Re: [xmca] Fundamental Questions

Paul Dillon wrote:
> Helena,
>
> That film does sound interesting. But doesn't it just show that capitalism's advances depend on destroying the collective solidarity? On "privatization" which is really nothing more than Marx said: the separation of labor from the means of production? I doubt I'll find this movie in the pirated videos that are all that's available here. But I'm curious to know what happened to the workers after they went their own ways.
>
It doesn't quite work like that. But it's impossible to say more without
giving away the plot.

Bruce

>
> Lately I've been looking at what World Bank money is used for in Peru. Privatization of land is one of it's most important projects under the guise of providing "titles" to lands that were originally communial property and inalienable. Once these lands can be sold by individuals ,which will occur as individual responses to all kinds of supra-indivvidual processes, from a bad rain season to a chola's desire to look like Madonna, the future of the unique and valuable culture sustained in these communities will be undermined.
>
> The same process, the same inexorable grinding away at the collective structures of human existence, the same subordination of all social relations to market-logic rationality, the same process of exploitation increasingly deepened and hidden within the myth of the individual.
>
> Like deep throat said: you want to know what's going on, follow the money.
>
> Paul Dillon
>
>
>
>
>
> Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> To all interested in following this film up, it is available on netflix.
> mike
>
> On 9/5/07, Worthen, Helena Harlow wrote:
>
>> Bruce, thank you for this information. It adds a whole new dimension to
>> my understanding of the film. Especially the scene in which the workers
>> carry equipment out into the yard and are told to smash it up with
>> sledgehammers.
>>
>> Helena
>>
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> Clinical Associate Professor
>> Labor Education Program
>> Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
>> 504 E. Armory, Room 227
>> Champaign, IL 61821
>> Phone: 217-244-4095
>> hworthen@uiuc.edu
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>> On Behalf Of Bruce Robinson
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 1:10 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Fundamental Questions
>>
>> I knew the person who wrote the 'Navigators', Rob Dawber. He was a
>> working class marxist activist who when he graduated got a job working
>> on the railways around 1980 and the film is based on his experiences of
>> how things changed over the years. (You can catch a glimpse of him in
>> one scene.) Sadly he contracted mesothelioma from being told to demolish
>>
>> buildings containing asbestos. He kept on fighting for adequate
>> compensation which he finally won in the courts shortly before he died
>> (about two years later than predicted).
>>
>> There are obituaries here:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4140804,00.html
>> http://www.le.ac.uk/press/press/baftafor.html
>>
>> Bruce Robinson
>>
>>
>> Worthen, Helena Harlow wrote:
>>
>>> I had been reading this thread, about individual/collective, with a
>>> sense of detachment until this morning when I realized that a film we
>>> showed in a class last night provides an instance of the process of
>>> separating the individual from the collective. The "individual" and
>>> "collective" aren't abstract, either, and both are fully dramatized.
>>>
>>> It's Ken Loach's 2001 film The Navigators, about a team of railroad
>>> workers experiencing the privatization and break-up of British Rail
>>> under Margaret Thatcher. The workers have functioned in this heavily
>>> unionized environment for -- well, the oldest shows a photo of himself
>>> with his team that has to be 45 years old -- and they possess all the
>>> social norms of that very collective environment; one refuses
>>> opportunities to work any overtime as long as others "are on the
>>>
>> dole."
>>
>>> One by one, they learn in different ways what the new work system will
>>> require of them, namely, to act not as a collective but as
>>>
>> individuals.
>>
>>> It's a brilliant film. You can chart this process as it unrolls step
>>>
>> by
>>
>>> step, differently with each character.
>>>
>>> Helena
>>>
>>>
>>> Helena Worthen
>>> Clinical Associate Professor
>>> Labor Education Program
>>> Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
>>> 504 E. Armory, Room 227
>>> Champaign, IL 61821
>>> Phone: 217-244-4095
>>> hworthen@uiuc.edu
>
>
>

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Received on Wed Sep 5 14:30 PDT 2007