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Date: 15/6/96 7:15 AM
To: Geoffrey Williams
From: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Hello Judy and everybody--
At 10:04 PM 6/13/96 -0400, Judy Diamondstone wrote:
>I admit I am having difficulty with this notion of the "ideal" as
>objective, unless you allow that the object may be, must be contested.
>That there be conflicting ideals. Counter-ideals? I sat on the
>admissions committee for my department at Harvard. Qualifications are
>contested. However "objective" they might be, they're assessed
>differently by different members of the committee. How do you
>explain this, outside the subject-object dichotomy?
Judy, let me give an analogy of defining price value of a used radio of a
market. A seller may go to see how much new radio costs, or for how much
other people sell their used stuff, or negotiate the price with a potential
buyer. You may call this process as "subjective:" persuasion of the seller
and negotiation abilities of the buyers can be rather idiosyncratic and
circumstantial. However, their exchange of radio and piece of paper with
fancy pictures called money is fully based on the network of relationship
among people that far exceeds the buyer, seller, and the whole market. This
global network was defined by Marx as alienated labor exchange. The buyer
and seller can trick each other or leave the network (e.g., the seller gives
the radio to the buyer as a gift) but their context of market exchange
exists "objectively" and not their caprice, illusion, idiosyncracy, or
arbitrary.
Similarly, you are sitting at the admissions committee for your department
at Harvard. You guys can argue with each other and negotiate qualification
requirements. However, in my view, you are a part of the global network of
production and consumption of skills alienated from people. In other words,
"objectivity" of job qualification is not in the nature of answers on what
is qualification but in the nature of the questions themselves.
I believe Marx somewhere said that the value of gold is not defined by
chemical analysis but by the nature of relationship among people in
production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. I think
similar statement can be done about job qualification.
Eugene Matusov
US Santa Cruz
PS Thanks, Judy, for your other points. I'll try to waive my responses on
them in my other messages.
------------------------
Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:50:08 -0700
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu, xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
From: Eugene Matusov <ematusov who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu>
Subject: Qualification & ideal
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