Recent posts by classmates have led me to that "glum chum" feeling. Here are a few of my favorites -
1. "Instead of reading the emergence of new social movements coordinated through the internet as revolutionary, we should see them as a vestigial tail, if anything they are the stale remains of old social movements." - Dan
2. "what are the hopes of developing the potential of the working classes in the information age?" - Robin
3. "What we seem to be left with in D-W’s account is a number of relatively isolated instances of emergent forms of worker resistance. There is no clear way, however, that these instances will become articulated together into a large-scale program of resistance that will lead to things like the reform of labor laws."
How about another read on D-W's accounts? The "isolated instances" of resistance are indicative that consent for capitalist hegemony is broad, but "paper thin". I find it interesting that the sublime world of gamer fantasy is built upon the mouse-clicks of exploited "gold farmers" in China. While we are razzled and dazzled by the buzzes and whirs of the Mechanical Turk, some human is at the heart of the "machine" - pushing and clicking the levers or the mouse that makes the "magic" possible, that makes the virtual gold flow.
As Braverman notes, "scientific management" develops in the need to control a "refractory work force in a setting of antagonistic social relations." These controls have gotten more sophisticated as time has marched on, but there still remains some loose ends to tie up if one would want complete control.
1. Somebody's got to do the work.
I think this is something D-W is trying to understand through the evidence he presents. Capitalism simply does not work without labor. And yet, discussion posts seem to be pretty annoyed with the fact that D-W relies so heavily on labor to save the day - "Should we rely only on labor (categorically in the first and last instance for D-W) to strategically deal with techno-capitalism?" Robin - 9/10/07
Let's look at "labor" and "social movements" in a less two-dimensional way. Labor is not only comprised of those folks that join the union. Those folks that don't join the union or are "not interested in being in unions" are still a part of the labor force, though not mobilized, as Chad says, "due to a number of causes..."
R & W provide interesting glimmers of hope in their section on the "Dark Side" p. 94 - "Populations are never simply and absolutely fixed and compartmentalised; they remain obdurately fluid and mobile." Before we dismiss these instances D-W speaks of as "isolated", we should think of the other current "isolated" instances of resistance not mentioned in D-W -
1. development of the IndyMedia Centers (IMC's) in response to corporate media handling of the "Battle in Seattle" of '99 (anti-globalization protests)...
2. Recent elections in Latin America reflecting a trend by the citizens of those countries to support candidates and policies that are anti-"free" trade and promote regionalization
3. Recent 9/15/07 anti-war protest of about 100,000 in DC led at the front of the march by "Iraq Vets Against the War" and "Veterans Against the War"...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/washington/16protest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Resistance is alive and active. I argue that these instances are not "isolated" but are linked to a broader concept - consent is thin for the dominant order. True, the "groundswell" myth has not played out for a popular revolution started by labor unions. But, social change is a process. It took many years for Anti-Vietnam War protesters to gain widespread, popular support to end the war. It took many, many years in the U.S. to abolish slavery. It took many more years and struggles to fight for an end to legalized segregation.
So, let's not be so glum. Let's just understand that true social change takes time and struggle. Admittedly, Big Labor may not be the first to sound the call, but Big Labor still has the power to shut down the machinery of capitalism...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
These are persuasive points...and make things a bit less glum around here :)
Let me know what you think of this argument (which I'm working out as I go along, so please forgive any awkwardness):
I agree with you that consent for particular political formations is generally paper thin. For instance, we all saw how quickly widespread support for the current war turned on the Bush administration. However, not everything is so fickle. Let's take the example of Second Life http://secondlife.com/. In this "game" (which isn't really a game because there aren't any goals, there's no way to "win" anything. Let's call it an "interactive virtual environment") one has the ability to do essentially anything one wants--the environment is totally mutable, your avatar can fly, you can fashion your appearance in whatever way you wish, you can say or do anything without severe consequences, etc. However, the one requirement for Second Life--the one thing that it cannot work without--is capitalism (the law of private property and a monetary system of exchange). It is as if doing away with capitalism would be too radical a move, as if individuals would not understand how to experience the virtual environment without this minimal support that references reality.
In Second Life your avatar comes without any sexual organs. However, one can purchase sexual organs of either (any) type to allow one's avatar to couple with other avatars. This suggests that even sexual difference is mediated by exchange. What is the "bedrock" of experience in this virtual environment? Not sexual difference--it becomes simply a matter of representation and purchasing power. Not race, ethnicity, age, etc.--these are a matter of choice, changeable at any time. In Second Life everything is redicible to exchange--it constitutes an instance of what we might call "pure exchange" in which no specificity (sexual, cultural or otherwise) blocks the smooth flow of capital.
It seems strange to me that people who play this game are not at all confused by reconfigurations of the symbolic ordering of social codes as long as the logic of capital remains present as a guide to interaction. I think it is worth noting the difference between support for (or resistance to) things like free trade, globalization and wars and resistance to capitalism as the operational mode of a society. This is, perhaps, just another way to restate what I said earlier--that for DW there's no clear connection between the two, and no reason why they should ever become articulated to one another. The question of labor, exploitation and exchange as the ordering paradigm for society is fundamentally different from the other things listed above, because it constitutes the frame through which these other things are experienced.
I'm not explaining myself well. Maybe this: resistance to capitalism itself means resisting the mode of experience of social relations (like a fish resisting water-based life). This is not easy, because consent is unconscious and has the character of facticity. Does that make sense? Feel free to dismantle...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv6tr3SvmIY - flying penis in Second Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSDB5zErn0Y - hackers flood Second Life with self-replicating Super Marios, resulting in a shut down.
Post a Comment