Some useful clarifications from the last bit of Wolff and Resnick. I wondered recently who the capitalists were; here’s my answer: “In modern capitalist enterprises, called ‘corporations’ for historical reasons, the role of capitalist is played by a group numbering typically between 9 and 20 individuals: the board of directors” (211). Interesting that our universities have similar boards who meet on a similar quarterly basis, but the objection might be that the university (at least the public institution where I am, and where many composition programs are: as pointed out before, elite private institutions often don’t have first-year writing requirements) isn’t yet a corporation harvesting surplus labor. But I think there’s still something to be said for the construction of education as commodity, especially give the insightful discussions about instructor exploitation (streamlining the workplace, harvesting surplus value from academic or so-called “immaterial” labor) at Invisible Adjunct.
Wolff and Resnick also helpfully reiterate their contention that people and groups of people invariably inhabit multiple class positions. One example, since we’re talking about boards: the CEO is very often on the board, so he has a hand in appropriating and distribuing surplus labor, but he’s also a manager, Wolff and Resnick say (214), and so receives surplus distributions in that role. Perhaps a more familiar example to some of us: consider Mark Bernstein, the terrifically nice guy (he might not remember, but when I was a first-year graduate student, he patiently answered some questions I e-mailed him about the economics of hypertext publishing: as a teenager, I ran into a very early bootleg copy of Michael Joyce’s brilliant hypertext fiction afternoon which Eastgate later published, and thought it was some sort of game, like a really well-written version of Zork, and have been fascinated by hypertext ever since) who has the title of “Chief Scientist” at Eastgate Systems. He’s also the founder, and I suspect the one in charge. So: he writes code, and is therefore a laborer; he leads teams, and is therefore a manager; he distributes hypertexts written by other authors, perhaps ones that are not commissioned, and so might be a capitalist in the subsumed class process; since he founded the company, one assumes that he invested initial capital and hired some employees, so he’s also a capitalist in the fundamental class process. Multiple class positions.
What we need to keep in mind, though, as Wolff and Resnick caution us, is that what a neoclassical economist calls “profits” are not the same thing as what a Marxian economist calls “commodified surplus labor”. Wolff and Resnick are instructive here: “In the absence of direct attention to the complex changes taking place in both the fundamental and subsumed class processes, Marxian theory rejects inferences about class structures and changes drawn from statistical movements in published corporate profits” (216). Neoclassical and Marxian economics focus on different things, start from different points, and define their terms differently. In short: I need to remind myself to be careful.
Which is certainly good advice under any circumstances. Perhaps a useful extended exercise for me would be to try to imagine the university and the wired writing classroom and all the class processes that go on therein, like I just did with Mark Bernstein, and despite Wolff and Resnick’s definition of education as a nonclass process. In any case, it’s good to be done with them, and it took me far too long. Their most helpful insights have been those concerning the originary assumptions of the two schools of economics; the idea that for neoclassicals, everything springs from individual preferences and the ideology of free individual choice and its concomitant assumption that free individual choice will result in increased utility-maximizing efficiency when productivity increases due to advances in technology. Technology becomes the rising tide that lifts all boats. The counterpart of this idea is the notion of the Marxians that everything begins with exploitation; classes are defined by relationships of exploitation, and so capitalism by its very nature produces inequality and unfairness.
Next up: some brief dashes through entry-level sociological perspectives on class, and then some work with the history of computers and composition. After that, a little bit of Jameson, and then on to some more sophisticated analyses of class before I get to the network culture readings and, finally, Feenberg by the end of August.
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