1) There is the problem of excellence; the recognition of excellence and quality, and the desire to strive to make and appreciate "things" in your own everyday life that are beautiful or high quality or that are well made. This is separate from the issues of style and commodification.
2) There is the problem of the commodification of style, turning the appearance of quality into a mere signification of status. Unfortunately in all class societies the striving for excellence and the recognition of quality has been spurred –and- corrupted by issues of ruling class dominance, and also (to be very Marxian about things) transformed through-out history by the specific ramifications of the mode of production of that society.
3) There is the problem of limited resources, both global and personal. One of those limited resources is time and place. So where you invest your own resources is important. But this choice is not merely one of utility but of way of life. In other words this connects up with personal moral decisions. These decisions go beyond simple consumer choices. Do I buy that Ipod or do I donate the time and money I would use to pay for that Ipod for something else? This is not merely a problem of marginal utility (ala Peter Singer, who I mostly agree with) but a problem of orientation of life, of way of life, of choices in how you live your whole life. Thus my Mennonite friends used to tell me often, that "what simple is also what is best." "It is a gift to be simple", "Service to others is simplicity itself," etc. (This is what most people on this list don't see about Ravi's points. Some people have many choices in their way of life and others have very little choice if any at all. The conditions for lack of choice are largely economic but not only economic and that was the point of my last post.)
4) My overall view is that the above three "confusions" all illustrate one basic point in two parts: (a) In the "discussions" above there is a fundamental confusion between "way of life" and the commodification of "life-style" that is not clearly discussed and (b) there is a confusion between the use of "things" as signs of status and the (always limited) choices we make in everyday life that create relations between people, whether it is through something we buy, or something we make, or say or do.
There is a line from Bertolt Brecht (it's the poem from which Andie took his handle) "What kind of times are they when/ A talk about trees is almost a crime/ Because it implies silence about so many horrors."
In a sense we are always living in such times. The problem is that you always-also must write poems about trees and flowers and love and beauty just so that you have a background from which you can recognize why the horrors are such a crime. And if you are going to write or read a poem or see a painting "about" a tree or flower or a rooftop water-tower it might as well be a poem or a painting that you recognize as a deep and moving experience.
But one of the things that BB is getting at here is that we only have a limited time to speak and be heard by various audiences and what you choose to say, and who you are able to say it to, and how you choose to say it, is always important.
You will notice here that I have moved the question out of the sphere of "things" and into the sphere of "relations." The question is not only what you buy but how you live your life, use your time, say what you have to say. Because I think that in all these cases the question is the same and it is best, as much as possible, to try to abstract away from the problems of "class struggle" and try to understand some of the moral and practical problems we are confronting in these matters. And the question is also the same question of quality whether we are talking about a choice to tell or listen to a poem or to use our time to make money to buy a good piece of clothing. Fundamentally, I would reframe all of these questions as questions of time and quality.
The fact is that there will never be a "socialism of time", so on a personal level at least, we will always confront the question of how we choose to make our time here on this earth. And there are times and places where a talk about trees implies a silence about so many crimes. (Just like there are times when a talk about the crimes of your enemies implies a silence about your own crimes.) Similarly, there are times and places where a choice to live a life that is not "simple" is a choice to live a life that does not help others and does not work for a world where solidarity is a way of life. The simplicity I talk about could be religious like Ghandi, Tolstoy, or the Mennonites. Or it could be cultural like that of Thoreau or it could be "social" like William Lloyd Garrison or like that of some union organizers I knew and like some professional revolutionaries I met in Central America and Brazil.
But it is important, to see contra Andie and Peter Singer that these are life choices, choices about way of life, and how and where we dedicate our time to others, and which others we dedicate our time to.
Which others? As Dylan says it may be the devil or the lord but you've got to serve somebody! Well it may be the workers or the rulers but you've got to serve somebody. It might be the CEO or it might be the union. It maybe a choice between family, neighborhood, or your fellow workers, but you got to serve somebody.
These are not questions of marginal utility. These are questions of ways of life, of commitment and vocation. This is why Singer's approach is only valid if you already accept some version of utilitarianism. J.S. Mill once pointed out in his contrast between Bentham and Colleridge, that the basic values of your way of life determine, in the first place, the choice of utilities. So there is a sense that you have to determine the values of a way of life, and whether any particular way of life is valuable at all, before you are able to know what value to place on the utilities. As Singer clearly notes as a simple matter of marginal utility perhaps the simplest choice is to give everything away, which he refrains as a reductio ad absurdum.
But why not accept the truth of the message at its extremes? Of course giving all of your wealth to the poor and following Jesus or Ghandi or Che is not a choice about utility but a choice about way of life and values. This is another point where the secular left has assumed the values of capitalism and translated a discussion about human relations into a discussion about possession of things. This I think is part of much of the secular lefts misunderstanding of what at one time (in a society where "spiritual" choices were taken seriously) would have been called "vocational" choices.
But all of these questions are separate from questions of quality. The question of simplicity, the question of way of life, should not be confused with the question of quality. Fred Astaire was a left New Dealer and once called himself a social democrat. But the reason my Great Aunt once called herself a Fred Astaire socialist had nothing to do with Astaire's politics and everything to do with what Andie rightly compares to the view of William Morris. My Aunt simply believed that people in their everyday lives should all have a chance to strive for excellence and elegance, and that a socialist future would provide that possibility.
Jerry Monaco
On 12/18/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am very much in sympathy with the very William
> Morrisian elegy expressed here for the lost knowledge
> _and taste_ of the artisan workers who knew the
> difference between real stonemasonry and a hack job,
> Verdi and Puccini, or Louis Armstrong and (say) Paul
> Whiteman, good tailoring and real food (whether or not
> they could afford it) and shoddy. A lot of Morris' own
> inspiration for socialism turns on precisely how
> capitalism puts everything fine, any sense of
> discrimination (not in the bad sense) and beauty,
> through meat grinder and turns us all into
> undiscriminating consumers of cheap and inferior
> disposables rather than makers and users of things
> that will last and deserve to.
>
> There are worse things to call that than Fred Astaire
> socialism, although I have no idea what Astaire's
> views were or whether he had any -- a quick net search
> turns up that Ginger Rogers was a conservative
> Republican (sigh, another illusion crushed), but
> nothing about Astaire. His last film was the 1960s
> adaption of Finian's Rainbow, lyrics by Yip Harburg
> (of The Wizard of Oz), the reddest writer on Tin Pan
> Alley, the play, anyway, is pretty left wing. I can't
> remember the movie. But a job's a job, he didn't have
> to agree with Harburg to take a role.
>
> I think the comment about the importance of the
> knowledge and skill that goes into having the taste to
> make the relevant distinctions or even, in some cases,
> the stuff about which distinctions are made, goes to
> what's deep, if anything is, in this discussion.
>
> Btw, my rudeness wasn't directed at anyone who
> criticizes my wardrobe -- feel free, fire away -- but
> at a particular troll who made a very ugly remark
> based on my net handle.
>
> I don't buy the argument that we should give the money
> that we might spend on something good for ourselves to
> the poor. Peter Singer once (quite seriously)
> performed a brilliant reductio on that argument by
> contending that declining marginal utility, the fact
> that each addition unit of wealth means less to those
> who have it, plus a few other premises (in his case,
> utilitarianism), means that we should give everything
> we have to the poor, because, after all, a dollar to
> someone who lives on three hundred dollars a year, as
> billions do, means a lot more to him/her than to
> someone who lives on, say 65K a year. That's where the
> argument that you shouldn't spend your money on
> Armani, you should give it to charity, leads. Apart
> from the fact that the $69 I spent on an Armani Black
> Label suit isn't likely to do much to alleviate the
> troubles of the poor, the are so many problems that
> are so manifest with this line of reasoning, even if a
> lot more money is involved, that it should not be
> necessary to go into them on this list. That won't
> stop people, I am sure. ;->
>
> --- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A lurker on this list writes the following about
> > this thread:
> >
> > "Go with me on this, as I pull this thread into my
> > WGA obsession.
> >
> > "The thread is about how both corporate right and
> > the sectarian left
> > go after progressives who wear expensive fashionable
> > clothes. Andie
> > posted a rant inviting critics of his Armani suits
> > to F-off; why
> > should any of them dictate to serious activists
> > their clothing style
> > choices.
> >
> > "Compare to the disdain the WGA faces when they
> > invite fans to their
> > pickets for theme days: the moguls call them
> > unserious and the
> > radical left can't even be bothered to show up.
> > Meanwhile, the
> > participants in the labor action report back on the
> > fun, the sense of
> > community, the things politics are supposed to
> > have."
> >
> > I replied:
> > The only thing wrong with well tailored Italian
> > suits is that not
> > everybody can afford to wear them and if everybody
> > could afford to
> > wear them we would have to have a lottery to ration
> > them. If I could
> > buy well tailored Italian suits I certainly would.
> > But I would
> > probably feel guilty for not giving the money to a
> > Central American
> > cooperative.
> >
> > If I haven't commented on this thread so far it is
> > because I think
> > that all sides have been pretty inconsiderate. They
> > don't considered
> > the fact that there can be such a thing as Fred
> > Astaire socialism,
> > which is a kind descendant of Oscar Wilde socialism,
> > and the Fred
> > Astaire variety was not at all alien to the Italian
> > working class
> > neighborhood that I remember from my youth. I
> > remember people who
> > worked at the GE during the week and were proud to
> > dress up for dinner
> > at the weekend and practice the fine art of bella
> > figura. They were
> > proud that they knew how to sing and could tell a
> > good story and knew
> > what went into making a good and beautiful building
> > or a powerful
> > opera. They were proud to tell me why Hank Williams
> > was great but
> > Jimmie Driftwood was shit, or why the Marx Brothers
> > made good movies
> > and the three Stooges which was just vulgar. They
> > were proud to
> > explain why a good shoe was well made and why so
> > many factory made
> > shoes were awful, even if they could not often
> > afford the well made
> > shoe. My Aunt V, who sometimes voted for the
> > Socialist mayor of
> > Schenectady, used to tell me that style, elegance,
> > and good work were
> > working class virtues and we had to fight for it.
> >
> > I don't know what everybody is ranting in this
> > thread, to tell you the
> > truth. Most people in the world don't get a chance
> > to search out
> > quality food, clothes, music, art, literature for
> > many reasons. One of
> > those reasons is that most people are economically
> > deprived. More
> > than 50 per cent of people in this world have never
> > used a telephone
> > and large portions of people do not have good water
> > much less good
> > food. But even without that major reason for the
> > lack of quality,
> > most people in the American middle class are simply
> > not exposed to
> > wonderful food and well tailored clothes or
> > beautiful and uplifting
> > architecture or challenging and engaging art,
> > consistently and at an
> > early enough age in order to know the difference.
> > In Northern Italy
> > even the working classes can discriminate between a
> > well tailored
> > piece of clothing and a lousy piece of clothing even
> > if they can't
> > afford the former. When I was young in Schenectady
> > everybody I knew,
> > knew the difference between good bread, cheese,
> > prosciutto, pastries,
> > etc. and the bad stuff. But when I go to places
> > like Schenectady now
> > -- or Nashville or St. Louis -- very few people can
> > distinguish
> > between decent bread and anything else. Why? I'm
> > not quite sure, but
> > I do believe it's exposure and desire and
> > opportunity. It is not
> > economics.
> >
> > For me the question is closer to Oscar Wilde's
> > question of beauty and
> > quality and its relation to socialism... and why
> > capitalism provides
> > the economic possibility of abundance but at the
> > same time undermines
> > excellence. It is a question of the depth of
> > experience in everyday
> > life.
> >
> > My Italian working class neighborhood in an
> > industrial town wasruled
> > by General Electric, the Catholic Church, the
> > democratic machine, and
> > the union local. But the people in that
> > neighborhood I remember from
> > 1965, had a good eye for "the quality" of certain
> > things -- good food
> > of course, but also good music and beautiful well
> > made clothes and
> > well designed "things". But their Italian-American
> > children and grand
> > children who moved to the suburbs often simply don't
> > care. My great
> > grandfather could tell you why Verdi was good and
> > Puccini was "like
> > adding sugar to honey" and he never even finished
> > the third grade.
> > He could tell you the difference between a good
> > stone mason and a bad
> > stone mason and could point out the well built
> > churches in town and
> > the ones that were just "mish mash". He knew who
> > was the good tailor
> > in town, where the good cloth came from, and what a
> > well cut suit
> > should look like even if he didn't own one. And all
> > he did in his
> > life is work in a factory and own a store. My great
> > Uncle Tony could
> > tell you why Louis Armstrong was great and why
> > Italian leather was
> > well tooled and why he liked Frank Sinatra and Billy
> > Holiday but why
> > so many other popular singers were "empty". Uncle
> > Tony never
> > graduated from high school, but he did take classes
> > in classical music
> > and the union hall. He belonged to a reading group
> > at the union hall
> > and read poetry. Yes there was a poetry group for
> > the factory workers
> > at the union hall in Schenectady, NY. I tend to
> > think that because
> > such people were around I learned to appreciate
> > quality.
> >
> > This whole thread seems misconceived to me. The
> > question is one of
> > quality and excellence and why once the working
> > classes all knew
> > people who were master craftsman who "knew" quality
> > in their everyday
> > work. You can only respect quality once your basic
> > needs are
> > satisfied. But you have a better respect for
> > quality and excellence
> > if you know working class people who strive for it.
> > In most places in
> > the world the basic economic struggle is what
> > outweighs everything
> > else. And yet I believe that it is a loss that
> > working class and
> > middle class neighborhoods have lost their everyday
> > relation to crafts
> > people who actually strive to make things with high
> > quality. I think
> > this is why many people in the middle classes don't
> > distinguish
> > quality on many levels. But I don't know why so
> > many people I have
> > met in the South and the Midwest seem to actively
> > reject quality or to
> > actively resent good craft makers. It is as if
> > quality itself is an
> >
> === message truncated ===
>
>
>
>
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/