this is a public service announcement

[keryx]

So, half the people I've ever met? I apologize for being all what do you mean, you don't know what Marx said? because apparently no one - well "no one" is strong wording, but you get the idea - has ever read Marx, so indeed you did not know. [Heh. Makes a girl wonder if Mao didn't read Marx. That would certainly explain some things.]

As an olive branch, I offer you Volume 1 of Das Kapital in audio files [It's FREE!]. You can play it in your car! While you work out! You can choreograph dances to it. *

I asked in the first place because I'd like to have a back-and-forth sort of conversation about knowledge work in relationship to the sort of fulfillment and craft Marx talked about with the whole "ownership of the means of production" thing. People tend to look at me funny when I bring this idea up. But hey! Maybe not ALL people.

*Now I'm getting ideas.

Comments

[belladonnalin.livejournal.com]

I would like to have that conversation. I had to search out the source material on my own, but I stll know it.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I'm downloading a bunch of the Das Kapital files I linked to, since I don't remember much of its actual content anymore. But I'm pretty clear that Kapital was intended to be a predictive theory, right? Like, based on limited info about what happened moving from farm and craft to factory production, Marx thought that we'd gradually evolve to workers taking over production and consequently get deeper fulfillment from work.

I was at this open space [explained in wiki] conference last week, talking about agile software development. So, side note: the way open space meetings work feels a lot like elegant, high-functioning anarchy - what happens is driven by passion, not agenda. That strikes me - as work often does these days - as workers owning the means (their brains, process) of production. And think about how much we talk about work as a source of fulfillment (particularly for neurotic white collar knowledge workers, but you see it in research on working class folk, too)... that points to me to a serious idealistic change since early industrial revolution thought. Our self-organizing team concept, collective ownership of code, and other things in the agile methods I work within make that even more interesting.

The weird thing is that this work process takes place inside, in many cases, corporations that exist in an environment where money is an increasingly abstracted value concept. I don't know how to fit those two things - work and its larger context - together, but my point is that some of what Marx predicted is really happening.

What tends to happen when I bring this up is people are all "eh, communism is a failed experiment" - so they're not prepared (well, neither am I, really!) to discuss theory cause it's all muddled up with the various things that were labeled "communist" either in the past or today.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

On a personal note, I think working in the corporate world is turning me into an anarchocommunist, and it's not a result of rejecting The Man (assuming I work for The Man) but of embracing the nature of my work.

[orkid.livejournal.com]

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.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

There's definitely an assumption that Communist = Very Bad Enemy (who was fortunately defeated) kinda baked into our culture, and I think that's at least in part because reading the theory isn't required. And possibly even a little subversive?

When people draw parallels between new software development approaches and communism, it's common for someone else to come back with a long explanation of how we it's totally not the same. Except it kindof is.

I do think the "hard work" vs "fulfillment" schools of thought continue to evolve in conflict. They're treated as generational differences, which points to a shift in thinking among younger people away from Puritanical work ethic.

[orkid.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, the kids i knew who read Marx in high school were being actively subversive.

Puritan work ethic - duh! i think the heat has addled my brain.

it does seem as if fewer people in our generation are invested in that kind of thinking, though there's always the chance that it's just the people i choose to pay attention to.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Marx since college but I'm sure I can remember enough to argue it with you. Hell, I've got a liberal arts education -- I can talk about anything cause I'm delightful at parties and dates.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that liberal arts degree is pretty much the only thing you've got going for you. HA! Otherwise you'd just be another hot chick.