[Xmca-l] Re: As of 2020, the American Century is Over

[Helena Worthen]

Greg, Martin — The circle of relationships that I described was not one-on-one personal relationships.  They are a combination of personal, contractual, organizational and state-to-enterprise-to-population-to-individual relationships.  These are as much “relationships” as who talks to whom individually.  Tracing the circle of commitment, obligation, security and reciprocity is how you can see the relationships. This is the “circle of reciprocal contribution” I was talking about. 

These relationships take an unthinkable amount of creativity and effort to build.  

Another example (and I’ll quit if people aren’t interested):  OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Agency) sets standards that have to be upheld regarding working conditions. The idea is to protect workers from hazards. I’m sure I don’t need to make a list.  But where do these standards come from? Someone has to identify the problem, do the research, write the proposal, get the plan through the legislature, and then train people to enforce it.  Every single step of the way, it’s a relationship of one kind or another —sometimes it’s one-on-one, sometimes it’s an attorney bringing a lawsuit, sometimes it’s someone making a speech to a crowd or a journalist photographing an accident scene. It’s a web of relationships.


Helena Worthen
helenaworthen.wordpress.com <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com/__;!!Mih3wA!RnbuAh52aLoQlR7CQmrMD3v_ARgnLMZ3jAkLzee3D4NHc48NsmbL49C4rt6I1q23fXNNqQ$ >




> On Apr 30, 2020, at 10:44 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Martin, 
> 
> I'm delighted by your optimism and hopefulness about the U.S.!
> (particularly for someone who left the U.S.! "It's a lovely place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there").
> and, of course, nostalgia has its problems (as you might imagine, my colleague's experiences in PNG were not all flowers and roses). 
> 
> But it is at least something to hold onto.
> 
> Perhaps you could share where you place your hopes? or what is your long duree visions of things (either as they HAVE happened) or as they might happen?
> 
> Based on what I'm seeing circulating among friends (both in person and on social media), I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about the hopes for America. As just one recent example, there is a video that was circulating in which two California doctors present a bunch of numbers to show that the coronavirus is not at all a serious threat. The only trouble is, their calculations are totally mistaken (and not only are they mistaken but they do two different calculations in two totally different ways). And yet the video has been posted and reposted as "truth" against the fictional numbers that the WHO is putting out (in cahoots with Bill Gates). Not only that, there has been news coverage of the video that does not point out the fundamental flaws. It's like someone says that 2+2=5 and then conclude that Trump is the right president and then claims that they should get equal coverage to those people who say 2+2=4. 
> 
> And then to add fuel to the fire, Facebook and Youtube have insisted on taking these videos down because they are propogating false information about the coronavirus. And guess what the coronavirus deniers are now saying that this is further evidence of the conspiracy of the WHO and Bill Gates! 
> 
> So this general trend, among many other things, is what makes me incredibly pessimistic about things and which makes nostalgia incredibly appealing (although my nostalgia is to Make America Decent Again). 
> 
> Anyway, my apologies for writing gobbly-gook, I'm not editing these at all. But I'd be delighted to hear your non-nostalgia forms of hope (and perhaps your hope is not at all a hope for American? Maybe quite the opposite? In which case what I've described above is precisely what's needed!).
> 
> And regardless of hope, how do you see this present moment in cultural-historical terms?
> 
> -greg
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 12:29 PM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
> My point was about the problematic nature of the hegemony of exchange-based relations (i.e. the capitalist relation in which "what value can I get from you" - you might call it "The Art of the Deal"!). At the very least, might you agree that it is a problem if we see ALL human relationships in these terms?
> 
> I don’t think it could ever happen, Greg. So I’m not going to worry about it.
> 
> I do seem to be disagreeing with everyone on xmca these days! Perhaps it’s my way of coping. Perhaps it’s because I think that if there was ever a time for thinking things through carefully it is now.
> 
> Surely impersonal anonymous kinds of interactions must have begun as soon as anything large enough to be called a city came into existence. I’m not a big fan of Dunbar’s number, but surely there are limits to the number of people with whom one can have an personal relationship, and those limits were exceeded at least 6,000 years ago.
> 
> And is xmca a place of personal relationships? I have met in person less than 5 people on this list, I think. That’s to say, we make constant, fruitful and enjoyable use of impersonal relationships, including here. I for one wouldn’t wish to return to a time when everyone lived in villages of less than 150 people.
> 
> And what I remember from Marx is that the original sin of capitalism is alienation of people not from one another but from their own labor. (Though the former may be one of the consequences of the latter.) Of course exploitation didn’t start with capitalism either, though wage labor under capitalism is a frighteningly efficient kind of exploitation. But if I had been born in feudal times I might have been laboring for the lord of the manor, who probably didn’t know me by name. If born in Roman times I might have been a slave, working for the lady of the villa.
> 
> I appreciate that we are all experiencing a certain nostalgia for the good old days, of perhaps 4 months ago. And that those of us in lockdown are craving genuine personal interaction. But I’m not convinced that there ever was a golden age, a time when development was not distorted and people were not exploited. It is true that Pleistocene hunter-gatherers seem to have had a face-to-face kind of community in which collaboration and sharing were central. But even they practiced infanticide and left their old behind when they moved to a new camp. I don’t think I would have lasted then as long as I have now. 
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 29, 2020, at 11:41 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Greg, I think you are drawing attention to one of the consequences of the distortion of human development under capitalism. If that’s what you mean, then yes, the phenomenon of relationships that dead-end when a commodity exchange has taken place, rather than moving in a circle of reciprocal contribution, would be an example.
>> 
>> A small relatively new private music school near us apparently has not been paying  either its state unemployment insurance payroll taxes or making its equivalent contribution to a special fund set up for non-profits. Now, with the lockdown, it is having to deal with reimbursing the state for unemployment claims by its laid-off teachers. If you draw the circle of reciprocal contribution around this situation, look at what gets linked up. Students, their families, teachers, the management of the school, the enormous Employment Development Department at the state level, the legislature…the circle is gigantic, elements of it way beyond the horizon of what most people linked up in it imagine.
>> 
>> In this case, the “cut and run” took place at the point where the Board of the school decided somehow to assume they could risk taking on the obligation of paying unemployment benefits rather than pay the payroll tax.  Easy to do — it’s a small non-profit and this is something that gets easily overlooked by inexperienced managers. 
>> 
>> Nevertheless, the distortion that I’m thinking of — the fear, anger and resentment that pile up when laid-off teachers apply for UI benefits— would be a consequence of capitalism.
>> 
>> Helena Worthen
>> h <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com__;!!Mih3wA!WMiwIrj0aKh8kp3SGKwBvclBmZk6gTThyyIOzQAAzRfBK1CIpbBjMxzz4gUQ8soy9jBUxA$>elenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:elenaworthen@gmail.com>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Apr 29, 2020, at 7:53 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Greg,
>>> 
>>> Are you suggesting that you would like to be able to build a personal relationship with each and every one of your students? And with all your colleagues at the university.? And all the staff at the local supermarket? And all the people who work to send you packages from Amazon? And ….
>>> 
>>> That’s to say, there are reasons why humans have added ‘anonymous’ interactions to the personal and interpersonal relationship that (as you acknowledge) we still build and maintain.
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Apr 28, 2020, at 10:13 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Helena,
>>>> 
>>>> It sounds like you are describing the commodity fetish. The labor of the professor is no longer seen as their own production. Instead it is seen that the professor simply draws from some "body of knowledge" or a credential that has a particular (monetary) value. As with any good (i.e., bad) commodity relation, even the exchange relations between buyer and seller (professor and student) are hidden and the professor is merely a conduit to that valuable knowledge or credential. What the professor has to offer is MONETIZED, perhaps we might say that the professor themself is monetized, even BRANDED (take a look at the web pages of young faculty and you'll see how important "brand yourself" has become in the academy). The professor and her work are understood in terms of market value, return on investment, earning potential of students. 
>>>> 
>>>> Students today understand their task as being a good consumer; to get at least equal value from professors as they pay in tuition. (granted much of this is via a credential, but the professors are a big part of what stands behind the university's credential). You'll hear students frequently complain (rightly so) about how much they are paying for their education followed by some specific complaint about a professor.
>>>> 
>>>> This is all part of a larger system in which this is understood as how the world works. You get what you pay for. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. And so on. Can we blame students for wanting to know what they are going to "get" for the money that they pay for college, and note that this gets even more intense during hard economic times, of which we are deep into right this moment (although the fear usually takes a semester or two before people start fleeing the humanities and the social sciences to business, engineering, computer science, or pre-anything).
>>>> 
>>>> (and Lave and Mcdermott's article on Estranged Labor Learning might be worth revisiting in this regard?)
>>>> 
>>>> In addition to Marx's commodity fetish, a related and interesting way to think of this is in terms of Marcel Mauss' notion of gift vs. exchange economy (if you'll allow me to oversimplify a bit). The main difference is that an exchange economy involves transactions that are always calculated to be of exactly equal value. The $13 pair of shoes I buy at the store are worth EXACTLY $13. Each party to the transaction gets their "money's worth". Sounds great right? Fair, to be sure. Except it means that there is no relationship established between the parties. After the exchange, the parties no longer have any meaningful relationship. In contrast, a gifting relationship is not responded in kind (at least not initially). As Mary Douglas says in her intro to Mauss' book The Gift, "there are no free gifts". Note that this is a very different statement from Milton Friedman's "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Douglas means that the gift creates a sense of obligation and thus a relationship. As much as we might understand this in intimate spaces, as Americans in public spaces all we know are exchange relationships (people reject healthcare for all b.c. "why should I have to pay for healthcare for someone else", ditto for education (yes, there is a movement in the US to get rid of public education!)). This is the logic behind the out-of-hand rejection of socialism - it does not make sense in the logic of exchange. And, of course, taxes are justified only in as much as you "get" something for it (roads, police, fire department, public transport, etc.) and increasingly tax dollars are getting hyper-localized so that you get precisely what you pay for and don't pay a dime more (e.g., gated communities with private police force, fire dept, etc). 
>>>> 
>>>> Interestingly I just today was privilege to hear a colleague present about his work in Papua New Guinea (the island of Missima, in the Massim region - the site of the Kula ring made famous to Westerners by Malinowski - and yes, the Kula ring still operates today). He noted that Missimans can't understand why Americans (and other Westerners) are so interested in engaging in exchanges that cut ties (e.g., buying things from them and then running off). And when Missimans do try to engage in gifting relationships with Americans, they are struck by how quickly the Americans run off, never to return (what idiots those Americans are!). It is absolutely baffling to them since they spend their days building relationships with others. Why would someone not want relationships with others? 
>>>> 
>>>> Can we perhaps understand their bafflement?
>>>> 
>>>> And what, then, is human development within a world where relations of exchange are everything? (and thankfully, it isn't total, we Americans still view kin relations as something more than an exchange relation).
>>>> 
>>>> Anyway, that's at least two times two cents too much. And terribly inchoate. Far too "off the cuff". Apologies.
>>>> 
>>>> -greg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 11:19 AM Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> thanks!
>>>> 
>>>> Helena Worthen
>>>> helenaworthen.wordpress.com <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com__;!!Mih3wA!UVu0FyqJVuJenyvV_scJ3MWPEkVsnH0IzNgN9NaOMBtflAfvMwpBsESRDItyh51rXR3z3Q$>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Apr 27, 2020, at 7:48 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> How about this Helena?:
>>>>> "Time is the room of human development. A man who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is absorbed by his labour for the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine         for producing Foreign Wealth, broken in body and brutalized in mind. Yet the whole history of modern industry shows that capital, if not checked, will recklessly and ruthlessly work to cast down the whole working class to this utmost state of degradation."
>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm__;!!Mih3wA!RnbuAh52aLoQlR7CQmrMD3v_ARgnLMZ3jAkLzee3D4NHc48NsmbL49C4rt6I1q34v3N7-g$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm__;!!Mih3wA!U0ZIjNUqNnItiZjyJjIUnKMWddqAJiWLdB_L-G5Wb6DNQLTG7uZz_Seq6oZRbIPgrIdiUQ$>
>>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!U0ZIjNUqNnItiZjyJjIUnKMWddqAJiWLdB_L-G5Wb6DNQLTG7uZz_Seq6oZRbIM88h444g$>
>>>>> Home Page <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!U0ZIjNUqNnItiZjyJjIUnKMWddqAJiWLdB_L-G5Wb6DNQLTG7uZz_Seq6oZRbIOjmsOLvw$>
>>>>> On 28/04/2020 5:23 am, Helena Worthen wrote:
>>>>>> Andy’s paper has basically 4 parts.  One a flyby overview of the history of the US — this is where the majority of criticisms by people I know are showing up because people have different versions of that history. Then the argument that with the US going down as one of the poles of global leadership. My friends and family agree with this and are all, as Americans, offering examples of how they have experienced this. Andy notes that there is an empty spot at the top that hasn’t been taken yet.  Then comes his COVID-19 point, that this is a global moment in which the whole world is participating. Most of the xmca discussion has been about that so far, if I’m not mistaken. And finally a challenge to foresee what we will learn from this experience.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> OK, now trying to forsee what we can learn is what I’m doing.  So here is my question, appropriate for this list since we are all interested in education. I found myself writing the following, as part of describing the way a workforce can be intentionally divided into feuding packs of enemies so that we can’t take action in solidarity. We’re referring to “the distortions of human development under capitalism” and say that “we see this in its sharpest form in the for-profit part of the higher education industry. We have to look past the distortion to find the original, human connection….”
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> One of our readers asks where this concept came from. I don’t remember!! It makes sense, though, doesn’t? Anyone have any idea where it came from? So far I’m saying, 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The concept of “distortions of human development under capitalism” depends on looking at human development as occurring within a social, historical and cultural framework – not just the development of individuals on their own or within a family or even a school, but within a society. Specifically we mean psychological and cognitive disabilities ranging from lack of empathy, envy, despair, alienation and bullying to obesity, eating disorders and stress-related auto-immune illness. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks — H
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Helena Worthen
>>>>>> h <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com__;!!Mih3wA!UcGlX0bri43EmtmpvW-FJpbJfMb7jPTAosJ6QpYDWeFiy_BNZhBTLSo7yel8Mfwas-BdIg$>elenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:elenaworthen@gmail.com>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Apr 27, 2020, at 9:29 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I have been circulating Andy’s paper among close friends and family to generate discussion. What is mostly coming back is confirmation of the general arc, with examples from personal experience, but some disagreement about cause. These are “inside” views — meaning, people who are US citizens talking about us, so these are experiences of the passing of an era and what they look like from inside.  
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> About a year ago I realized that, for better or worse, I identify as “an American.” And I don’t mean North American. 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Chris Appy’s book, American Reckoning, is a pretty good history that takes us from the 1940s up to Obama and tracks the hole we fell into with the Vietnam War. For people of my generation (BA 1965 — and I mention that date rather than when I was born because 1965 connects to the draft, the lottery, the anti-war demonstrations, the asssinations, etc etc) the story told with the Vietnam War in the foreground connects very tightly to lived experience. 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Helena Worthen
>>>>>>> helenaworthen.wordpress.com <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com/__;!!Mih3wA!UcGlX0bri43EmtmpvW-FJpbJfMb7jPTAosJ6QpYDWeFiy_BNZhBTLSo7yel8MfzvtKpTMQ$>
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Apr 22, 2020, at 4:30 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/American-Century.pdf__;!!Mih3wA!RnbuAh52aLoQlR7CQmrMD3v_ARgnLMZ3jAkLzee3D4NHc48NsmbL49C4rt6I1q1NFSCSPg$  [ethicalpolitics.org] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/American-Century.pdf__;!!Mih3wA!RX_kT308fV5J979vU0HnZwn3N_ILxa76WV811I3K7Q1lByCHw_H-2IpA6g71m_ZdQvTjgA$>
>>>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements [brill.com] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!RX_kT308fV5J979vU0HnZwn3N_ILxa76WV811I3K7Q1lByCHw_H-2IpA6g71m_bmjhN_kw$>
>>>>>>>> Home Page [ethicalpolitics.org] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!RX_kT308fV5J979vU0HnZwn3N_ILxa76WV811I3K7Q1lByCHw_H-2IpA6g71m_aKuyy5Zw$>
>>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
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