“Productive capitalists are those individuals who obtain surplus value (expand their capital) by appropriating surplus labor in the capitalist fundamental class process. Unproductive capitalists expand their capital by means of certain nonclass processes — processes other than surplus labor appropriation, such as lending at interest, merchanting, and renting property” (Wolff and Resnick 165). So, according to Wolff and Resnick, there are different classes of capitalists, and the class structure is not strictly hierarchical. This, again, seems closer to Bourdieu’s view, and an important insight. Despite my asseverations regarding the ways in which class markers can move independently of one another, on the whole I’ve been using the convenient assumption that class markers flock together: if you’re rich, you probably also have certain tastes.
In other words, I’ve been assuming that there are ladders of wealth, occupation, taste, cultural practice, et cetera, and that ascending one ladder causes corresponding ascensions of the other ladders, as well. When I make myself slow down and consider things more carefully, I know that this isn’t necessarily the case, but it’s been a convenient way to think. In any case, it helps me to set up a different class system, with capitalists divided into productive and unproductive, and laborers similarly divided. “Unproductive labor is every expenditure of human brain, nerves, and muscles which is not directly involved in the capitalist fundamental class process of performing surplus labor. Therefore, labor power purchased by anyone other than a commodity-producing productive capitalist is automatically unproductive. And even if the labor power is purchased by a productive capitalist, Marxian theory still must determine whether that labor power is directly involved in surplus labor production (in which case it is productive labor power) or is rather set to work to perform nonclass processes needed for the fundamental class process to occur (in which case it is unproductive labor power)” (Wolff and Resnick 167).
I think I could use the productive/unproductive capital/labor taxonomy to set up a diagram charting the locations of various members of the university community in the class process. (It’d have to be diachronic, I think; showing how positions change over time.) Such a diagram might be interesting to compare to other diagrams charting the locations of members of the university community according to other class hierarchies: wealth, occupations, tastes, values, cultural practices. But how would that help my teaching of writing? I’m back to the “so what” question: why should this matter?
You are so right. You how many fucking millions I paid that painting? You think good taste comes cheap you little pissant? You know what I pay for interior decorators?
I have to ask, Madame Candidia: At what point in your ineluctable acendancy to the ranks of the ultra-rich did you acquire such unimpeachable taste? Was it always there? Did you naturally possess it, as an earmark of your birthright to live treading over us peons with abandon? Or was it something that naturally arose as an outgrowth of your fabulous wealth? If the latter, at what point in your rise did you acquire it? What’s the tipping point of personal wealth that signals you must, by definition, have flawless taste? If the former, in those dread days before you could employ an army of interior decorators and buy that Klee original, how did you ornament your surroundings with the same panache? I seek the wisdom of your experience. What is the genesis of taste like yours?
Chris — she’s got a fucking Harvard MBA! Oh, no, wait; that can’t be where she got such taste — because that would imply that students in the Harvard Business School spend a good bit of time taking art history classes, or perhaps just poring over rubrics (“Kandinsky, acceptable if you’re new money, check; Klee, good, check; Klimt, good, check”), when I’d imagine that the curriculum is (1) somewhat more vocational/skill-oriented, although my feeling is that such skills themselves carry with them implicit cultural baggage, such as the notion I would assume to have some currency among prospective Harvard MBA recipients that American society is fair and the best will always rise to the top and be the richest, since those prospective MBA recipients presumably want to be wealthy, and (2) involves a good bit of networking, and with such networking comes the circulation of cultural definitions of class. Now, since Candidia previously scolded me for asserting that her tastes must be the only tastes to have, I think we might extrapolate that wealth does not instantly equal taste. Perhaps the best way to understand how Candidia became the way she is, then, is to look for a cultural counterexample: who can we see as an example of a hugely wealthy person with horrid tastes? And where does the disconnect between wealth and taste arise? I’m not sure, and I can’t think of a good example right now, but I’ll make one prediction: I’ll wager we perceive that imagined person of impressive wealth and terrible taste to be somehow more connected to the material and to the body than a person of similar wealth but better tastes. But that may be totally misguided.
I will say, Candidia, that the Cosmotic Soap in your portfolio could be called a bit gauche: with the wealth you have, why should you be troubled with the exigencies of air travel? Let the world come to you!
Money creates taste–Jenny Holzter.