Gar Lipow wrote:
>
> Before I reply to Todd, let me reply to a point repeated by several on
> this list. Noticing that a substantial class exists between labor and
> capital is not a moral judgement.
I think a lot of the confusion is loaded into the word "between" here. In discussions such as this the meaning the word is apt to carry (I think Gar _mostly_ avoids this) is that of being in the middle of a status hierarchy (of wealth, education, birth, etc. etc.). Gar's term "coordinator" (which seems to echo the old "professional/managerial" class of the Ehrenreichs) attempts to avoid this. I doubt however that it does. A foreman at Ford does not really "stand between" capital on his/her left, labor on his/her right, carrying out the wishes of capital (except in the tautological sense that everyone in capitalism, including all of us on this list, willy-nilly carries out the wishes of capital).
This idea can (and usually does) lead in a reactionary and anti-labor position. Back in 1979 or 1980, the entire firefighting force of Normal, Illinois went to jail for 40 days rather than admit that the captains and lieutenants were management rather than union. (The captains and lieutenants uanimously supported the union and they all went to jail also.) A huge proportion of those who might be called "coordinators" can choose to operate as scabs, just as I pointed out in an earlier post firefighters can. But scabbing is not part of their job description. Coordinating work is managing the production process; and that is part of the work, not part of the capitalist management of workers.
In the Post Office, unlike the Normal Fire Dept., working supervisors are defined as part of management. And that is a large part of the reason that the post office is a hell hole to work in. Back in 1949 or so the foremen in the auto industry tried to form a union. They asked the UAW to support their effort. (I don't remember now whether it was just at one company or all three.) The union refused. That was one of a series of decisions "on the left" between 1935 and 1950 that helped get us in the hole we're in now. (And I think the Taft-Hartley law contains provisions that make it easy for management to simply define workers out of the union into management without changing their job at all.)
Cops are in between capital and labor. Prisons are in between capital and labor. The military is in between capital and labor. Strikebreaking firms (such as the one Normal tried to hire -- but a mob of nearly a thousand chased them out of town) are in between capital and labor. But people who manage and coordinate the actual work are working supervisors, not management. Gar wants to be anti-capital, but by playing around with superfine (and hence utterly vague) definitions of class he is giving support to one fairly powerful tool if capital in keeping labor down.
There are probably several million petty producers and independent professionals in the u.s., but with the virtual disappearance of actual "family farms" (and we never had a peasantry) that class of petty producers has ceased to be a particularly relevant class demographically. Again, however, theories like Gar's (which I think mostly are simply spontaneous reaction to everyday experience in a capitalist economy) help maintain the illusion that a way out of the working class exists. The theory in fact helps bolster the conviction of tens of millions that they _have_ got out of the working class.
And class analysis is not classical physics. There are probably several million people in the natiobn out of 280 million) who are for various reasons simply ambiguous in class membership. It is utterly obscurantist to worry endlessly about achieving a precise categorization of those people. (I would like to include by citation here Chapter 3 and the Conclusion of Ellen Wood, _Democracy Against Capitalism_. If my fingers wouldn't tire out I would simply plagiarize 10 or 20 pages from the book.)
And once again, class analysis except in a very general and sloppy way is no help in predicting political activity. There is no mechanical relationship between class and consciousness. That arises out of struggle, and so far no one (marxist or non-marxist) has come up with a magic formula for grabbing struggle out of the air. It always catches everyone by surprise.
Carrol
In point of fact Engels observed this,
> though he limited it to petty capitalists -those who own enough of the
> means of production to extract suprlus value from others, but must still
> provide susbstantial labor themselves in order to survive - for example
> a resteraunt owner who works 12 hours per day in her resteraunt.
>
> On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 09:37:47
> "Todd Archer" <todda39 at hotmail.com> said
>
> > Gar said:
> >
> >
> >>You can start with one of Marx's brilliant (and I mean this
> >>non-sarcastically) observations - that capitalists buy labor time, not
> >>labor. (Yes there are exceptions.) The capitalist class is not large
> enough
> >>to personally extract as much labor as possible during work
> >>
> >
> > I thought it was surplus value, not labour that's extracted.
> >
>
> In order to extract surplus value, the workers must work. You must
> extract labor.
> >
>
> >>time, so they have to hire supervisors and managers. They need
> >>
> >>>coordinators. >A lot of people we would not think of in this context
> >>>fulfill a coordinator function. For example engineers and software
> >>>
> >>designers >help create the workplace, and indirectly play a large
> role in
> >>this type of control. Artists and writers and educators are a means of
> >>controlling the flow of information to workers, and help shape how easy
> >>they are >to control.
> >>
> >
> > If I read this correctly, you say that any person who is involved in
> > "controlling" workers, to broad extent e.g. control of working
> environment
> > by creating it or control of information flow to workers, is a
> coordinator?
>
> pretty much. There are some subtileties - people who don't actually make
> decisions, (within the broad context of capitalist contraints) but are
> mere "transmission belts" for the orders of capitalists or coordinators
> are not coordinatators.
>
> >
> >
> >>
> >>The very top of this group is so highly compensated for this that
> they end
> >>up as capitalists. But the key here is that coordinators have interests
> >>that differ from both capitalists and from workers as a >whole.
> >>Coordinators to capitalists are an expense, a labor cost. They want to
> >>minimize the cost of coordination. Whereas coordinators want to be
> >>indispensable.
> >>
> >
> > All workers, coordinator or not, want to be seen in this light.
>
> I should have been clearer. Because coordinators have greater control of
> their own circumstances and the circumstances of others they can become
> indispensable - a choice workers do not have.
>
> >
> <snip>
>
> > How do they differ from the rest of the working class? They both
> contribute
> > surplus value (pace Wojtek), both are paid a wage, and neither owns the
> > means of production.
>
> They have more control over their lives and the lives of other workers.
> They have a monopoly on the pleasant and empowering tasks. And their
> interests definitely differ. For example, imagnine a fairly egaltarian
> form of socialism - one in which all workers were paid about the same
> per hour. The vast majority of the working class, as I have defined it,
> would be better off even in strictly financial terms by this definition.
> Their hourly rate would increase rather than decrease. But the vast
> majority of coordinators would lose money. So your typical coordinator
> would be materially worse off under eqalitarian socialism than under
> capitalism.
>
> Similarly even though coordinators have much less power than
> capitalists, they still have more power than they would in a poltically
> egalitarians society. A doctor or a lawyer or a middle manager may not
> have as much power as a capitalist; but a coordinator in a nation with
> 250 million peopole has more than 1/250 millionth of the power.
>
> >
> >>I know the idea that a class may be defined on some basis other than
> >>relation to the means of production is extremely counter-intuitive to
> >>Marxists.
> >>
> >
> > If you base your class analysis on "work", then where does it end?
> Every
> > type of new job created requires a revamping of the analysis.
>
> Not true. Does every new type of production machine require a revamping
> of the Marxist theory of the working class? The fundamentals remain the
> same. You own enough of the means of production to live on the work of
> others. Or you don't own the means of production, but help extract
> surplus value from other workers on behalf of those who own the means of
> proudction. Or you don't own the means of proudction, and must sell your
> labor without having the choice of extracting surplus value from others
> rather than primarily from yourself. In all forms of capitalism up to
> the present this has remained true.
>
> I suspect that Kelley , if she wanted to and was able to make the time,
> could tell you some stories about the relations between workers and
> coordinators that would illustrate my point.