Eric Beck wrote:
>Maybe there's another way to approach the debate that surrounded the
Great Michaels Controversy, which I think touched on
>some vital issues
but, as Carrol tried to get across, may have turned too much on the
intellectual failings of Michaels.
JG sez:
Great post. You're really busting your brain on this. I just have a little something to add, culled from some offlist exchanges I've had regarding the "GMC."
You wrote:
>he does nothing to describe
a real, material basis for exploitation. (I think this is what shag
means
>when she says his analysis is in no way Marxist.)
JG sez:
Michaels' methodology and his politics are disproportionately liberal (or left-liberal, perhaps) rather than radical (or Marxist).
On the one hand, Michaels appears to make a perfectly laudable move when he suggests that "pro-diversity" liberals would be entirely satisfied with a world in which social roles and economic outcomes are unequally distributed, but each ascriptive group claimed its representative share of those roles and outcomes. To a critical sort this move seems laudable NOT ONLY because it challenges the inegalitarian premises of multi-culti capitalism (or whatever one wants to label it) BUT ALSO because there is an implied critique of Weberian-style stratification analysis that is so caught up in DISTRIBUTIONAL inequality.
But then on his own accord Michaels rehabilitates liberal (or left-liberal) preoccupations with DISTRIBUTIONAL inequality through his own expressed or implied political remedies, sort of a warmed-over New Deal/social democratic agenda... delivering universalistic welfare programs, rather then massively enlarging democratic self-management in the workplace, the state, voluntary organizations, political parties, social movements, the family, etc.
When Marx pontificated about getting beyond the realm of necessity and entering the realm of freedom, he wasn't talking about everyone enjoying an equal share of the surplus product... he was talking about creating conditions whereby everyone's latent potentials (rooted in their co-evolving social individuality) could flourish. Michaels is far, far from this terrain...
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