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

[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.