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

Wed Apr 29 10:36:38 PDT 2020

Martin,

Yes, you point to a valid concern: total hegemony of intimate relationships
on a universal scale would be a problem. But that wasn't exactly my point
(unclear as it was). (I don't entirely agree with you - I'd suggest that
some kind of universal connection, perhaps a universal kinship, would be
important for a more humane world, but that is not the same as a close
meaningful relationship with every single human being that we encounter).

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?

-greg

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 8:56 AM Martin Packer <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>
> 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>
> 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> 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!TDyQMrjogWXxYx2zksntX2j9lAxaTiP-7h_XkcdQobPlYUCHGJHShH1D5sZQtoJpFHDMNw$ 
>> <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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 27, 2020, at 9:29 AM, Helena Worthen <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$>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 22, 2020, at 4:30 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/American-Century.pdf__;!!Mih3wA!TDyQMrjogWXxYx2zksntX2j9lAxaTiP-7h_XkcdQobPlYUCHGJHShH1D5sZQtoJpdJqoVQ$ 
>> [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
WEBSITE: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson__;!!Mih3wA!TDyQMrjogWXxYx2zksntX2j9lAxaTiP-7h_XkcdQobPlYUCHGJHShH1D5sZQtoIggeRMTA$ 
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson__;!!Mih3wA!TDyQMrjogWXxYx2zksntX2j9lAxaTiP-7h_XkcdQobPlYUCHGJHShH1D5sZQtoIB7qd1oA$ 
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