But that isn't where to look, says Marx, if you want to understand what's going on. It's not because in one system labor isn't paid and in the other labor is. It is in the ensemble of social relations where we have to look to see how remarkably different they are because in that ensemble of social relations "human nature" is forged -- and forged quite differently under each system. It is not a question of one system being an advance over another because labor is supposedly compensated more fairly or even because labor is "free" (to move). it is the myriad ways in which a worker -- and thus 'human nature' -- is shaped in each system. The smallest, seemingly inconsequential activities, the most pithy throw away lines, the banalities of a Helen Steiner Rice, the 'deep' ruminations of Ken Wilbur all converge in a way to create and sustain a lie. We are the instrument-effects of that lie: liars lying to ourselves and one another more often than we ever grasp the truth, even here on the so-called marxist end of the political spectrum. We fancy that we know the truth but we lie just as much as everyone else. This is why a homeless shelter is seen as a horror. But that is a lie we tell ourselves, reproducing an ideological system we claim to oppose.
I have just noticed Ted's post and he's after the same thing, so my pre-coffee ramble is not off the mark.
"You know how it is, come for the animal porn, stay for the cultural analysis." -- Michael Berube
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org