>CB: Do all agree that humans have a bigger nurture component than other
>species ? That our culture is our distinguishing characteristic as a species
>?
>
>Do I go too far in suggesting that language or mathematics learning ability
>is an instinct in humans, unique to humans ?
>
>-----------------
>i can't answer your 3 questions, but with your permission i'd like to
>propose three alternate ones instead that must be answered before we attempt
>any gross social engineering; otherwise, the social engineers are asking for
>lots of potential trouble, IMO:
who said anyone was interested in social engineering in the first place. the only people i've ever heard say that the left aree, exclusively, the social engineers were people who self identified as conservatives. as such, the label and assumptions behind it are already suspect.
folks not among the left or liberals seem, from where i sit, just as interested in social engineering as anyone else. the claim, for ex, that the family is the building block of society and that we must do what we can to protect and foster/nuture families is very much about social engineering the good society via government. indeed, the argument for limitations on the role of gov by even Adam Smith was about social engineering. Smith made a claim about human nature (truck barter and exchange, homo oeconimus, rational choice man, etc that operated best in a 'free market') and made a claim as how to best organize society in order to maximize 'nautral' human capacities.
the 'free' market, itself, is not 'natural'. it had to be engineered into existence. the notion that society best works if we allow the natural business cycles play themselves out is, itself, another form of social engineering that libertarians seem to forget about and, as doug pointed out in his piece in the new york press, libertarians also forget just exactly why .gov grew. not the least of the reasons, were factions of the capitalist class itself. after all, if you are running a capitalist enterprise, it is *awfully* nice to have a relatively predictable business cycle within which to make short and long term decisions. stable markets mean that capital can make more efficient decision regarding labor, wages, procurement of raw goods, etc and so on.
the labor-capital-gov accord was formulated b/t 1935-1950, a set of tacist, informal udnerstandings be/t large mass production industries, unions, gov.
mgmt retained the right to govern enterprise operations: resource allocation, marketing, product dev., plant location, technological changes, investment, and internaltonal trade.
in retrun, org labor rec'd assurances that trade union rts would be upheld, minimal living standards protected, high unemployment avoided, and rises in labor productivity would be accompanied by increases in real income.
the state was accepted by both capital and labor as the ultimate guarantor of the accord, the key provision of which endorsed union organization and collective bargaining arrangements by which unions were able to secure for their members gains in income, employment security, and working conditions.
for this recognition and legally sanctioned bargaining power, unions were expected to maintain an orderly and disciplined workforce, --to bring under control the militant thrust of th e labor movement.
during this era of managerial capitalism, capital accepted the active intervention of unions and gov and it did so as part of an effort to overcome the severe economic difficulties that had characterized the fifty years prior.
by the time of the Great Depression, mass production was firmly grounded in the manufacture of consumer durables and in related industries such as steel and rubber. As a result, the economic system was extremely sensitive to the level of consumer purchasing power. It was a mass prod. *and* mass consumption economy.
Attempts to boost profit thru wage reductions only worsened the chances of economic recovery by diminishing the level of consumer demand. recovery required the steady maint. of an appropriate level of aggregate demand, and the state and org labor were incorporated into managerial capitalism for this reason--to ensure a continuous presence of large stable markets.
under these conditions, most unions b/c conservative bureaucratic, and economistic, serving to integrate workers into the capitalist system. unions most readily developed in the mass production industries dominated by managerial organization and oligopolistic markets. given their size, urgan base, and major labor markets, oligopolistic firms made sure targets for unionization. and, unions prosper where wages are eliminated as a factor in the competition process. oligopolies were in a good position to do this given their ability to control prices and pass on wage increases in the form of high prices to consumers.
it was these large manufacturing enterprises that most needed the stability and predictability offered by collective bargaining, a procedure that enables the firm to control labor costs as a stable factor of production, making investment decisions easier to make.
conflict took place within the context of agreed upon rules, rather than conflict OVER the rules themselves.
the labor capital gov accord encouraged union to concentrate on distributional questions, and to shape a system of industrial relations based on the proliferation of work rules and defined job classifications. thus, an internal labor market is established and it is one that is, again, predictable and controlled.
the state operated as monitor and enforcer of the labor-capital accord, securing the predictability that made for mass markets and economic growth. the economy of managerial oligopolistic capitalism was incapable of correcting itself. rather, it is inherently crisis ridden, tending toward one of two extremes: inflation or depression. such an economy requires constant stabilization and assurance of appropriate levels of aggregate demand. with the new deal and keynesian demand mgmt techniques, the state assumed the responsibility for economic stabilization.
a larger, interventionist state used fiscal and monetary policy, altering tax rates, gov spending and the money supply in response to the cyclical movement of the economy in order to keep that economy on an even keel. in turn, gov extended protection to citizens from the vagaries of the market, another implicit part of the accord, thereby keeping up demand
growth in military spending after WWII enhanced the stability of the private sector. the rise in social welfare expenditures maintain effective demand during downturns; gov policy and funding promoted massive programs of housing and highway construction that boosted demand for building, consumer durables, and automobile industries.
the state stepped in to provide the mass production/mass consumption econ. with the stability and security that were the basis of its effectiveness.
the corollary discussion of all this would, of course, be a discussion of the internal organizational changes in the rise of managerial capitalism that also encouraged the rise of big .gov. that is, in order to make their markets more predictable and controllable, major industries turned from the foreman's empire to that of managerial capitalism in order to maximize profits.
As Edward Herman writes, the multidivisional firm "made possible the imposition of standardized financial goals on the various division... (and this) tended to enhance the importance of profits and rate-of-return considerations...(Further), under...(this) structure, one of the core functions of the top mgmt is the allocation of capital. as part of this process, great attention is given to the profit performance and plans of the divisions, as well as to criteria for best overall use of corporate resources"
the advantages of the oligopolistic firm lie in their access to:
1. plenty of capital to invest and nearly unlimited...credit on favorable terms in both domestic and foreign money mkts.
2. a pool of exp'd managers that can be deployed anywhere in the corporate structure according to need 3. a large, effective sales apparatus that is available to all units of the org 4. r and d facilities that can be put to work to solve technological and marketing problems (magdoff and sweezy)
under these circumstance, concern with grown and stability manifests itself in a strategy of diversification (penetrating new industries by acquiring diff product lines) and geographical diversification (penetrating new markets).
i won't bother to go into the ways in which gov helped capital to realize these organizational changes, thereby dominating markets. etc.
kelley