Functionalism, was Re: Harry Braverman (was Re: Labor: Menial vs. Noble)

[Dennis Breslin]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> Could you expand on this. What in Althusser constitutes
> his "functionalism"? What is your understanding of
> functionalism?
>
Consequentialism so that the consequences seem to give
rise to their origins.  Worse yet is where the analysis
has the consequences of actions single-handedly working
magic to bring themselves about.  Add to that consequences
that always result in preserving order - in its sociological
variant, social order. In Althusser, ISAs are the marxian
flip-side to sociology's interest in socialization - one
produces while the other produces enculturation - and both
produce conforming subjects.  I add further that too much
marxian verbiage focuses on how the system is reproduced,
almost mechanically as if the outcome was driving the 
forces that result in it.  To harken back to the earlier
discussion, accounts that ignore both outcomes as 
contingent and the unanticipated consequences of causal
factors makes for a tight tho bogus theory.

It's this, by the way, that mars Burawoy's work in Mfg.
Consent where the stress is in consent and there's actual
little regard to how consent is produced - all actions by
managers result in consent (tho Burawoy's own participant
observation shows that management was often incompetent
in achieving its goals) and pretty much everything that
workers did resulted in the same.  In fact, short of 
organizing and engaging in outright rebellion and one
that was informed by a marxist analysis, workers 
consented.

Dennis Breslin