The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (2011) by Dr. Kathi Weeks

12 Tue Apr 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Civic Engagement (Activism), collective bargaining, Feminism, Global Labour Movement, Marxian Theory (Marxism)

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Autonomous Marxism, basic income guarantee, Dr. Karl Marx, It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World), Max Weber (1864-1920), productivism, socialist humanism, socialist modernism, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The Ramones, wage labour

220px-8hoursday_banner_1856 LUMPENPROLETARIAT—British songwriter Bernard Sumner has often written some of the more thoughtful lyrics found in popular music, embedded in a social consciousness informed by his upbringing in 1970s post-industrial Manchester. In “Turn My Way” (2001) Bernard Sumner (joined by Billy Corgan) sings:

I don’t wanna be like other people are
Don’t wanna own a key; don’t wanna wash my car
Don’t wanna have to work, like other people do
I want it to be free, I want it to be true

There’s a sense of utopianism, which can be traced through such popular song lyrics rejecting work. [1] Yes, we honour labour as a means to an end, but not as an end in itself. We don’t celebrate work for its own sake. Creativity and self-directed activity are quite distinct from capitalist modes of production predicated upon profit motive and capital accumulation.

Since we know that unemployment through automation is increasingly rendering more and more people redundant within capitalist modes of production, we’re confronted with a choice as a society: Do we criminalise the redundant, or involuntarily unemployed? Or do we liberate them?

For some time now, the eight-hour work day has been taken for granted. But it was fought for and won under great sacrifice. As Americans (and others) are increasingly facing longer work hours, Dr. Kathi Weeks argues that we need to imagine life beyond work in order to challenge the constraints to conventional thinking and imagining around what makes life meaningful.

In her book, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (2011), Dr. Kathi Weeks makes a case for shortening the working day to a six-hour day without a pay cut, as our forebears did when they fought and won the right to shorten the working day to an eight-hour workday in the 19th century. She joined free speech radio’s Against the Grain to discuss her book, The Problem With Work, and to challenge conventional thinking around the romance of labour and the virtues of self-directed activity. Listen (or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Against the Grain]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[12 APR 2016] “Today on Against the Grain, more than a century ago, the Industrial Workers of the World, or the IWW, called for the four-hour workday. Should we be considering something similar now?

“I’m Sasha Lilley. We’ll air my conversation with Kathi Weeks about why radicals need to envision a world where work is not central to our existence. She’ll also talk about cutting the workweek. That’s after these news headlines.”

[KPFA News Headlines omitted by scribe]

SASHA LILLEY: “This is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I’m Sasha Lilley.

“Liberating work from its exploitative nature under capitalism has been a central tenet of the radical Left. But what about liberating our lives from the centrality of work? Work may be necessary. But should it be at the heart of our vision for the future? And what would be the political consequences of demanding shorter work hours in the here and now?

“The Autonomous Marxist tradition has championed the refusal of work. And, today, I’m joined by Kathi Weeks, who brings together Marxism and feminism in arguing that we need to rethink the place of work in our imaginings of life after capitalism. She also argues that, in the present, we should fight for a significantly shorter workweek without a cut in pay and for a guaranteed basic income for all.

“Kathi Weeks teaches Women’s Studies at Duke University and is the author of a number of books, including The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. That’s published by Duke University Press.

“Kathi, could you begin by describing for us the history of the work ethic under western capitalism? How has it evolved? Why has it been so central?” (c. 7:54)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Well, I mean, I trace it back, in the book, to Max Weber‘s famous study in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. And he identifies, kind of, the original formulation of the work ethic as the Protestant work ethic. And he talks about how it creates some of the conditions conducive to early capitalist development. So, it promoted really hard work and long hours from one class of people—workers—and frugal saving on the other side. So, that made it possible to produce capital in that moment.

“But, over time, I think the work ethic has evolved and changed slightly. I mean in some ways it remains the same. In all its forms, the work ethic sort of preaches the value of work as an end in itself, not just a means to other ends. it preaches the importance of hard work as not just an instrumental activity, but a kind of highest calling, an ethical duty as what we should organise our lives around, as what we should invest our identity in.

“And I think that element of the work ethic remains similar across time. The supposed reward of all of that activity sort of shifts. I mean it’s no longer sort of, as it was for Weber, a matter of the anxious Protestant being sort of assured of being among the elect, or the saved.

“It’s not even, any more, the industrial version that promised that one could pull oneself or one’s family up by their bootstraps and sort of climb the class ladder through this activity. And I think that today it’s much more about being able to develop your capacities as an individual.

“So, I mean what’s promised by these activities shifts. But I think that the basic insistence on work as an end in itself, rather than just an instrumental activity remains the same.” (c. 10:16)

SASHA LILLEY: “You’ve just been describing the centrality of the work ethic within capitalism, particularly in the West. But work itself—the process of work itself—seems to be pretty uninterrogated, both, within academia in many ways, also for people at work, they feel frustration often. But they see it as an individual problem. Why do you think it is that we have such a hard time getting a handle on work in our lives, our relationship to work?” (c. 10:49)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Yeah, I just find that such an interesting problem. You know I have a couple of ways getting at it. But I think it remains an open question. And I think of it in terms of why work is not more politicised than it is now in some ways. I mean it’s strangely depoliticised. And, yet, work is where most of us experience direct relationships of domination, you know, between bosses and employees and among coworkers. Work is an incredibly hierarchical structure in most sites.

“So, I mean I think it is an interesting question why we don’t want to interrogate more the actual, everyday experience of work. And, again, I think it is in part because we treat work as—we don’t really think of it in terms of a system. We think of it in terms of this job or that job. And we measure one job in relation to another job. But we don’t really think about the similarities among jobs or think about work as a system, let alone as a system of domination, that it gives employers power over employees. And that’s crucial to how most of us experience work. And, yet, we don’t think of it as a site of power relationships, that should be evaluated for their justice or lack of justice. (c. 12:13)

“And, again, I find that an interesting puzzle.”

SASHA LILLEY: “We’ll probably speak more about this in the course of the hour, but how do you define work? Are you speaking of just paid labour? Does unpaid labour fit into this?”

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Yeah.”

SASHA LILLEY: “What is work in your definition?”

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Yeah, I mean, again, it’s a good question. And, generally, when I talk about work, I tend to focus more on the privileged model of wage labour because I think that’s how we understand work popularly. But I think what counts as work is constantly being debated. It’s certainly something that feminists have long debated, you know, why forms of unwaged work are not counted as work.

“So, I don’t want to limit it to waged work. But I do wanna highlight that when we talk about work, we usually mean wage labour and that wage labour becomes the standard for what we count as work. So, I kind of slip between a focus on just wage labour and also a more expansive understanding of what work is.” (c. 13:15)

SASHA LILLEY: “So, your book, The Problem of Work, draws on a couple different traditions. It draws on Marxism; it draws on feminism and traditions within them. But the traditional Marxist critique of work has two basic, or central, elements. There’s, on the one hand, the critique of exploitation—the extraction of surplus value. And, then, on the other hand, there is a critique about alienation, that work is alienating, that it degrades our skills and makes us separate from our actual work process.

“So, the idea within Marxism is that in a society, that would be socialist or communist, the idea would be to free work from its oppressive aspects and make it joyous. You have a different take on how work should be in a more utopian society. What are your problems with the Marxist critique, as traditionally conceived?” (c. 14:11)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Well, I mean I think the problem with both of those versions of the Marxist critique is that they leave that work ethic uninterrogated. That is: Work could live up to what the ideology says, if only work were not a site of exploitation and alienation.

“So, I think its critique of work is incomplete, to put it mildly. So, I draw on other traditions also within Marxism, that I think try to take aim, both, at a system of organisation of production, but also the ideology of productivism—so, not just work, but also the ethics and our ideas about work, that support and encourage us to invest in work.

“So, one tradition, that I’m very interested in is the tradition of Autonomous Marxism. And there’s a kind of slogan, that’s central to most iterations of Autonomous Marxism, and that’s been the refusal of work. And, at one level, it’s sort of self-evident. You know, refusing work is—the strike is an example of refusing work. But in another, like, more theoretical level, the refusal to work is really an attempt to try to think much more critically about, both, the present world of work and the ethical discourse, that helps to sustain it.

“So, the problem, from this point of view is not just that work is exploited or that our work, our labour, is alienated. It’s really that the critique has to go farther. It has to extend to the ways that work dominates our existence, the way that work is over-valued.

“And I think that this one tradition of Marxism really wants to take the critique much further—beyond just the critique of exploitation and alienation.” (c. 16:07)

SASHA LILLEY: “And I will ask you more about some of these different contending perspectives. But I just wanna ask you: What does the refusal of work mean? I would imagine most listeners would say: But wait a minute. So many people are out of work. Why would we wanna refuse work? What does it really mean? Are you talking about a society where no one actually works?” (c. 16:29)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 18:50)

SASHA LILLEY: “And I’ll ask you more about the whole feminist dimension of this argument a bit later on. The programme is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I’m Sasha Lilley. And I’m speaking with Kathi Weeks about her book, The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. That’s published by Duke University Press.

“So, I want to just stay a little longer with the Marxist tradition. And you were saying that you’re drawing from the Autonomous Marxist tradition, particularly, which a lot of these ideas swirled around in Italy in the 1970s, intersected with feminism. But, sticking with the traditional Marxist critique, you mentioned a moment ago the notion of productivism, which I wonder if you could explain. It’s something, that you locate within Marxism, but also within other ideologies and radically different political outlooks. What is productivism?” (c. 19:52)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 20:35)

SASHA LILLEY: “Within Marxism, you locate two traditions where the lack of interrogation of work, as you see it, leads to what you deem insufficient solutions or visions for a new utopian society. One of them is socialist modernism. And the other is socialist humanism. I wonder if you could explain both of those and what they are, and then why you have problems with the solutions, that are on offer within those two traditions.” (c. 21:05)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 24:11)

SASHA LILLEY: “Well, within Marxism, work isn’t just, I think, simply about the productivist aspect, that you mentioned. But you could also argue that work has been seen to be the kind of center of people’s social and collective power, that having work is important because it gives you a collective strength in being brought together in work, which you don’t have under capitalism, as an individual. Also, within work, there may be even sort of creative or utopian potentialities. How do you respond to that argument in favour of the centrality of work?” (c. 24:49)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “I would respond by saying I haven’t seen much evidence of people’s being empowered through work as workers in their opposition to the present organisation of work. I support it entirely. But I think that we need to try to think about additional ways to politicise work and to fight for change.

“And, so, one of the reasons that I’m interested in this kind of politics of work, that’s really a critique of the over-valuation of work and also the way that work dominates our lives and also our imaginations and sociality is I think we can construct a more powerful coalition of activists.

“I mean in some ways, instead of, rather than focusing on only the employed, or employed in only certain kinds of industries, or employed who have access to unions, there’s a way to think about some of our common problems with work.

“I mean I think the people who are employed, underemployed, and also overworked all have an investment in this critique of work. And I really wanna think about constructing a politics of, and against, work, that can draw in more people, that can speak to a range of people’s problems with work.

“I don’t think it’s the province of a specific class formation, as it’s been understood at this point. I think that there’s a possibility to provoke other kinds of activism across some of these traditional divides of union/non-union, employed/unemployed, waged workers/unwaged workers.” (c. 26:40)

SASHA LILLEY: “Kathi Weeks is my guest. We’ll return with her after this music break.” (c. 26:45)

“It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)” by The Ramones

SASHA LILLEY: “You’re listening to Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I’m Sasha Lilley. And I’m joined by the author of The Problem with Work. Her name is Kathi Weeks. And she teaches Women’s Studies at Duke University. She’s also the author of Constituting Feminist Subjects.

“And we are talking today about the issues around a politics, that puts work at its center. She’s arguing for more utopian possibilities.

“So, earlier in the programme, you spoke about the Italian feminist autonomist Marxist traditions, which were connected up in the 1970s efforts for wages for housework. And I wanna ask you more about your critique of feminism, as it relates to work. But I wonder if you could tell us more about what the wages for housework campaign actually was—wages from whom, for example—as a way of looking at this dimension of your argument.” (c. 29:55)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 34:04)

SASHA LILLEY: “Does feminism have its own—and, of course, I’m generalising when I say feminism; it’s obviously a broad category—but outside of the Marxist-feminist tradition, that you’ve been talking about around wages for housework. Does the feminist tradition have its own politics related to an embrace of the work ethic?” (c. 34:24)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 36:32)

SASHA LILLEY: “Is there also the danger within feminism that, when work is subject to critique, it often gets contrasted to work time and family time, that, you know, we need to allow people to have time with their families. And, so, the whole notion of the time when one isn’t at paid labour that it is seen through that familial lens?” (c. 36:55)

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Yes and, again, that’s another reason why I find wages for housework so refreshing because they insisted that a family was within—not against or outside—the system of work, that it is part of the general economy. It’s where work is organised and work takes place. It’s just happens to be mostly unwaged work.

“So, the idea that family would be refuge from work and that family is something we should be balancing with work is something that I think that they critique quite well because family is another side of work.

“So, I think they wanna sort of include the critique of family in a larger critique of work and try to think in different ways about what we want outside of work and that we might want time for families and other kinds of relationships of care and sociality. But family, you know, it’s not limited to this institution of the family.” (c. 37:55)

SASHA LILLEY: “Well, let’s talk about what we want outside of work. You just said that, although you have found the Wages for Housework campaign of the ’70s to be very stimulating in your thinking. But, ultimately, Wages for Housework is not enough.

“So, in terms of what you’re proposing as an alternative to our work-centered lives, you mention two things, two reforms of sorts. One is a basic income guarantee. And the other is a 30-hour workweek without a cut in pay.

“Let me ask you, first, about the basic income guarantee. How would that work? Why do you support it?” (c. 38:32) [3]

DR. KATHI WEEKS: “Well, a basic—I mean there are many, sort of, proposals out there for how we imagine a basic income. As I imagine it, it would be an income, that would be paid unconditionally to individuals. And it’s designed to sort of establish a kind of minimal floor, below which income would not fall. Um, if it—you know, again, there’s different versions of this.

“If this income is so small that people would be forced into work, all it does is sort of subsidise low wage labour in some ways.

“But, if it’s an income, that someone could possibly live on, independent of work, it would enable people to—maybe not completely independent from the wage system, but less dependent on its sort of present terms and conditions.

“So, I think it might give workers some bargaining power to demand better work in some ways. It provides support for all of the different kinds of unwaged work and for workers, that are precarious at this point.

“And I think it also, then, provides some relief for those who are forced into family relationships in order to be part of another income-pooling unit.

“So, I think a basic income would provide—again, it probably wouldn’t enable most people to be free of the wages system. But I think that it would allow people some measure of relief to be not tethered to it so tightly.” (c. 40:12)

SASHA LILLEY: [SNIP]

DR. KATHI WEEKS: [SNIP] (c. 42:00)

SASHA LILLEY: [SNIP]

DR. KATHI WEEKS: [SNIP] (c. 45:00)

SASHA LILLEY: [SNIP]

DR. KATHI WEEKS: [SNIP] (c. 49:00)

SASHA LILLEY: [SNIP]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

“Turn My Way” by New Order

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[1] Of course, various songs come to mind, which reject work:

“I was looking for a job and then I found a job / And heaven knows I’m miserable now…” —”Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” (1984) by The Smiths
“I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day…” —“Rock and Roll All Nite” (1975) by Kiss
“You can take this job and shove it/I ain’t working here no more…” —“Take This Job and Shove It” (1977) by Johnny Paycheck
“I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more…” —“Maggie’s Farm” (1965) by Bob Dylan
“I don’t work / I just speed / That’s all I need / I’m a lazy sod…” —“I’m a Lazy Sod” by The Sex Pistols
“You and me, all we want to be is lazy…” —“Lazy” by Suede
“You thought you’d come and amaze me, honey / You thought you’d come on and amaze me with your money…” —”Money” by Suede
“How many insults must you take in this one life? / I’m in prison most of the day…” —”Don’t Talk To Me About Work” by Lou Reed
“Everybody’s working for the weekend…” —“Working for the Weekend” (1981) by Loverboy

[2] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Against the Grain, this episode hosted by Sasha Lilley, for Tuesday, 12 APR 2016, 12:00 PDT.

[3] Also see a previous article on the concept of a basic income guarantee for all, which includes notes on the more concrete Job Guarantee Programme, which is promoted by proponents of Modern Money Theory (or Modern Monetary Theory):

“Sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright On A Guaranteed Income for All“, 5 APR 2016

***

[Image entitled “8hoursdaybanner 1856” by not known via Wikipedia; it is believed to be public domain.]

[14 APR 2016]

[Last modified 00:15 PDT 15 APR 2016]

Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (2016) by Chris Jennings

10 Thu Mar 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, History, History of Economic Theory, Political Economy

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Age of Enlightenment, Étienne Cabet (1788-1856), Bible communism, Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Chris Jennings, Communist Manifesto, Dr. Karl Marx, Fourierism, Friedrich Engels, Icarians, John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886), Joseph Meacham (1742–1796), KPFA, Letters and Politics, Mitch Jeserich, Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784), New Harmony, Oneida Community, Owenism, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, utopian socialism

chris jennings paradise now utopianism LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (2016) is the name of a new book by author Chris Jennings. Letters and Politics host Mitch Jeserich joined Chris Jennings to discuss the history of north American utopianism. Listen (or download) here. [1]

Messina

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[Official Letters and Politics programme summary from the KPFA archive page] [1]

LETTERS AND POLITICS—[10 MAR 2016] With Chris Jennings, author of the book Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism.

About the book:

In the wake of the Enlightenment and the onset of industrialism, a generation of dreamers took it upon themselves to confront the messiness and injustice of a rapidly changing world. To our eyes, the utopian communities that took root in America in the nineteenth century may seem ambitious to the point of delusion, but they attracted members willing to dedicate their lives to creating a new social order and to asking the bold question What should the future look like?

In Paradise Now, Chris Jennings tells the story of five interrelated utopian movements, revealing their relevance both to their time and to our own. Here is Mother Ann Lee, the prophet of the Shakers, who grew up in newly industrialized Manchester, England—and would come to build a quiet but fierce religious tradition on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Even as the society she founded spread across the United States, the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen came to the Indiana frontier to build an egalitarian, rationalist utopia he called the New Moral World. A decade later, followers of the French visionary Charles Fourier blanketed America with colonies devoted to inaugurating a new millennium of pleasure and fraternity. Meanwhile, the French radical Étienne Cabet sailed to Texas with hopes of establishing a communist paradise dedicated to ideals that would be echoed in the next century. And in New York’s Oneida Community, a brilliant Vermonter named John Humphrey Noyes set about creating a new society in which the human spirit could finally be perfected in the image of God.

Over time, these movements fell apart, and the national mood that had inspired them was drowned out by the dream of westward expansion and the waking nightmare of the Civil War. Their most galvanizing ideas, however, lived on, and their audacity has influenced countless political movements since. Their stories remain an inspiration for everyone who seeks to build a better world, for all who ask, What should the future look like?

Learn more at LETTERS AND POLITICS.

***

[Partial transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Letters and Politics] [1]

LETTERS AND POLITICS—[10 MAR 2016] “This is Pacifica Radio‘s Letters and Politics. On today’s show:”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “They called their philosophy Bible communism. So, they’re taking inspiration from certain sections of the Bible, which they read as commanding Christians to communism. In fact, all these groups, even the secular ones, were reading the same bits of the Bible and saying: Look, it’s evident here that our most sacred texts tell us that we must live in communities of total equality without private property.

“But the United community were also very intellectual and very interested in reading the socialist ideas of their secular contemporaries. [2] They’re really wedding these two streams. They’re very politically aware as well as being religiously inspired.”

MITCH JESERICH: “In the 19th century, a number of communes sprung up around the United States, that attempted the old anarchist adage of creating a new world within the shell of the old.

“For most of us, these stories have been lost to history, but not today. We’ll talk to author Chris Jennings about five of the them: the Oneida, the Shakers, the Fourierists, the Icarians, and New Harmony.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “One thing we can take from them is this idea of imagining idealised futures allowed them to see things that it took their fellow countrymen another century to see: You know, the equality of women, the fact that education needs to be free for all children if we’re gonna have a democratic society.

“These were not mainstream ideas in the middle of the 19th century. And they were within these communities.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Chris Jennings is the author of the book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. That’s next on Letters and Politics. But, first, the news.” (c. 1:45)

[KPFA News Headlines (read by Aileen Alfandary) omitted by scribe] (c. 09:57)

MITCH JESERICH: “Good day, and welcome to Letters and Politics. I’m Mitch Jeserich. With this programme, I occasionally like to point out that we like to do history-related topics because I believe history is important in today’s world. That how we tell history, frequently creates the boundaries of our contemporary political debates, and that the struggle against forgetting is also important in the dynamic. One history, that I was unaware about before, but is also the topic of our conversation today, is the communes of the 19th century in this country, that were meant to create a society based on equality, including full equality for women, and an equal distribution of resources.

“Joining me to talk about that history is Chris Jennings. Chris Jennings is the author of the book Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. Chris Jennings, it is my very good pleasure to welcome you to this programme.” (c. 10:44)

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Usually, when we talk about communes in this country, we’re talkin’ about the communes of the late 1960s and ’70s. The communes during the 1800s were very different than the communes of more recent history.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “They were very different. I think, probably, if you were to ride your horse up, or drive your bus up to one of them, they might look similar on the face. You know? Sort of farms with too many people living on them, big communal meals of beans and rice.

“In actual fact, the ideas and the rhetoric, that undergirded the 19th century communities were, in my estimation, far more utopian than anything that happened in the late ’60s or early ’70s around these parts.”

MITCH JESERICH: “And it’s really fascinating. When we talk about history, it’s hard to find a lot of examples of alternative styles of living, especially in a progressive kind of way. But the five you look at are the Shakers, New Harmony, the Fourierists, [inaudible], the Icarians, and Oneidans. I probably said like three of those wrong.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “No. You, you nailed ’em. Yeah. They were. I mean, obviously, this sort of language we have now of progressive and conservative and left and right don’t map neatly onto 19th century political thinking. But it’s true that this sort of chapter of American history, which is, I think, underdiscussed, represents a sort of counter-history to the rather monolithic narrative we have of American history.” (c. 12:16)

MITCH JESERICH: “Are they all religious?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “They’re not all religious. And one of the things, that’s really interesting about them is some of them are avowedly atheistic, or at least avowedly secular. And some of them are extremely religious. But they saw enough, they had enough in common with one another that they saw each other as, sort of, fellow travellers. Their rhetoric and their programmes were very similar. And, to outsiders, to their fellow Americans, they were generally understood as being part of one, sort of, coherent movement, despite the fact that some of them based their philosophies on religious revelations. And some of them were building on the Enlightenment ideas of progress.

MITCH JESERICH: “And communism?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “And communism. Communism, probably small-‘c’ communism.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Communism, as Karl Marx wrote about?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Well, it’s interesting. There’s a lot of—Marx and Engels, actually more Engels, spent an awful lot of time reading and writing about these people. And they lifted—and they mostly give credit a lot—from these folks.

“But, at the same time, the reason we now call these utopian communities, that language comes from Marx and Engels. In the Communist Manifesto, they, sort of famously mock these, the people they, who invented socialism before them. They’re sort of their predecessors. And they use the term utopian socialism to distinguish these folks from themselves, who they were calling the scientific socialists. So, that language comes from Marx and Engels. And—”

MITCH JESERICH: “Are these the groups?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah. They name about four or five groups. Four of the five, that I write about are mentioned in the Communist Manifesto. So, sort of obliquely, because they’re sort of teasing them, they don’t say them by name. But, elsewhere, they wrote at great length about them.

“And Engels, in particular, was very interested in the Shakers and sort of. If nothing else, it looked to these folks as evidence, since the Shakers were really thriving at the time they were writing, as evidence of the practicality of communism.

“They would say the biggest critique of communism, then, as now, was: This just isn’t gonna work. And Engels would go: Oh, look at the Shakers! Their barns are always full of hay. Their pots are always full of soup. And, clearly, a society without private property can thrive.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Tell me more about the Shakers and Mother Ann Lee. This was run, headed by women.” (c. 14:44)

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yes, it was. Well, it was, sort of, the prophet or the prophetess, as they called her, of the Shakers, whose actual name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. Shakers started as, sort of, a derogatory term, they eventually made peace with, that derives from their mode of worship, which was to bounce around a lot.”

MITCH JESERICH: “And it comes from the Quakers. Or are they—did it come out of the Quakers?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Loosely. Ann Lee starts, gets her start in Manchester, England, which, again, an interesting connection to the later, so-called, scientific socialism. Manchester is, sort of, the cradle of Marxian philosophy also, and for much of the same reason. It was the Industrial Revolution and this supposed capitalist future was on full display. And it was extremely ugly.

“So, it’s a place where people formulated counter-theories. But Ann Lee gets her start there. And she doesn’t really so much as come out of the Quakers. But the group, that she starts in a prayer group, that had been started by two former Quakers. So, their neighbours start calling them the shaking Quakers, from which their name derives. (c. 15:51)

“She comes to—she sort of ascends to the leadership of this small prayer group. And, she, most notably, by having a revelation that says that we should all stop having sex, that that’s how the millennium god has promised us the thousand years of peace and abundance on Earth will come about once we stop having sex.

“She leads a small group of followers from Manchester to upstate New York, just in the middle of the American Revolution. And she dies soon after the Revolution. And the Society is led by a series of incredibly talented followers of her’s. And the leadership is split 50/50 between men and women. It really was.

“I mean, obviously, these were people of their time. So, theory and practice did not always align. But, yes, the Shakers were largely led by women at a time where anything other than a school room was not run by a woman anywhere in the United States.” (c. 16:45)

MITCH JESERICH: “And no sex?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “And no sex.”

MITCH JESERICH: “No marriage? No—”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Mm. No marriage. One thing, that pretty much all these communities have in common, that distinguishes them from other types of communists, I suppose, is that they strongly believed that the family, the nuclear family, was an obsolete institution, that was standing in the way of, of mankind’s ascent to a perfected society.

“So, they all hoped through various means to dissolve the nuclear family. For the Shakers, that largely meant not having sex. But, for some, like the United community, the took an opposite approach. They all had sex with each other and considered everyone in the community married to everyone else in the community.” (c. 17:23)

MITCH JESERICH: “What time frame was the Oneida and the Shakers? Were they around at the same time?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Did they overlap?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah, they overlapped because the Shakers lasted much longer than anyone else. They go their start in Manchester and, I mean, theoretically, there’s still two people who count themselves Shakers, living in a community called Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

“But the Shakers reached their demographic peak in the 1840s, which is when the Oneida Community starts. And the Oneida Community, kind of, unravels after the Civil War in the 1870s. And the Shakers were also declining at around that time.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Did they communicate amongst each other, these groups?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “They did. (c.17:56)

[SNIP] (c. 18:42)

“But they spoke of each other as noble contestants. That was the language, that one Shaker said. Noble contestants were bringing about the millennium.” (c. 18:48) [SNIP] (c. 19:11)

“Yeah. It is amazing. It was amazing at the time. And they did—”

MITCH JESERICH: “How big was it?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “You know, it fluctuated in size. But it sort of peaked out at about 300 people, which doesn’t sound like that many until you see where they lived, and you see the scale. They, basically, all lived in one mansion, that they built for themselves. It’s very impressive.

“The United community, like the Shakers, and unlike some of their other utopian colleagues, really thrived economically. They made a ton of money. So, they built themselves a beautiful estate.

“And they did, eventually, excite enormous public rebuke from, sort of, more conservative fashions. And their existence did, sort of, coincide with, sort of , the peak of the Victorian era, the sort of out-of-control American [inaudible]. (c. 20:00) [SNIP] (c. 20:26)

“So, they were at odds with the surrounding culture.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Are they one of the secular groups, that you were talking about?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “They’re not a secular group. They’re kind of are interesting. And I put them at the end because they, sort of, wed the secular and the mystical strain, that runs through American utopianism. They were definitely building. They called their philosophy Bible communism. So, they’re taking inspiration from certain sections of the Bible, which they read as commanding Christians to communism. In fact, all of these groups were reading. Even the secular ones were reading the same bits of the Bible and saying: Look! It’s evident here that our most sacred texts tells us that we must live in communities of total equality without private property.

“And, so, but the United Community were, also, very intellectual and very interested in reading the socialist ideas of their secular contemporaries. So, they’re really wedding these two strains. They are very politically aware as well as being religiously inspired.” (c. 21:29) [SNIP] (c. 23:27)

MITCH JESERICH: “Looking back at the Shakers, after Mother Ann Lee, we have other leaders. Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright. And they developed what’s known as religious communism.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah. They, again, there’s a key, similar to what we were just discussing, a key to bit of the Bible, they were all reading. This is in the Book of Acts, where it’s describing: Jesus has died. His apostles are all living together with a, sort of, small community. They didn’t even call them Christian. But they’re sort of Jewish Christ-worshippers.

“And it says very explicitly that they had all things in common. Everyone who came in with property into the community sold it and laid the wealth at the feet of the apostles. And they shared everything.

“So, all of these people, the Shakers said: Okay, these are the people, that knew best what Christ wanted, they’d lived with him. They were his friends.

“He’s gone now. But, clearly, how they’re arranging their society is how God wants a Christian society to be organised.

“So, they initiated this, sort of, religious communism, wherein anyone who came into the—Shakers donated their wealth into the collective. And every Shaker, theoretically, owned, you know, one share in what they called Zion, which was this, sort of, federation of communities, that they built throughout the northern United States.” (c. 24:53)

[SNIP]

[music break: Bach] (c. 27:45) [SNIP] (c. 52:15)

“And utopianism is, along with being a very good way of organising one’s grievances with the here and now, because what more, you know, when you describe the perfect society, the things you add to it and the things you leave out are the things you don’t like or do like about the world in which you live.

“So, the fact that these people, utopianism simultaneously allows you to formulate a good critique of the present and stimulate the, sort of, energy to move forward towards something. I think that’s very valuable; and it’s something, that’s missing from contemporary discourse.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Are there paralells to how all these five groups came to an end?”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “There are parallels, but not neat ones. They didn’t all die of the same cause.

“Some of them died of poverty. Some of them died of—because they got too rich. And they were afraid to let new people in. The United Community and the Shakers, they ended up with so much property because, for a time, their economic structure was so successful that they got, sort of, nervous about letting new people in.

“Very often—and this does, sort of, echo closely with 20th century communalism, the children of the founding generation wanted to see something else of the world. They knew that their parents had picked a very weird life. And they wanted to go live a different kind of life.

“A lot of them died because of fire. It’s a funny thing to read 19th century history. You realise what a dominant part of day-to-day life fire was. And, so, you know, Brooke Farm goes bankrupt when the massive phalanstère, which was what Fourier called the buildings in which he thought people should live. Their phalanstère burns down.

“So, they died of various causes. But, basically, my research indicates that the real reason that they, if there’s one cause of death it’s that some circumstance intervenes, which ceases to make it look like their rhetoric is gonna come true.

“Once the utopian dream is—begins to look like it’s not gonna be realised, all of the effort that people have been spending years pouring into these communities, kind of, unravels because, as long as the dream was there, you know, people were happily working along, you know, working very hard. It’s hard work.” (c. 54:36)

MITCH JESERICH: “Yeah. And you could say: Nothing lasts forever.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Businesses don’t last forever.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Does that mean they were a failure? Probably not.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I mean I think you can say, in some ways, basically, people fail by their own terms because they thought they were, unlike, say—”

MITCH JESERICH: “They were bringing the revolution.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah. They were bringing the revolution.”

MITCH JESERICH: “A new day.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah, exactly. So, I would say, like, if your average hippie commune shutters after 20 years, you can say, well, that was great fun.

“But these folks did say that they were not—”

MITCH JESERICH: “Did not reach their final goal.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “—not reach. The millennium was not commenced, as they said. They promised it was going to be.”

MITCH JESERICH: “Chris Jennings, thank you.”

CHRIS JENNINGS: “Yeah. It’s a real pleasure. Thank you so much.” (c. 55:11)

MITCH JESERICH: “Again, the name of the book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. (c. 55:18) [SNIP]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at LETTERS AND POLITICS.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Letters and Politics, hosted by Mitch Jeserich, for Thursday, 10 MAR 2016, 10:00 PST.

[2] The United community refers to the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, which came to be known as the Shakers.

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[Last modified 00:58 PST 11 MAR 2016]

Capitalism: A Six-Part Series (2015) Directed by Ilan Ziv

19 Fri Feb 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Documentary Film, Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Education, History of Economic Theory, International Trade, Marxian Theory (Marxism), Open Economy Macroeconomics, Political Economy

≈ 3 Comments

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2015, accumulation of capital, accumulation of debt, Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-1759), Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Bolshevik Revolution, Capitalism: A Six-Part Series, comparative advantage, David Hume (1711-1776), division of labour, documentary, Dr. David Graeber, Dr. David Harvey, Dr. Karl Marx, Dr. Michael Hudson, Dr. Thomas Piketty, Dr. Tristram Hunt, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. Yanis Varoufakis, enclosure, fictitious capital, Flashpoints, free trade, Hernán Cortés (1485 - c. 1547), Ilan Ziv, IMF, immiseration thesis, International Monetary Fund, Karl Marx Was Right, KPFA, Kris Welch, Mary Gabriel M.A., October Revolution, Opium Wars, Pacifica Radio Network, Saturday Morning Talkies, structural adjustment, The Communist Manifesto, the credit system, the money form, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, transcript, triangular trade, UpFront, World Bank

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Free speech radio KPFA is currently holding its on-air 2016 Winter Fund Drive. In order to encourage support for the first listener-sponsored free speech radio station and network in the nation, perhaps the planet, audio excerpts from cutting edge documentary films are often featured. One such film is poised to be an invaluable resource for helping the general public understand the capitalist mode of production, which engulfs us all. It presents a wide breadth of information and analyses about economics. [1]

Capitalism: A Six-Part Series (2015) was directed by Ilan Ziv and released through Icarus Films. [2] Capitalism is celebrated as much as it is misunderstood by its proponents. This enlightening documentary series is required viewing for all students, citizens, migrant workers, and economic refugees, as it encourages a clearer understanding of capitalism and the social relation at its core known as capital, and, therefore, more informed public decision-making toward the healthiest economic outcomes for society.

Messina

Capitalism: A Six-Part Series (2015) directed by Ilan Ziv

***

ICARUS FILMS—Capitalism has been the engine of unprecedented economic growth and social transformation. With the fall of the communist states and the triumph of “neo- liberalism,” capitalism is by far the world’s dominant ideology. But how much do we understand about how it originated, and what makes it work?

CAPITALISM is an ambitious and accessible six-part documentary series that looks at both the history of ideas and the social forces that have shaped the capitalist world.

Blending interviews with some of the world’s great historians, economists, anthropologists, and social critics (view the complete list of participants), with on-the-ground footage shot in twenty-two countries, CAPITALISM questions the myth of the unfettered free market, explores the nature of debt and commodities, and retraces some of the great economic debates of the last 200 years.

Each fifty-two minute episode is designed to stand alone, making these ideal for classroom use or as an additional resource for students:

Episode 1: Adam Smith, The Birth of the Free Market
Capitalism is much more complex than the vision Adam Smith laid out in The Wealth of Nations. Indeed, it predates Smith by centuries and took root in the practices of colonialism and the slave trade.

Episode 2: The Wealth of Nations: A New Gospel?
Adam Smith was both economist and moral philosopher. But his work on morality is largely forgotten, leading to tragic distortions that have shaped our global economic system.

Episode 3: Ricardo and Malthus: Did You Say Freedom?
The roots of today’s global trade agreements lie in the work of stockbroker David Ricardo and demographer Thomas Malthus. Together, they would restructure society in the image of the market.

Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right?
Have we gotten Marx wrong by focusing on the Communist Manifesto instead of on his critique of how capitalism works – a critique that is relevant and as penetrating as ever?

Episode 5: Keynes vs Hayek: A Fake Debate?
The ideological divide between the philosophies of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek has dominated economics for nearly a century. Is it time for the pendulum to swing back to Keynes? Or do we need a whole new approach that goes beyond this dualism?

Episode 6: Karl Polanyi, The Human Factor
An exploration of the life and work of Karl Polanyi, who sought to reintegrate society and economy. Could the commodification of labour and money ultimately be as disastrous as floods, drought and earthquakes?

CAPITALISM is an impressive series that makes economics accessible through an interdisciplinary approach that explores the work of great thinkers, while embedding economics in specific social, political, and historical contexts. The series can be watched as a whole, but each episode also stands alone.

The series features some of the world’s top economists, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, including Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, Nicholas Phillipson, Kari Polanyi Levitt, David Graeber, and Abraham Rotstein. View the complete list of storytellers.

“A captivating epic… a major contribution to economic and social reflection.” —Le Monde (France)

“Brings clarity to confusion, makes complexities accessible, and produces a clear narrative of a system that seems opaque to most people.” —Journal du Dimanche (France)

“Masterly… is going to revolutionize our vision of the economic world.” —La Vie (France)

“In first look CAPITALISM seems like the economics class you should have skipped…. but in a second look CAPITALISM is the seminar that you must take in the second semester … the point of view is very different and surprising, the result is an impressive, visually rich series.” —Israel HaYom (Israel)

“Should not be missed! Combines highly educational explanations of concepts, economic history and contemporary life, to create a series of documentaries, each of which it is difficult to stop watching!” —Alternatives Economiques (France)

“10 Stars! A truly captivating series that delves into history, philosophy, investigates four corners of the planet, and stimulates the viewer with a re-examination of the basic concepts that define our lives.” —Globes (Israel)

The series was chosen as one of the ten best programs in France in 2014.

Learn more at ICARUS FILMS.

***

Notes on CAPITALISM: A Six-Part Series

[Notes on Episode 1: Adam Smith, The Birth of the Free Market by Messina]

[On Adam Smith]

[David Hume]

[Amazon…rubber found by foreign resource extractors…indigenous Maijuna people, then, are enslaved and proletarianised…]

[Dr. David Graeber]

[On the barter myth]

[Romero Rios (c. 18:49)]

[Amazon…rubber found by foreign resource extractors…indigenous Maijuna people, then, are enslaved and proletarianised…]

[(c. 19:07) Robert Boyer, economist, on the “actors who invented capitalism”]

[transforming indigenous communities, which were previously self-sufficient, into homo economicus, i.e., the process of proletarianisation]

[(c. 19:55) On the “discovery of the Americas”, which was important for the development of science and capitalism as well as the interrelations between them.]

[Yuval Noah Harari, historian]

[SNIP]

***

Notes on CAPITALISM: A Six-Part Series

EPISODE 4: What if Marx was right? [episode summary by Icarus Films]

“Paradoxically, we can’t really learn that much about socialism or communism or the future from Marx. We can learn a great deal about how capital works.” —Marx historian David Harvey

When the communist systems of the 20th century crumbled, many thought that was the end for Karl Marx as a serious thinker too. But the last few years have seen a reawakening of interest in Marx’s work – in particular for his analysis of the nature of capital and the forces it unleashes.

film still

Concentrating on commodification, alienation, and the fetishization of money and credit, WHAT IF MARX WAS RIGHT argues that Marx is more relevant now than he has been in nearly a century. Have we gotten Marx wrong by focusing on the Communist Manifesto instead of on his still-cogent critique of how capitalism works?

Featuring former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, small farm activist Vandana Shiva, economist Thomas Piketty and Marx experts Mary Gabriel and David Harvey, among others.

Episode 4: What if Marx Was Right?

[Working draft transcript of actual free speech radio broadcasts by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, Icarus Films, and KPFA/Pacifica Radio]

Episode 4: What if Marx Was Right?

NARRATOR: [3] “We were told that capitalism is the product of big thinkers and big ideas. But is it true? How did ideas shape our lives? What is their relation to reality? Can they help us understand today’s economic crisis, let alone the future of capitalism?

“[Audio of disciplined Chinese schoolchildren training and chanting in unison] Dawn in Nanjing, China’s last surviving communist commune. On the surface, a time warp, complete with revolutionary posters and radio news piped into the main square. But the community claims it rediscovered Marxist values, as a defence to China’s roaring capitalism.

“In London’s financial center, Marx is unexpectedly being rediscovered here as well.”

DR. TRISTRAM HUNT: “And all of Marx’s and Engels’ warnings over the dangers of monopoly capitalism and concentrated finance have come to pass.” [4]

NARRATOR: “And we thought he was gone forever.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism, that system of government was consigned to the dustbin of history. And Marx was thrown out along with it.”

NARRATOR: “So, is it possible that we’ve misread Marx? Is it possible that his insight into 19th century capitalism has more relevance now than in past decades? Karl Marx, housed in Trier, Germany, besieged by Chinese tourists.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “Karl Marx was born in 1818 in the Rhineland, which is the westernmost province of Prussia. It was an interesting part of the greater Germany because it had been occupied by Napolean. And, so, it had been initiated in the ideas of the French Enlightenment. And that was a milieu in which he was raised.”

NARRATOR: “I can feel no regret, wrote a young woman to her loved one. I shut my eyes very tightly, once again I lay close to your heart, drunk with love and joy. A romantic love letter, like so many others. The innocence of the early 19th century in a provincial German town. The only difference is that the man the letter is addressed to was Karl Marx.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “In Trier, he met Jenny von Westphalen. She was quite a catch for Marx because he was the son of a Jewish lawyer and was, by such, a social outcast. She was the daughter of a Prussian baron.”

DR. DAVID HARVEY: “So, he got educated in Trier. And, then, he went to Berlin. I guess the expectation was that he’d go to college and be a good boy and learn law or something like that. He was, politically, very much engaged because there was always this kind of question of: After the French Revolution, would there be a sort of liberal democracy? What’s going to happen to the autocratic regimes in Germany? And so on. So, he was kind of mixed up in all of that.”

NARRATOR: “More than a century later, the romantic student from Trier had been transformed into the menace of western governments and capitalist countries.

[Santa Claus/Marx cartoon omitted by scribe]

“Marx had become a bogeyman, the conspirator behind every social demand.

[Santa Claus/Marx cartoon omitted by scribe]

“The reason for this radical transformation from a promising young student into a dangerous revolutionary can be found in the basement of the Trier museum, kept in a safe. [snip]

“In that year, Europe erupted in popular revolts. It was the moment that Marx had been waiting for after years of agitating for radical political reforms.

“A spectre is haunting Europe, opens The Communist Manifesto, the spectre of communism. All the powers of Europe have entered into holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “Unfortunately for Marx, he was always late in all of his writing. And he didn’t publish The Communist Manifesto until after the 1848 revolts had begun. So, he couldn’t take credit for those. And, in fact, The Communist Manifesto was sort of lost in the revolution. And it was only rediscovered later.”

NARRATOR: “The story behind The Communist Manifesto did not begin at the 1848 Revolution, but in Paris five years earlier when Marx met Friedrich Engels, the revolutionary son of a wealthy industrialist.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “They met at a Paris cafe, that was known worldwide as being a place where chess masters matched wits. Marx and Engels spent ten days and ten nights talking. And, at the end of that time, they came out feeling that they were completely in agreement on all things. And a beautiful relationship was born.”

DR. DAVID HARVEY: “Marx meeting Engels was, I think, a crucial moment. He met somebody who was actually engaged in, or working in, the factories of Manchester and, therefore, could talk to Marx about the labour process.”

NARRATOR: “They are worse slaves than the negros in America, wrote Engels, for they are more sharply watched. And, yet, it is demanded of them that they shall live like human beings, shall think and feel like men. This they can do only under glowing hatred towards their oppressors, which degrades them as machines.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “Marx went to Manchester with Engels, for a little trip, in 1845. He saw the people who were living in the most degraded conditions, who were building this industrial future by working in the factories.

“He saw the families that had been torn apart by the factory work, the mothers who had to give their infants opium in the morning, so they could go off to work and assume that the children were going to be drugged all day and they wouldn’t have to be cared for. For a man like Marx, a social and political theorist, and an economic theorist, to go there would be to walk right into the laboratory of humanity, of industrial humanity.”

NARRATOR: “While, in 1848, The Communist Manifesto was ignored, in 1917, it was the blueprint for the Bolshevik Revolution and its global ambition.”

VINTAGE USA PROPAGANDA FILM: “You ever hear of Karl Marx? In his mind, communism was born more than a hundred years ago.”

NARRATOR: “Marx has now been transformed into a global threat.”

VINTAGE USA PROPAGANDA FILM: “This is the Kremlin, a citadel of Russian communism. Looking closer we see a public display of giant portraits of communist leaders. Here was a new face. But in the background was an old one—Karl Marx.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “The Marx, that people in the 20th century, and in the 21st century, ran away from was Marx of The Communist Manifesto. That’s the person, that, I think, capitalist governments and democracies and western governments, held up as the person who was responsible for communism and its atrocities in the 20th century.”

NARRATOR: “So, maybe, we got it all wrong. We focused so much on the revolutionary message of The Communist Manifesto and ignored the bulk of the document, which analysed the real revolution, that Marx wrote about—capitalism.

DR. TRISTRAM HUNT: “Ladies and gentlemen, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the first to chart the uncompromising, unrelenting, compulsively iconoclastic nature of capitalism. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties, that bound man to his natural superiors and has left no other remaining nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payments.

“And it was Marx who revealed how capitalism would crush languages, cultures, traditions, even nations in its wake. In one word, it creates a world after its own image, he wrote. [snip?]

“I would like to suggest to you that Marx has rarely seemed more relevant. ‘Marx’s Stock Resurges on A 150-Year Tip’ was how The New York Times, The New York Times, marked the 150th Anniversary of the publication of The Communist Manifesto, a text, which more than any other, as they put it, ‘recognized the unstoppable wealth-creating power of capitalism, predicted it would conquer the world, and warned that this inevitable globalization of national economies and cultures would have divisive and painful consequences’. ”

NARRATOR: “After the publication of The Communist Manifesto, Marx was expelled from continental Europe. He was once again a refugee, this time arriving in London in 1849.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “Imagine Dean Street in 1850, the year Karl Marx and his family moved into this Soho neighborhood. The streets were teeming with refugees, people who had fled failed revolts on the Continent. They arrived in this country, some with only the clothes on their backs, many not even speaking the language.

“Marx and his family were among the lucky. But all they had—three adults and three children—were two rooms and an attic. And, in those cramped quarters, Marx tried to make sense of what he had just experienced and what he saw in the streets around him.”

NARRATOR: “And, next door, a brand new exhibition opened right at the time Marx began writing Das Kapital, an exhibition celebrating the achievements of the industrial revolution.”

MARY GABRIEL, M.A.: “It was a triumph of industry. Man’s greatest achievements were on display. And, so, this was the dawn of a new era. King Capitalism was on the throne. And, yet, Marx, up in his garret, was busily scribbling why this system would never work. Yes, it produced wonders. But it would also produce great destruction.”

DR. DAVID HARVEY: “I teach Marx. And a question I always ask is: What can we learn from Marx? And what do we have to do for ourselves? And I think that that’s a very important question to ask because very frequently, in the past, people have read their Marx and then sort of, I don’t know, plunked reality into it and, then, said: Ah! Here’s the answer! I don’t think you can do that. I think there’s only a limited set of things we can learn from Marx.

“Paradoxically, we can’t really learn that much about socialism or communism or the future from Marx. We can learn a great deal about how capital works.”

NARRATOR: “The wealth of societies, in which capital modes of production prevail, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities. Our investigation must, therefore, begin with the analysis of a commodity. —Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Volume 1.

[Audio of 1950s-ish idyllic home life omitted by scribe]

“A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside of us, a thing, that by its properties, satisfies human wants. —Das Kapital.

[Audio of 1950s-ish idyllic home life omitted by scribe]

DR. DAVID HARVEY: “Now, what Marx does in Volume 1 of Capital is have a little section called The Fetishization of Commodities. And what it, basically, means is that our daily experience doesn’t actually give us all of the information we need to understand how the system is working.

“Our daily experience is we take some money and we buy a commodity. We take it home. That’s our daily experience. But that doesn’t tell you anything about the labour, that went into the commodity. It doesn’t tell you anything about why it is that this commodity costs twice as much as that commodity. And Marx is kind of saying: The market system disguises all of those social relations.”

NARRATOR: “There are many different commodities with different use-values. But they have only one common property left, that of labour itself. —Das Kapital.

DR. DAVID HARVEY: “The Industrial Revolution, which we conventionally date from around 1780 was founded upon the creation of a factory system with large-scale machinery and, of course, a labour process, that was very different from that which artisans, in making there cabinets and so on, engaged in.

“This conversion and this rise of capitalism, from 1780 onwards, was for Marx a crucial transformation.”

NARRATOR: “The worker is related to the product of labour, as to an alien object. The more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects, which he creates, the poorer he himself, his inner world, becomes. —Karl Marx

“This iPad worker, who has asked for his identity to be hidden, has been given a camera to film his life outside the factory. Once these workers were peasants, with a connection to the land and its products. Now, they are part of an assembly line. Alienation, argued Marx, is built into the manufacturing process of commodities.”

DR. DAVID HARVEY: “To Marx, it’s the idea of living labour, which is so crucial, which distinguishes him very much from the classical political economists, who saw labour, as a fact of production. They call it a factor of production. It’s a thing.”

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

UPDATE [28 FEB 2016]—Gonzo: Thanks to KPFA’s Kris Welch for mentioning Lumpenproletariat.org and reading from our website during the last nine minutes of her Saturday Morning Talkies broadcast for Saturday, 27 FEB 2016 (c. 1:51:55). It was through KPFA that I found out about the University of Missouri-Kansas City and other radical, heterodox economics departments; so, to KPFA I am indebted. And it is with KPFA/Pacifica Radio, first and foremost, that I endeavour to share what I have learned about heterodox economics, political economy, and life under the capitalist mode of production. [5]

Gonzonian regressions aside, here is a list of radio broadcasts featuring excerpts of Ilan Ziv‘s Capitalism: A Six-Part Series for those interested in listening and, thereby, learning more about the capitalist mode of production, but are unable to afford purchasing or getting a copy of the Six-Part Series as a thank-you gift for donating to KPFA. [6]

Fund Drive Special: Capitalism, 4 MAR 2016, 15:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast features two excerpts (c. 5:00; c. 21:00) from Episode 1: Adam Smith, The Birth of the Free Market. (N.B.: KPFA usually removes audio archives of Fund Drive special programming, such as this one, two weeks after initial radio transmission.)
Special Programming: Capitalism Special, 4 MAR 2016, 11:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included four excerpts (c. 4:00; c. 22:00; c. 37:00; c. 47:00) from Episode 2: The Wealth of Nations: A New Gospel? The four excerpts broadcast during this hour were based on the same selected, edited, excerpts, as broadcast on UpFront (for 3 MAR 2016, 07:00 PDT, see notes below). (N.B.: KPFA usually removes audio archives of Fund Drive special programming, such as this one, two weeks after initial radio transmission.)
Hard Knock Radio, 3 MAR 2016, 16:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast was a re-run of the Hard Knock Radio broadcast for 22 FEB 2016. (See notes below. Excerpt start times have shifted because the News Headlines are new.) The first two excerpts (c. 10:12; c. 24:48) from Episode 3: Ricardo and Malthus: Did You Say Freedom? addressed the work of David Ricardo (1772 – 1823) and Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 – 1834) and the consequent implications for modern institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, and featured analyses from Dr. Michael Hudson, et al. This radio broadcast also included an excerpt (c. 49:54) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right? (N.B.: Hard Knock Radio usually removes audio archives two weeks after initial radio transmission.)
UpFront, 3 MAR 2016, 07:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included four excerpts (c. 10:16; c. 26:16; c. 37:23; c. 48:05 ) from Episode 2: The Wealth of Nations: A New Gospel?, on the obfuscated aspects of Adam Smith‘s work (1723 – 1790), particularly his foundational text, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which informs his more famous Wealth of Nations (1776). For example, in the first excerpt (c. 10:16) Dr. Noam Chomsky reminded us that, rather than uncritically accepting the division of labour, Adam Smith “points out that division of labour is monstrous” because it “turns people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as a person can possibly be because a person just becomes a machine. That’s a terrible attack on fundamental human rights. And, therefore, [Adam Smith] says, in any civilised society, the government’s gonna have to intervene to prevent division of labour.” Similarly, another distortion made by most economics textbooks, ascribes an Ayn Randian Virtue of Selfishness to Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, which is antithetical to Smith’s actual moral philosophy. “Self-interest, his second most quoted principle, suffered a similar fate [as did Smith’s analysis of the division of labour].” Adam Smith’s conception of self-interest was corrupted by historical revisionists to serve the aims of capital at the expense of the working classes and the general welfare. In the second excerpt (c. 21:18), the complex aspects of Adam Smith’s notion of self-interest are parsed and expanded beyond the narrow Ayn Randian Virtue of Selfishness predicated upon illusory perceptions. These false perceptions fail to see the interconnected and interdependent nature of human social relations. Indeed, Ayn Rand is cited in the documentary film, as promoting a 21st century “philosophy of self-interest”, which helped fuel the Reagan and Thatcher political revolutions. This right-wing backlash overturned the previously established social contracts in the USA and the UK, largely based on Keynesian state interventions and regulations, which recognised the reality of human interdependence. Another distortion of Smith’s philosophy made by his misguided proponents regards the so-called invisible hand of the free market. Indeed, your author, having read The Wealth of Nations several times, can assure readers that Smith uses the actual phrase “invisible hand” maybe two or three times in the entire tome. When Smith’s proponents cite Smith’s concept of the invisible hand, it’s invariably taken out of context. As Noam Chomsky points out: “Adam Smith was concerned that, if there was free movement of capital and free import of goods, he said England will suffer because British capitalists will invest abroad, and they’ll import from abroad, and that’ll harm the English economy. Adam Smith, then, gave an argument—and not a very good argument—but his argument was that English investors will prefer to invest in England because of what some called a home bias. They’ll have a preference for investing close by. And, therefore, as if by an invisible hand, England will be saved from the menace of free capital movement and the free imports. That’s invisible hand. What’s that gotta do with the Cato Institute or modern enthusiasm about free capital flow and having U.S. corporations invest in China, so they can send stuff back here to sell cheap, exploiting Chinese workers? That’s not Adam Smith.” In the third excerpt (c. 37:23), the distortions and obfuscations of Adam Smith’s work are shown to have contributed to the Global Financial Crisis (c. 2008). During a 2009 Congressional hearing on the Global Financial Crisis, Ayn Rand disciple, Alan Greenspan (then-Chair of the Federal Reserve System, the USA’s central bank), had to answer for the failure of his neoclassical invisible hand assumptions, by which he promoted financial deregulation: “I found a flaw in the model, that defines how the world works, so to speak.” (Cf. The Flaw (2011)) In the fourth excerpt (c. 48:05), the intellectual foundations of slavery are explored, which are also the intellectual foundations for neoclassical economics and the central assumptions justifying capitalist modes of production. “One of the first to identify the intellectual foundations, on which slavery was built—the ability to separate economic logic from social and human reality [a central requirement for neoclassical economics, but not heterodox economics]—was a contemporary of Adam Smith, a former slave, and a philosopher, too.” His name was Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-1759). Unfortunately, his ideas were, literally, burned and obfuscated, whilst a revisionist take on Adam Smith’s ideas were touted as gospel.
Special Programming: Capitalism, 2 MAR 2016, 11:00 PDT. Notes pending. Hour-long broadcast. (N.B.: KPFA usually removes audio archives of Fund Drive special programming, such as this one, two weeks after initial radio transmission.)
Letters and Politics, “Capitalism: The Six-Part Series“, 2 MAR 2016, 10:00 PDT. Notes pending. Hour-long broadcast.
Flashpoints, 1 MAR 2016, 17:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included excerpts from Episode 1: Adam Smith, The Birth of the Free Market. Notes pending.
Uprising, 1 MAR 2016, 08:00 PDT. Notes pending. Hour-long broadcast.
Against the Grain, 29 FEB 2016, 12:00 PDT. Notes pending. Hour-long broadcast.
Saturday Morning Talkies, 27 FEB 2016, 09:00 PDT. Notes pending. Hour-long broadcast.
Special Programming: Capitalism, 26 FEB 2016, 11:00 PDT. Notes pending. Hour-long broadcast. (N.B.: KPFA usually removes audio archives of Fund Drive special programming, such as this one, two weeks after initial radio transmission.)
UpFront, 25 FEB 2016, 07:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included four excerpts (c. 8:12; c. 24:55; c. 36:25; c. 46:05) from Episode 6: Karl Polanyi, The Human Factor. The first excerpt (c. 8:12) features Dr. Michael Hudson on Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation) and history of economic thought. The second excerpt features Dr. Yanis Varoufakis and Dr. Michael Hudson (UMKC) on ancient economic history and ancient economic planning, such as land redistribution and debt annulment, the clean slate. Dr. Hudson. The third excerpt features Dr. Yanis Varoufakis and Dr. Michael Hudson (UMKC) on ancient economic history, clean slate, land redistribution, and debt annulment. Dr. Hudson emphasised that most ancient transactions were governed by the state or the church, which gave the issuers of the currency monetary sovereignty. This is a central concept in MMT (or modern money theory or modern monetary theory), which is taught at the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City: The issuer of a given currency has monetary sovereignty. This meant that debts of the poor could be forgiven periodically to correct societal imbalances, which may develop over time. The trouble came when most debts in society were owed to private banks. Private debt wasn’t as easily forgiven, as debt controlled by a church or a crown. The narrator raises several fascinating questions. When did debt become a purely economic issue? Dr. Yanis Varoufakis reminded us that economic desperation could lead societies down a path like that of Nazi Germany, or other fascist outcomes. The fourth excerpt features Dr. David Graeber on the traditional supremacy of debt.
Letters and Politics, 24 FEB 2016, 10:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included two extended excerpts (c. 7:19; c. 21:22) from Episode 1: Adam Smith, The Birth of the Free Market, featuring David Graeber, et al., on the myth of the barter economy, reciprocity, and more. In this first extended clip (c. 7:19), Dr. David Graeber challenged the standard narrative about the origins of capitalism by placing them centuries before the industrial revolution, in the context of colonialism and slavery. Dr. Graeber argues that Hernán Cortés, the Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition, which led to the demise of the Aztec Empire, drove his troops into debt via his company store. Rather than offer debt forgiveness, Cortés gave indebted troops a “ten year moratorium” and sent them out to colonise and pillage the Americas in order to repay their debts. So, their outrage, argued Dr. Graeber, combined with virtually “unlimited power turned them into monsters.” In this process of Spaniard looting of natural resources, the extraction of silver from the Americas flooded into Spain, driving demand for English wool, “which made raising sheep more profitable.” English peasants were, then, “displaced to make room for more sheep. The process was called enclosure.” (c. 15:55) In this narrative of early capitalist modes of production, we clearly see how wealth accumulation in one part of the world led to the displacement, poverty, and immiseration of working classes in another part of the world. This riveting narrative emphasises the interconnectedness of global capital and the serious consequences resulting from the decisions of capitalists driven purely by profit motive commanding capital flows. In the second extended excerpt (c. 21:22), the origins of capitalism were placed in the context of the slave trade and its importance in creating early global markets, which are “disembodied from society”. Early private enterprises engaged in “triangular trade” “contributed to the emergence of a market economy”. Triangular trade was “increasingly dependent on black slavery”, but Adam Smith’s canonical narrative chose to “turn a blind eye to slavery”. Slave plantations were profit-driven enterprises and functioned in every way, as capitalist enterprises with the sole exception of utilising slave labour instead of wage labour. Thus, “a strong case can be made that capitalism actually started in the 16th century with the colonisation of the Caribbean and Latin America.” (c. 30:00) This radio broadcast also included two excerpts (c. 34:30; c. 45:21) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right? The first excerpt (c. 34:30) contextualised the life and times of Dr. Karl Marx and his pivotal friendship with Friedrich Engels. The second excerpt (c. 45:21) fleshed out the concepts introduced earlier in the historical accounts of colonialism and slavery. Dr. David Harvey explained that the accumulation of capital is always accompanied by the accumulation of debt. The money form exists in tandem with the credit system, which leads to the fetish of commodities and a dialectical relationship between commodities and human behaviour. Long-held values, morals, and ethics are obliterated by the fetish of commodities. Actor Angelina Jolie and her publicised case of breast cancer is cited as an example. Today, genes are patented, whereas in the past such notions would’ve seemed absurd to the prevailing norms of yore. Such are the revolutionary forces unleashed by capitalist modes of production, as Dr. Karl Marx brilliantly observed long ago.
Uprising, 23 FEB 2016, 08:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included two excerpts (c. 10:04; c. 29:05) from Episode 3: Ricardo and Malthus: Did You Say Freedom?, featuring Dr. Michael Hudson (UMKC), Dr. David Graeber, et al., and addressing the IMF and the World Bank. This radio broadcast also included an excerpt (c. 44:48) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right?, featuring Dr. David Harvey (CUNY), et al., on the fetishism of commodities.
Hard Knock Radio, “Capitalism 101“, 22 FEB 2016, 16:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included two excerpts (c. 9:25; c. 24:00) from Episode 3: Ricardo and Malthus: Did You Say Freedom?, which addressed implications for modern institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank and featured clips from Dr. Michael Hudson (UMKC), et al. This radio broadcast also included an excerpt (c. 49:21) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right? (N.B.: Hard Knock Radio usually removes audio archives two weeks after initial radio transmission.)
UpFront, 19 FEB 2016, 07:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included two excerpts (c. 8:40; c. 25:27) from Episode 3: Ricardo and Malthus: Did You Say Freedom?, featuring Dr. Michael Hudson (UMKC), Dr. David Graeber, et al., and addressing David Ricardo‘s notion of comparative advantage, the origins of free trade dogma, the Opium Wars, colonialism, imperialism, and consequent implications for contemporary working classes and institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank. This broadcast also included two excerpts (c. 37:56; c. 45:18) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right?, featuring Dr. David Harvey (CUNY).
Flashpoints, 18 FEB 2016, 17:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included an excerpt (c. 21:38) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right?, featuring Dr. David Harvey (CUNY).
Letters and Politics, 18 FEB 2016, 10:00 PDT. This hour-long radio broadcast included two excerpts (c. 18:45; c. 30:54) from Episode 4: What If Marx Was Right?, featuring clips from Dr. David Harvey (CUNY) discussing fictitious capital. This broadcast also included an excerpt (c. 41:36) from Episode 5: Keynes vs Hayek: A Fake Debate?

Messina

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[1] And, most impressively, it is very consistent with my university training as an economics major at one of the world’s finest, radical, heterodox economics departments, University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“Where is the best new economics now being done? UMKC.” —James K. Galbraith

[2] Previously it had only been made available to educational institutions for $498. Currently, it can be acquired at an extremely discounted price with a donation to KPFA/Pacifica Radio.

[3] This particular audio excerpt was transcribed from the Flashpoints (94.1 FM, KPFA, Berkeley, CA) broadcast for Thursday, 18 FEB 2016, c. 21:38, hosted by Dennis Bernstein.

[4] For an extended video clip of this soundbite, see “Tristram Hunt: Marx Was Clear About the Consequences of Capitalism”, by IQ Squared on YouTube:

Or for those with true grit, or an insatiable hunger for knowledge, consider the entire debate, entitled “Karl Marx Was Right“:

[5] But it’s not easy. Perhaps one is married with children, and still trying to persevere with a dignified measure of civic engagement, and not just shrivelling up under the pressure of putting food on the table and being there for loved ones uninterested in, or wary of, civic engagement. But we keep on pushing in whatever capacity we can, hoping to build bridges with other people of conscience interested in truths, however brutal or emancipatory, rather than endless escapism and frivolity.

[6] All others with means, please consider supporting free speech radio in all of its manifestations and permutations. It cannot be understated that democracy cannot function without an informed electorate. And there is truly nothing more informative in the public realm than honest listener-sponsored free speech radio and broadcast media.

***

[19 FEB 2016]

[Last modified 20:05 PDT 26 SEP 2016]

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Tag Archives: Dr. Karl Marx

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Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (2016) by Chris Jennings

Capitalism: A Six-Part Series (2015) Directed by Ilan Ziv

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