[lbo-talk] the Grundrisse and credit.

Chuck Grimes c123grimes at att.net
Thu Jan 19 12:07:18 PST 2012


*The foundation of social life is morality*. It seems to me that the primary requisite of social life is people *reproducing* themselves materially. How people rationalize their necessary productive practices (whatever they need to do to ensure their reproduction), how they establish rules of collective behavior to reinforce their reproduction, how they vest the social arrangements that mediate their reproduction with moral and even mystical qualities to make them stick, all that seems to be much less fundamental than their material reproduction proper. Julio (parapharsing Gaebler?)

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A much clearer way to understand social relations is not morality, but obligation. In anthropological terms this fits within kinship systems of organization, (division of labor) to reproduce the society. Genders and age peer groups have their obligations of work and contribute to reproduction of the society via their particular variation on kinship obligations.

For example in some US southwest cultures (Hopi, Zunni) women were in charge of corn, beans, and squash production, with men and male age-peer groups responsible for game and later live stock, as well as tools and certain crafts. Women were in charge of pottery. The kinship system was matrilineal. Together they divided up labor for the work and reproduced the society. There was nothing moral about it in the western sense of the word moral.

The grandmother had a particular role since she was head of a man's (and his wife's) family. The man dealt with her brothers, and male descendents under the women's line. The woman dealt with the grandmother's female descendents. The `land' use and dominion over it was under the various controls through women's lines of obligation and descent. This system was how the society, its trade, and reproduction were accomplished.

Really the differences and issues involved here are essentially turf wars between academic disciplines that reflect a larger battle over the political economy. Economists lay claim to knowing, understanding, and determining policy over the social structure to fit its economic model. This is the consequence of privilaging the needs of the economy over the needs of the society. In the converse, what we need is to subsum the economy to the needs of the society.

Really, its the war of the money clan against all the other clans... the corn and bean clan, us toolmaker clans...etc

CG



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