[lbo-talk] Hardt/Negri's Commonwealth as reviewed in WSJ

[Alan Rudy]

Hi Eric, the argument and history in John Bellamy Foster's MR article, The
Fetish of Fordism, generated the first step in my rejection of the term.
The second step was trying to get a grip on whether "Fordist" production
relations or "Fordist" consumption patterns were supposed to be the key
because I never really saw a coherent statement of the relationship between
the two much less a critique of the kinds of depoliticizing economic and
cultural discipline imposed by such relationships and patterns - or even
their dependence on the Cold War competition and neoimperialism.  Harvey's
Condition of Postmodernity helped with this.  Despite the limits of the book
- particularly in terms of its theory of the state - with this title, I tend
to lean more towards Monopoly Capital.

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:


> I think H&N are right to be aware of and try to describe shifts in
> types of labor and the like. The problem for me isn't the empirical
> validity of their claims but when they try to turn these "new" job
> types (affective, communicative--post-Fordist labor, which is a term I
> like and think is useful) into the revolutionary vanguard of the
> working class. As Robert said, banal dialecticism.
>
>