies. Finally, my regular apologies for a long post -- maybe I should put it in my signature?! Best, Per Per Gunnar Berglund Lilla Sallskapets vag 60 127 61 SKA
[PEN-L:11755] another hayek question
Some time ago you posted an interesting quotation from: Hayek, "Science and Socialism." in Knowledge, Evolution, and Society (1983). That book is missing from the U.C. Berkeley library. Was the article published elsehwere? Thanks. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11754] Re: Sex work and choice
On Tue, 12 Aug 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > A comment on the issue whether women forced into prostitution have some choice. > > 1. The fact of depriving a person some choices, even those deemed important > in our society, does not meet depriving that person of all choices. A > prostitute may have little choice as far as the selection of her occupation > is concerned, but she may still have considerable (or some) choice of how > she practices that occupation, howe she compensates for power inequalities > etc. > Wojtek:I'd say except in the case of outright slavery (e.g., comfort women) those who enter the sex work market generally do have choices about both whether to get in and how to behave once in. The conditions on those choices, of course, vary enormously. > 2. In fact, if we take the petty bourgeois morality out of the picture, > prostitution is work just as any other work, except that a prostitute owns > the means of production, and under most circumstances she is paid for the > "product" rather than for the time. These arrangements may vary, however. > In case of "Comfort Women" or Asiatic forms of sex work in general, where > women are held in some form of capitivity or debt slavery, their work is > more like hiring a labourer who must toil for the capitalit for a fixed > period of time during which the capitalist squeezes as much use value out of > the worker as possible. Wojtek: I think the "owning of the means of production" assumes a dualistic and alienated relationship between prostitutes and their bodies/minds/personalities. I can't see any more reason for looking at these aspects of prostitutes as "means of production" than I can for any worker. These are parts of themselves, the parts they must sell the use of in order to earn income, just like other workers sell the use of their arms, hands, minds, personalities. We may not like the way these parts of us are used/abused but that doesn't make them "means of production". They are elements of our laborpower, our ability and willingness to work as well as parts of our being and potential for all kinds of activity, not just work. Similarly, I think the usefulness of thinking about prostitutes as if they are independent entrepreneurs selling "products", e.g. pleasure, understanding or catharsis, is limited. Even when they are independent operators, e.g. working without bosses (pimps or brothels), their situation resembles that of "independent" peasants, truckers, and many small "businesspeople". That is to say, while they have the FORM of a capitalist, the CONTENT of their work and lives is that of workers: they work, they earn enough income to reproduce themselves, but the banks, landlords, moneylenders and the state take any surplus they might generate and they rarely accumulate in the social sense of gathering enough money to put others to work. Like housewives, their "unwaged" status hides the working class character of their lives. Also like housewives, their work is primarily the work of reproducing labor power. > > 3. Since we should not view prostitution differently from any other kind of > work (in fact, the term 'sex worker' is more appropriate than petty > bourgeois 'prostitute') Wojtek:Personally I like the term prostitute, precisely for its connotations. Instead of casting it aside in the case of sex workers, I prefer to apply it to all of us who sell some aspect of ourselves to survive (as I suggested in a previous post). - whatever can be said of how workers deal with the > lack of choice should apply for sex workers as well. That problem was > specifically addressed by Michael Borawoy in his book _Manufacturing > Consent_ -- which is an ethnography of how manual workers in Chicago area > deal with the very limited choices they have regarding their work. The > bottom line is that they usually develop a quite elaborate informal system > that allows them to adapt (at least emotionally) to a situation that > significantly affects their lives (how much their earn what hours they have > to work, what they have to do) -- but over which they have very little > choice. That is, depriving them of some, even important, choices does not > mean depriving them of all choices. > Wojtek: Yes, the parallel is a good one. But I think such informal (and sometimes formal) networks often go far beyond just emotional adaptation and come to provide all kinds of mutual aid and support, often laying the groundwork for more formal and collective forms of struggle. In the case of prostitutes such networks probably predated, to some degree, the formation of formal groupings who fight for their rights. > 4. Given the informal nature of sex work and the absence of any written > rules, a sex worker has a greater latitude in negotiating with her employer > how the work will be performed. Wojtek: In the first place, you are talking here about a sub-set of prostitutes. There are lots of prostitutes with quite formal work relat
[PEN-L:11753] Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
To continue my discussion, I lived in Puerto Rico for three years and worked as an Analista de Planificacion for the Planning Board of the government of Puerto Rico. One of my assignments was to develop methodological approaches (adductive rather than a priori) for qualitatively and quantitatively assessing the linkages and leakages (from final demand, tax base etc) of aspects of the underground economy (drugs, prostitution and bolitos). In Puerto Rico, with about 4.2 million people on the island, about 2/3 of the population is receiving some form of "pagos transferencias" (transfer payments). The typical places where prostitution goes on are well known. About 80% of the prostitutes are non-Puerto Rican (Columbianas, Dominicanas, Haitians) and of course there are males also involved in prostitution with the percentage who are non-Puerto Rican being even higher. We were interested in such things as how many women or males typically live together (average six per dwelling), how long they typically stay on the island (average 8 months), how much they typically make during their stay (average $36,000), how much of their earnings are repatriated (average 80%), how much of their earnings are taken by pimps or other "overhead" (average 60%) and many other questions. I had funds available to go out and pay women for their time so they would not be losing money; they all knew I wasn't a cop and would never turn them in (some who had become friends would tell others that I would never turn them in or assist the police in any way). I did not find these women and men seeing themselves as "self- valorizing" themselves or practicing a form of "self-determination" or "empowered" in any meaningful way. Sure some would mock the tricks and take delite in getting over on them but there was always a look of sadness and expression of marginal pleasure out of a situation of desperation and hopelessness. In all cases, I would give my number and say, if you ever need any help with the bureaucracy (for access to services) or any help I am able to give please call--and many did. (Often academics do studies with no inclination or care as to what happens to the "subjects"). Prostitutes by virtue of their conditions of work, atomization (atomization is consciously designed to keep them powerless and unorganized) and isolation, attitudes (many were extremely anti- communist and anti-socialist eventhough they sometimes had a hard time articulating what it was about communism and socialism they opposed) typically belong more in the lumpenproletariat than in the classical proletariat. Of course there are many in the lumpenproletariat who have progressive sympathies and have played progressive roles while there are also some in the proletariat who are reactionary and have inhibited progressive struggles. I think that much of Franz Fanon's work helped to break down some of the anti- lumpenproletariat biases and stereotypes common in the left and that he was right on in suggesting that the potentially progressive sympathies and roles played among some in the lumpenproletariat have been grossly underestimated. On the other hand, it was not because of petit-bourgeois morality that the Chinese and Cuban revolutions de jure abolished prostitution as one of the first official acts and worked to abolish it de facto. They understood that prostitution is about much more than the "exchange of use of genitals"; it is about commodification, which under capitalism is more about degradation and depreciation than "self-valorization" and "empowerment"; it can cause all sorts of problems in families (imagine the husband goes home and after giving his wife STDs from a visit to a prostitute says "But honey, I was only aiding in the empowerment and self-valorization of a fellow worker who just happens to be selling a different kind of product but essentially doing what I do at work"), for the families of prostitutes as well as prostitutes themselves (drug addiction, pimps). Further, in the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, there was an understanding based on bloody experience that revolution requires dedication, focus, discipline, sacrifice, compromise, resoluteness etc and that these pathetic and marginal and individualistic (read "atomistic") attempts at "liberation and empowerment" generally lead nowhere except to even more marginalization and powerlessness and alienation. BTW what is this stuff about "atomistic Marxism"? On the inscription on Marx's grave at Highgate it says: "The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." "Workers of all countries unite" It doesn't say "workers of all countries do your own individualistic and atomistic thing and cut the best deal for yourself and your own limited and jaundiced notions of self-empowerment and self-valorization and screw your oppressors in marginal individualistic and self-destructi
[PEN-L:11752] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
Louis Proyect wrote: >So I guess this autonomic Marxism is something I have to learn more about. >My only reaction to Harry's post is that anything that coincides with the >thinking of the dreadful Karl Carlile must be re-examined. But what do I know. Lou, and anyone else too - check out Harry Cleaver's fine book, Reading Capital Politically. His emphasis on resistance is something that economists and/or Marxists should pay attention to. Doug
[PEN-L:11751] WSJ on UPS Pension Objectives
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 13, 1997 For UPS, Union-Run Pensions Pose Issues of Liability, Control By LAURA JERESKI Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL United Parcel Service of America Inc. has made pension funds a central issue in its labor dispute with the Teamsters union because it feels it can't afford not to. The reason UPS wants out of the union-controlled funds, which pool money from many employers, has as much to do with the shipper's success as it does with arcane rules that govern union pension plans. UPS says it is carrying an ever-growing share of the pension-fund burden and, at the same time, has little or no control over the ever-growing benefits being paid out. The union, for its part, doesn't want to negotiate about the pension plans at all. "They are under local control," said a top Teamsters benefits expert. UPS would have to pay about $700 million upfront to extract itself from the Teamsters pooled funds in order to start its own pension fund solely for UPS employees. Despite the expense, UPS has proposed doing that because many of the Teamster plans are underfunded, which means there's a liability cloud hanging over the company. Under a 1980 federal law governing multiemployer pension funds, any shortfall between the plan's assets and the amount due to retirees is shared among the contributing companies. The bigger the contributions, the bigger the "withdrawal liability" a company faces for pulling out, say pension experts. And UPS is a big contributor: Even as overall union membership has stagnated, UPS has added 46,000 union jobs since 1993. Higher Future Costs If UPS doesn't get out of the Teamsters pension funds now, a top UPS official says, the cost of getting out later will be much higher -- perhaps as much as $2 billion -- to pull out in five years, based on the company's projections of exit obligations. The current cost has already more than doubled since 1993, when UPS last negotiated with the Teamsters. And in spite of the underfunding, Teamster funds have been ratcheting up benefits for UPS retirees, exacerbating the friction between UPS and the union. UPS's contribution to the 21 Teamster pension plans in contention is determined by the collective bargaining agreement. But the level of benefits is set by a local board of union and management trustees running each plan. The union has characterized UPS's proposal, which echoed a similar one during the 1993 contract talks, as a "greedy pension grab." Pension experts like Teresa Ghilarducci, a University of Notre Dame economist, say the Teamsters and other unions encourage trustees to ratchet up benefit levels so plans stay underfunded. Overall, underfunding has remained steady during the past five years, according to a study by pension consultants Segal Advisors in New York. That's the case even though union pension plans have been doing well as they've moved increasingly into the stock market. As a result, companies faced with the punitive withdrawal liability feel pressed to stay in. Debate Inside Union Charles Rader, director of the Teamsters Office of Benefits Research, doesn't disagree. "There is a debate on this issue within the union," he said. He said consultants conduct seminars to guide pension trustees on how to manage their underfunding. By and large, benefits have been rising for UPS union employees, even as their wages have stagnated since 1987, according to a study of pension data by Prof. Ghilarducci. By 1994, the latest year for which information is available, a typical UPS driver saw pensions increase more than 60% and health benefits more than double. Some Teamster plans have done even better: monthly payments to retirees of the New York State Teamsters Conference have risen to $3,500 from $2,000 in four years, though the underfunding of the plan has fluctuated. The union, in one of its informational fliers, notes that UPS has shortchanged part-timers who are in a company-controlled pension fund. Those workers haven't had a benefit increase in eight years, the union says, while union-controlled benefits for comparable workers have more than doubled. Size of UPS Benefits In all, the Teamsters have 170 pension funds with assets totaling $60 billion, most of them multiemployer plans. As a result of this system, which is similar to the pension funds at many other unions, the monthly benefit for a 60-year-old UPS employee with 35 years of service can run anywhere from $2,450 to $4,500, according to figures provided by UPS. UPS is proposing to pay $700 million over four years to pay its share of the shortfalls that would be created by the company's withdrawal, on behalf of the retirees in those plans. Under this still-vague proposal, UPS w
[PEN-L:11750] Re: Black Male Employment
Speaking of the incarceration of black males in the U.S., I recently came across a factoid that shocked me, and I thought I was pretty much un-shockable. Based on present rates of incarceration, a black male child born in the U.S. today would face a 28% lifetime chance of doing prison time. Prison, where you go for a long stretch after conviction, as opposed to jail, where you await trial or do short time for minor "offenses." This is from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Doug
[PEN-L:11749] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
On Sun, 10 Aug 1997, James Michael Craven wrote: > > > Harry, > > > > Thanks for the response. On one level I can see what you are arguing > > and why. Yes, I too have known prostitutes who have told me directly > > that yes, they know well the probable costs (risk of AIDs and STDs, > > beatings by pimps, murder or beating by a John, psychological damage > > from dehumanization, incarceration, payoffs and favors for cops, > > rapid aging and a jaundiced view of life etc), > > Jim: The conditions of work in the sex industry vary enormously, just as > they do in other areas of the labor market. Your summary portrayal is > brutal and certainly applies to the conditions facing many sex workers. > But the dangers you describe make me think of similar > dangers in other jobs: beatings by company and union thugs in factories > almost anywhere, dehumanization in damned near all alienated waged work, > work ages and work kills as a general rule in our society; a jaundiced > view of life or a realistic view of life? I am uncomfortable with your > portrayal as it stands it is too much of a caricature. Just as we need > to recognize and understand the array of working conditions in other > industries, so too here. One of the most widely held assumptions about sex > work is that sex workers wind up with a "jaundiced" attitude toward sex > itself. It is, after all, their work. Yet, in Japan my student has found > that prostitutes spend considerable sums, every week, hiring other > prostitutes for their own pleasure! At a recent West Coast conference by > and for sex workers, there were, I am told, several panels in which the > sex workers gave glowing descriptions of the power their sexual competence > gives them. Response (Jim C): I agree with your notion that there are many forms and levels of prostitution and indeed many forms and levels of brutality and degradation under capitalism. But another way of interpreting your comments above--about sex workers hiring others for their own "pleasure" is that it is analogous to abused becoming abusers; further, the glowing descriptions of the "power" their sexual competence gives them could also be interpreted as a typical reaction of the powerless seeking some marginal form of power in their own lives. I see no a priori reason to dismiss all this as mere delusion > by perhaps once abused individuals. Just as other workers can subvert > their work for their own purposes and empowerment, so can some sex > workers. "Detournement" as the situationists called it, is a common > element of subversion in many jobs. Why not this one? > Response (Jim C): My reasons are not "a priori". I once worked as an Analista de Planificacion for the government of Puerto Rico. My work involved analysis and estimation of linkages/leakages of the underground economy in P.R (drugs, prostitution, bolitos etc) from the ground up. In the course of that work, I interviewed literally hundreds of prostitutes (always in confidence and not one was ever turned in and they knew it). I never met even one "sex worker" who looked forward to going to work or who did not have dreams of using the money "to get out of the business." Yes, workers have various ways of suberting the power relations and brutality in the work place but real empowerment comes through collective action which may or may not come about or be enhanced through individualistic reactions and forms of subversion in the workplace; sometimes these individualistic reactions and attempts at "empowerment" through individual acts of subversion--not coupled with collective action--may even set back the forms and levels of collective action necessary. that they regard sex > > as a business and that housewives and girlfriends are essentially in > > the same business they are in, > > Jim: And they are all too often right, I would say. More frequently than > many would like to admit a marriage is just a long term contract to > provide sexual and other services in exchange for income and job tenure. > (Jane Austin wrote about his in her novels, without calling a > spade a spade but the lesson is spelled out clear as day.) Prostitutes > negotiate short-term contracts, spouses negotiate long term > ones (often with legal documents these days). In general I think one of > the best descriptions of capitalism is a society of generalized > prostitution. We are all prostitutes, the only choice we have is which > part of our selves are we going to make available for work. Some make > their genitals available, others their hands and arms, others their minds, > others their personalities and emotional expressiveness (McDonald's hires > only those who can smile on demand). Response (Jim C) Harry, I'm sure you don't mean it this way, but frankly the above sounds a lot like the typical libertarian argument that all exchanges are "voluntary" and "mutually negotiated" as other wise why would they have occurred? Further the
[PEN-L:11748] Poll: Sympathy is with strikers not management
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 14, 1997 Polls Show UPS Strikers Have Wide Public Support By CHRISTINA DUFF Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL RICHMOND, Va. -- A real-estate agent with a fondness for Oliver North and school-prayer bumper stickers, Renee Shipley is your basic union hater. "The time for unions," she says, "has come and gone." Ms. Shipley, however, can't help but feel "a wee bit sorry" for a certain brawny, brown-suited guy who, until he went out on strike 10 days ago, picked up and delivered packages at her building, always with a nod and a cheery grin. Once, she says, he even put down his load to help her carry an unwieldy ficus tree back to her office, and he used his own handkerchief to clean up a bit of spilled dirt. "It was just the sweetest thing," she says. A Change of Heart An unlikely supporter of the United Parcel Service of America Inc. strike that has idled 185,000 UPS workers since Aug. 4? Not really. For the first time in many years, the public at large seems to be siding with strikers. About 40% of the 506 Americans surveyed by the ABC News Nightline poll conducted Monday night said they back the Teamsters in their fight to win more higher-paying, full-time jobs. Just 30% back the company. The result jibes with a Fox News poll finding that 44% of 906 registered voters sympathize with the strikers, while 27% side with UPS. Greg Tarpinian of the union-supported Labor Research Association says the poll results reflect a "big change" from strikes of the past couple of decades -- from Caterpillar Inc. to McDonnell Douglas Corp. -- when labor people felt the country was against them. The public, he says, supports the union's argument that its part-timers need to work full time if they are to earn a decent living and get adequate benefits. UPS full-timers earn on average $20 an hour and get full benefits. Part-timers get $11 an hour and reduced benefits. "This is a turning point," says consumer-researcher Carol Farmer of Boca Raton, Fla. After being slapped around by corporate restructurings, she says, the public is "wondering, "Oh, god, what's next?" and realizing that at some point people have to draw a line in the sand." Many Nonvoters The vote of confidence is particularly noteworthy because it is unclear exactly how much support the UPS Teamsters have among their own rank and file. Every union member at UPS was sent a ballot for last month's strike vote. Of those ballots returned, 95% were votes to strike if negotiations failed to reach an agreement, but the turnout, which the union refuses to disclose, apparently was small. UPS says that more than 8,000 union members have crossed picket lines. The union disputes that. Teamsters President Ron Carey has refused to allow a rank-and-file vote on what UPS calls its last, best and final offer. Granted, the public doesn't hold union leaders -- or business executives, for that matter -- in particularly high regard. At the end of last year, for example, only 16% of Americans surveyed by the Gallup Organization said they thought union leaders had "high" or "very high" honesty and ethical standards. Just 17% thought business executives had "high" or "very high" standards. But that poll result represents a gain for unions and a loss for business. In 1985, 13% of respondents vouchsafed the high honesty and ethical standards of union leaders, while 23% had the same to say for business leaders. The "Norma Rae" bug has bitten even in this conservative, Southern city. For one thing, people say, the economy is going great guns, so it is about time workers got theirs. "Shareholders should suck it up and share the wealth a little bit," says Dale Phillips, technical-services administrator for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, who is outdoors enjoying a smoking break. Brandishing his cigarette, he says he normally considers national unions to be "as corrupt as the businesses they strike against." But with profits and executive salaries skyrocketing, he says, UPS workers have a point. "The booming economy doesn't mean a damn thing to the UPS guy in the truck," Mr. Phillips says. But there is something else involved here in reactions to the strike --personal relationships. Just about everyone knows a UPS delivery man, by sight or by name. As Mr. Phillips says, they are "pretty well Johnny on the spot." (On the other hand, how many people can say they have ever seen a UPS manager?) "You kind of get chummy with them," says Mike Strother of the deliverers. As a mail clerk for the advertising firm Martin Agency here, he runs into two UPS guys in the mail room from time to time. Even while walking briskly, as they are required to do, and lifting big boxes, they are always ready to exchange a word or two about Orioles baseball or the Tyson fight, he says. "UPS is getting the full benefit of their grunt work, and they're not w
[PEN-L:11747] COSATU/ANC split?
/** labr.global: 283.0 **/ ** Topic: S.A. Cosatu Threatens Split With Mandela & ANC ** ** Written 9:49 PM Aug 11, 1997 by labornews in cdp:labr.global ** From: Institute for Global Communications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: S.A. Cosatu Threatens Split With Mandela & ANC Mandela may lose union allies S. African federation threatens split from ANC Saturday, August 9, 1997 By Hein Marais Reuters A trade-union federation that is a major supporter of Nelson Mandela's government has threatened to abandon its alliance with the governing African National Congress and form a new left-wing political force. The 1.9-million member Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) issued its threat as the ANC prepares for a crucial national conference in December, when it will elect a successor to Mr. Mandela. The ANC played down the possibility of a split. "If there are differences in the alliance . . . it does not mean that there is a divorce," Labour Minister Tito Mboweni told the Cape Town Press Club. "The marriage is very much intact." The ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party entered a formal alliance to win power in the country's first all-race election in 1994. Since then, the ANC has come under increasing fire from its partners for adopting moderate economic policies and abandoning its socialist background. Cosatu's threat appeared in a report drafted by a special team, the September Commission, charged with the task of redefining the role of the trade-union movement. Yesterday, the federation also tried to play down the report, which was leaked to the media. The threat "was only one of several possible scenarios considered by the team," said Philip Dexter, a member of the September Commission. "It simply pointed out that, if the economy deteriorates and the government does nothing to assist workers, then eventually workers will have to consider a new party as a real option. It's a hypothetical option." But deep strains recently have appeared between Cosatu and the ANC, and they centre on the government's controversial Growth, Economic and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, which the September Commission's report bluntly describes as "right wing." In June, the Communist Party launched its own attack on GEAR, calling for a wholesale revision of the strategy on the grounds that it was not benefiting the majority of South Africans. Cosatu's efforts to force the ANC back to its roots pose a huge dilemma for the party's leaders. "On one hand, the ANC is historically a mass-based liberation organization committed to deep social transformation," one Johannesburg-based analyst said. "On the other, its leadership believes that the realities of the global economy force it into policies like GEAR and to govern more as a tightly controlled conventional political party. I'm not sure they can reconcile the two." Both Cosatu and the Communist Party, most of whose members also belong to the ANC, believe a choice has to be made. "We're not looking for a gap in the market so we can hoist the red flag," said Jeremy Cronin, the Communists' deputy general-secretary. "We're hoping the ANC plays a more effective role as a liberation organization." One Cosatu source said: "It's going to be a real tug-of-war, seeing who can pull the ANC this way or that way." Launched a year ago, the GEAR plan sketched what some economists are describing as a "home-grown structural adjustment program," referring to the austerity measures commonly urged on Third World countries by the International Monetary Fund. It entails cuts in public spending, the lifting of all financial controls, trade liberalization, privatization and exempting some categories of workers from key labour protection. The government hopes the plan will encourage greater investment by local and foreign companies. But Cosatu said the plan fails to address poverty and inequality by meeting the demands of business at the expense of social development. Observers said that, while Cosatu may opt to break ranks with the ANC after the 1999 elections, it is unlikely to endorse the "new party" possibility when it stages its national conference in mid-September. "What Cosatu's really pushing for is a kind of left social-democratic path where there's growth and strong social development," labour analyst Eddie Webster said. Such a course meshes with Communist Party proposals. It wants the government to abandon GEAR and return to the core values of the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), a plan drafted by Cosatu and other progressive organizations before the historic 1994 elections. The RDP was later adopted by the ANC, albeit in severely diluted form. Some critics inside the ANC say GEAR has effectively sunk the program. But there are signs that ANC delegates may support a push for change in GEAR when they meet in December to map out the organization's future. One discussion document -- The Character of the ANC, authored by Mr. Cronin and circulate
[PEN-L:11746] Discussion on UPS strike heard at U. of Illinois
What follows is an absolutely truthful and accurate story! Names have been changed to protect identities. I am sitting at a popular coffee-shop in Urbana this morning reading the latest issue of LinguaFranca and sipping a cup of coffee, when my ear starts tracking the conversation at a neighboring table. It's a discussion of the UPS strike among three grads, one of whom (let me call him Bob) I recognize as a person who has refused to join our Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) --our grad union at the University of Illinois. Bob is arguing that President Clinton should intervene and stop the strike because the Teamsters "have gone too far." He knows UPS workers who make a pretty good living because of how generous the company has been. One person he went to high school with works at UPS in Chicago and earns over $40,000 per year. Bob is obviously not very happy at this. He feels that his friend is making way too much money for a person with just a high-school education. Bob has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from good schools and he will be finishing up a Ph.D. in a year or so at the University of Illinois. He has been working as a teaching assistant making no more than $10,000 per year even though he busts his tail to do a good job for his department. Bob feels that "it just ain't fair" for a high-school graduate to be making $40,000 when he is barely getting by. Besides which, what are the prospects for the future? Not so great. In his particular field chances are about 50/50 that he will be able to land a tenure track position within 5 years after getting his Ph.D. Even then, the starting salary will be less than the $40,000 his high-school classmate earns working for UPS. Bob is understandably bitter this morning and his friends are not making matters any easier for him. One of them --I'll call her Ani-- argues that UPS workers make a good living NOT because of the "generosity" of UPS but because of the collective bargaining power of the Teamsters (mind you, I recognize Ani as one of the hundreds of GEO members that joined to improve the lot of graduate employees). Ani calls Bob an "elitist" for arguing that the labor of a working-class UPS employee is not nearly as valuable as the labor of a graduate employee and/or of an academic. The other participant in the discussion --I'll call her Rosa-- has trouble understanding what Bob's point is. Does he want the salary of the UPS worker to be scaled down or would he rather be better-paid himself? Bob is not quite sure... He is just "pissed-off" at all the fuss that the Teamsters are making. UPS workers are lucky to have the jobs they do. There are millions of people around the country, and billions around the world that would be happy --"truly ecstatic"-- to be making half what a UPS worker is making!!! Rosa says that Bob is a hard worker and that he is being exploited by the University of Illinois, but this doesn't mean that the UPS worker is some sort of culprit for his penury. If Bob wants to be pissed-off about someone he should be pissed-off at the administration that is exploiting his labor and the labor of more than 5,400 graduate employees at the University of Illinois. One more reason for him to join the GEO! Ani agrees with Rosa and adds that scapegoating a UPS worker because his union has managed to provide him or her with a pretty good contract is not the way to go. Bob should join the struggle waged by the Teamsters to stop the down-hill tumble that the working-class has been in over the past few years. "The corporations are part-timing America to death and they are turning one worker against another so that they can fatten their wallets and to hell with the rest of us! We better wake up and demand radical changes." "Yeah," adds Rosa,"there is a reason for the saying 'Workers of the World Unite!' If working people unite then we might be able to even the playing-field a bit. But, you see, the people with their hands on the levers of power don't want this. So, they find ways to divide us. In your case, you barely need any prompting!" "Besides which," adds Ani,"I know a full professor in Mozambique who makes a hell of a lot less than we do as teaching assistants. She has a full teaching load and she barely makes ends meet for herself and her two children. By your logic she would be fully justified to argue that YOU do not deserve to make what you make because you have nowhere near her education and experience." I have nothing to add, so I put my LinguaFranca away and walk out of the coffee-shop. Maybe Bob will wake-up and smell the coffee:-) It is interesting to hear a discussion like this. What I see coming out of Bob is insecurity, an insecurity that he translates into disdain for a UPS worker who might be doing better than him. Of course, there is a lot more that can be said about what has transpired. But I won't bore you wi
[PEN-L:11745] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
On 14 August 1997 Louis Proyect wrote: > I wonder if this is evidence of "autonomic Marxism". There was a conference > in Madrid recently that brought together Zapatista supporters, anarchists, > squatters, autonomic Marxists, etc. This piqued my curiousity and I checked > out the auto-op-sys Web Page at Spoons and discovered that the site > includes one of Cleaver's essays as an example of what they stand for. They > view their mission in the following terms: (...) > One of the useful things about the Internet for an uneducated person like > myself is that it allows me to find out about things that I never would > have run into during my day-to-day existence as an activist and > ex-Trotskyist. As a Trotskyist I found that the sort of things I read where > rather narrowly focused. Now, as a result of participating on the Spoons > lists and PEN-L, I have discovered Althusser, postmodernism, and a bunch of > other squeaky-new things. > > So I guess this autonomic Marxism is something I have to learn more about. > My only reaction to Harry's post is that anything that coincides with the > thinking of the dreadful Karl Carlile must be re-examined. But what do I know. I am, together with Steve Wright, a convenor of the aut-op-sy list, and I've just subscribed to pen-l, so it's great for me to see that comrades here are talking about "us-the-autonomist" (not autonomic...). And it's nice to hear from Louis, whom I met at a Rethinking Marxist conference at UMass last year, where I went with a South African delegation from "Debate", a journal on the SA ultra- left (that's how we are defined here by both socialdemocrats and mainstream Trotskysts). The passage that Louis quoted from the aut- op-sy site was just an introduction to the aut-op-sy discussion list, and it did not come from some "summa" of autonomist thought or from some grand statement on "what we stand for" that are quite common, I imagine, in Louis' political tradition (at least here in South Africa). The aim of that introduction was just to provide some tips for discussion on aut-op-sy, and on many of those issues discussion has indeed developed with a remarkable degree of complexity and articulation. So, from this point of view, given that we on the list are interested in raising questions *before* giving answers, our statement quoted by Louis may look rather narrow (or too broad, depending on points of view). However, the implications of those issues are not narrow at all, and they point exactly to the kind of problems raised by Harry in the message to which Louis replied: self- government, self-valorization and self-empowerment. That is to say: focusing not on vanguardism and grand narratives of the Contradictions of Capitalism and the necessary nature of Class Consciousness, but on the ways in which concrete forms of social antagonism and the construction of networks of resistant subjectivities relate with capitalist restructuring, create spaces of freedom, open up possibilities for subversion, and materially disarticulate the strategies of restructuring itself. If anyone wanted to get closer to this kind of "autonomic" stuff, maybe this is a good point to start. BTW: These issues were at the core of the Madrid Encounter as well, and lots of Trots were there too... Franco Franco Barchiesi Sociology of Work Unit Dept of Sociology University of the Witwatersrand Private Bag 3 PO Wits 2050 Johannesburg South Africa Tel. (++27 11) 716.3290 Fax (++27 11) 716.3781 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mshalev/direct.htm Home: 98 6th Avenue Melville 2092 Johannesburg South Africa Tel. (++27 11) 482.5011
[PEN-L:11744] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"
Harry Cleaver: > >This discussion is but an example of a kind of dialog in which I find >myself from time to time. Those of us on the Left, following to an >uncomfortable degree in old Charles Marks' footsteps, know a great deal >about exploitation and the brutalities of work. We are generally quite >capable of describing in gruesome detail the nefarious effects of >alienated and exploitative labor under capitalism. Where we are usually >much less knowledgeable and less eloquent is on the forms and degrees of >self-determination, of self-valorization and empowerment which workers >achieve --this despite the centrality of creative living labor power in >Marxist analysis. > Louis Proyect: I wonder if this is evidence of "autonomic Marxism". There was a conference in Madrid recently that brought together Zapatista supporters, anarchists, squatters, autonomic Marxists, etc. This piqued my curiousity and I checked out the auto-op-sys Web Page at Spoons and discovered that the site includes one of Cleaver's essays as an example of what they stand for. They view their mission in the following terms: Most of the debate on class composition over the past twenty years has occurred in and around the Italian revolutionary left. While much of the Italian discussion has been stimulated by that country's autonomist movement, members of other political tendencies - for example, the anarchists and libertarians associated with the journal Collegamenti/Wobbly - have also made notable contributions to this discussion. In Germany, important work has been carried out by comrades such as Karl-Heinz Roth, and members of the magazine Wildcat. In the English-speaking world, however, only a fraction of this work has become available - and even that in a selective fashion. Meanwhile, a number of writers in North America, Britain and elsewhere have begun to develop their own distinctive approach to the question of class composition and social conflict. We hope that AUT-OP-SY can be a place where these different approaches can be evaluated: not as some academic exercise of theory for theory's sake, but as a way of judging their usefulness to the further understanding and development of working class self-organisation. For example: the brief definition of class composition we quoted earlier was written back in 1975. How well does it stand up today, in the face of the dramatic shifts that have reshaped the worlds of waged and unwaged work since that time? What does mass struggle mean in a period when the mass worker seems to have lost its centrality? What do the struggles of women mean when the family and the welfare state have continued to fracture? What does the circulation of struggle mean at a time when millions are fleeing their place of birth? What does communism mean in the face of the 'socialist' bloc's collapse and the emergence of a global ecological crisis? - One of the useful things about the Internet for an uneducated person like myself is that it allows me to find out about things that I never would have run into during my day-to-day existence as an activist and ex-Trotskyist. As a Trotskyist I found that the sort of things I read where rather narrowly focused. Now, as a result of participating on the Spoons lists and PEN-L, I have discovered Althusser, postmodernism, and a bunch of other squeaky-new things. So I guess this autonomic Marxism is something I have to learn more about. My only reaction to Harry's post is that anything that coincides with the thinking of the dreadful Karl Carlile must be re-examined. But what do I know. On the question of prostitution itself, I tend to think that one of the great things about the Cuban and Chinese revolutions is that they put a stop to the "sex industry" right away. I have no idea of what "self-valorization" under capitalism means. This sounds like a contradiction in terms. I do think that the re-emergence of prostitution in Cuba is an awful symptom of what is being lost there. At any rate I suppose I will have to find out more about this autonomic Marxism stuff at some point and render my untutored and autodidactic opinion here. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:11743] Re: Black Male Employment
Rudy Fichtenbaum wrote: "I wonder if the continuing increase in the incarceration of black males could account for a significant part of the declining employment to population ratio." Thanks for the comment. The employment rate is a measure of the share of the noninstitutionalized population which is employed. In this case, if there is a growth in the incarceration rate of unemployed black men, the employment rate would actually increase. Thus, a higher incarceration rate increases the employment rate just as it decreases the unemployment rate. This, however, might mean that if the incarceration rate DROPPED between 1995 and 1996, this might have reduced the employment rate as more black men were on the streets rather than in prisons. This would show up as an unusually large increase in the noninstitutionalized population. Robert Cherry
[PEN-L:11742] Prostitutes and value........
A KARL CARLILE POSTING: KARL: Hi Rakesh! You reply was appreciated. RAKESH: That is, how women who sold sexual favours came to be seen, in Carole Pateman's words, as a special class of women, isolated from other workers or working class communities, how there came to be a specialized profession of prostitution, how prostitutes came to be seen as different from women who were similar in most respects--young, poor, and powerless, how prostitutes came to be seen less in medical terms (as carriers of vd) and more in social scientific terms (as deviant types). Moreover, there is the question of what role the law and social scientific observation played in the creation of this type about which Karl writes. KARL: In making my statement my point, Rakesh, was to indicate that prostitutes do not necessarily form part of the working class since they do not sell labour power as a commodity. They are not wage workers. By contrast the prostitute sells his/her body, as opposed to labour power, as a commodity on the exchange market. This means that s/he sells her/his body piece meal over a sustained period. Her/his body is the commodity. The purchaser of her/his body relates to it as a commodity. In this sense s/he is a simple commodity producer: an independent commodity producer. This means that the class character of the prostitute is petty bourgeois rather than working class. Clearly this situation is modified if there is a pimp involved in the business of the prostitute. Under these conditions the prostitute sells her/his body as commodity in exchange for money. Now the prostitute through the medium of the market exchanges value in the form of a simple commodity for value in the form of money. There obtains equal exchange. There is no unequal exchange and consequently no exploitation either direct or indirect by the purchaser of the body commodity. However there is a form of oppression and exploitation when the pimp forcibly extracts a portion of this value from the prostitute. S/he extracts value in the form of money from the prostitute outside of the exchange process. Nothing is exchanged by the pimp for this value in its money form. It is simply appropriated by the pimp. In this sense this relationship of appropriation takes place outside the limits of value relations. Consequently not only does the pimp/prostitute relationship transcend capitalist relations but it also transcends simple value relations. The pimp acquires value gratis by virtue of the fact that the prostitute sells her/his body as commodity. The prostitute turns her/his body into a commodity. This is the chief distinction between worker and prostitute. The worker turns her/his labour power into a commodity while the prostitute turns her/his body into a commodity. In this regard their exists a commonality between slavery and prostitution. The body of both are exchanged as commodities. However in the case of the slave his body as commodity is not her/his. In the case of the prostitute the body is hers/his. This is a significant distinction. Another distinction is that in the case of the slave the body is sold all at once while in the case of the prostitute it is sold piece meal. It is sold on a continuous basis. This means that even though s/he sells her body it is not sold in toto. Consequently even though s/he is engaged in the business of selling it, because of the peculiar way in which it is done, s/he still maintains overall ownership over it outside business hours. It is this peculiarly limited form in which her body is sold that prevents the prostitute from being reduced to the status of a slave. The prostitute reproduces his/her body so that s/he can sell it on the market. By selling his/her body as commodity s/he is exchanging the form of value in the form of commodity for the form of value in the form of money. The latter is the value form by which she can continue to reproduce her body in order to sell it again. Now the prostitute who tends to produce a "better quality body" by putting more labour into the reproduction of her body increases the value of her body and thereby the price she gets for it. The prostitute contributes to the creation of value as a simple commodity producer by selling her body as a commodity. S/he then makes a contribution to the economic system by creating value. As a petty commodity producer s/he is petty bourgeois and not a member of the working class. Her/his petty bourgeois position will tend to reflect itself in her politics and culture. Her/his economic condition, as prostitute, tends to be a function of the specific character of the capitalist economy at any given time, the quality of her/his body as commodity, the degree to which her/his body as commodity enters the exchange process, whether or not s/he has a pimp or employer and the character of her/his relationship to either. To sum up: As far as the circulation process goes there takes place equal exchange between the prostitute and
[PEN-L:11741] Fwd: Send strike support messages to UPS e-mail (fwd)
In a message dated 97-08-13 12:43:21 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Susan Feiner) writes: >Subj: Re: Fwd: Send strike support messages to UPS e-mail (fwd) >Date: 97-08-13 12:43:21 EDT >From:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Susan Feiner) >Sender:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 07:47:33 -0700 >From: "Andrew J. English" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Send strike support messages to UPS e-mail > >send UPS an e-mail voicing your support of the teamsters > >The e-mail address is: >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Network out and send them a few thousand messages. they have to read them >all! > >Susan F. Feiner >Economics & Women's Studies >96 Falmouth Street >University of Southern Maine >Portland, ME 04103 > Voice Mail: 207 780 4966 >Fax: 207 780 5532 > > > > > > > > > > >- >NOTICE FOR JOURNALISTS AND RESEARCHERS: Please ask for written permission >from all direct participants before quoting any material posted on FEMECON-L. > > >--- Headers >Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Received: from mail.bucknell.edu (marge.bucknell.edu [134.82.7.249]) > by emin19.mail.aol.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) > Wed, 13 Aug 1997 12:24:46 -0400 (EDT) >Received: from reef.bucknell.edu by mail.bucknell.edu; >(5.65v3.2/1.1.8.2/17Jul96-0109PM) > id AA05640; Wed, 13 Aug 1997 12:21:44 -0400 >Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 12:21:44 -0400 >Message-Id: >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Originator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Precedence: bulk >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Susan Feiner) >Subject: Re: Fwd: Send strike support messages to UPS e-mail (fwd) >X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas >X-Comment: Feminist Economists Discussion Group >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Mime-Version: 1.0 - Forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Susan Feiner) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 97-08-13 12:43:21 EDT Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 07:47:33 -0700 From: "Andrew J. English" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Send strike support messages to UPS e-mail send UPS an e-mail voicing your support of the teamsters The e-mail address is: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Network out and send them a few thousand messages. they have to read them all! Susan F. Feiner Economics & Women's Studies 96 Falmouth Street University of Southern Maine Portland, ME 04103 Voice Mail: 207 780 4966 Fax: 207 780 5532 - NOTICE FOR JOURNALISTS AND RESEARCHERS: Please ask for written permission from all direct participants before quoting any material posted on FEMECON-L.
