I didn't catch up with LJ in time to respond to your last post, but I wouldn't have known those texts before my PhD program, and I'd be surprised if any public schools in the U.S. include them in their curricula. I've always felt that the only way we'd ever pass public health care in this country is to avoid any association with the words communism and socialism, because even though McCarthyism has been vilified, a lot of Americans still have a Cold War mentality.
This may sound a little far out, but I think that the majority of people in this country have traditionally held a very "Christian" mindset when it comes to their work lives: a lifetime of suffering, toil, and self-sacrifice in hopes of gaining the ultimate reward of a paradisiacal retirement. When you factor in all the competitive capitalist stuff, people who don't acquire the outward markers of success are judged not to have worked hard enough, and that practically makes them sinners!
So I guess what I'm saying is that I suspect Marx's ideas about people being personally invested in the craft of their work have been as foreign to most Americans as his ideas about capital. And I hope that *is* changing, no matter what we call it.
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This may sound a little far out, but I think that the majority of people in this country have traditionally held a very "Christian" mindset when it comes to their work lives: a lifetime of suffering, toil, and self-sacrifice in hopes of gaining the ultimate reward of a paradisiacal retirement. When you factor in all the competitive capitalist stuff, people who don't acquire the outward markers of success are judged not to have worked hard enough, and that practically makes them sinners!
So I guess what I'm saying is that I suspect Marx's ideas about people being personally invested in the craft of their work have been as foreign to most Americans as his ideas about capital. And I hope that *is* changing, no matter what we call it.