Re-Packaging the Harmful Effects of Capitalism
Key words
for Czechs and Slovaks: bagatelizovat,
kapitalismus
A friend recently sent me a link to two professors who are in the business of justifying the consequences of capitalism.
Women today are choosing not to marry. They find that men lack the attributes needed in a committed relationship. At any rate, that is one way to describe it.
Another way is this: due
to the demands of the workplace, and the psychic shocks of
unemployment, men are increasingly unable to cope---not through any
inner failure or inner incapacity, but due to the genuine stress of
their real situation. This is not an individual failure, but a
social failure. The structures which allow men to develop
emotionally do not exist.
Brave new women who make
such choices!
Well, not really. Both
men and women are reacting to fundamental changes which have their
source in the decisions of a small minority of (mostly) men who own
the wealth of our society. This „new social trend“ is nothing
but the consequence of decisions made by a small group of people;
it's got nothing to do with a new „freedom“.
Nor is it anything new. In the past, the poor male could not afford to marry. We can see the fragile economic life of families in nineteenth century novels. My choice to make the point now would be George Elliot's „Mill on the Floss“. The father wants nothing but that his son should have the vocabulary and intelligence to do battle with lawyers, but the father cannot choose wisely. His choice of an education for his son is overly influenced by the opinions of a richer man, and the father's bankruptcy sets into motion a series of steps which destroy his children.
This is a tale about
parents and children---parents who want their children to be happy.
And it depicts a family which is destroyed by inequality, injustice
which is at the heart of that society.
Nor are the new apologists
for the social and emotional consequences of capitalism seeing
through the appearance to the essence of things. The destruction of
the 1950s style family is not merely the destruction of an artificial
form of organization; it is also the destruction of the life-hopes of
millions of people.
I have no wish to worship
or justify the peculiar sort of family structure which Americans
wrongly believed to be the essence of social relationships. However,
the changes in capitalism which have forced a change in sexual
relationships have also made it harder simply to have deep
friendships. It is not merely the 1950's style family which is under
attack. It is our very personal lives themselves---and there is no
better example of this than „Facebook“--which makes your
friendships and your “free time”
commodities whereby already existing class
divisions are intensified.
18 November 2012
An
after-thought: Communism and Social Relationships
Living in
Central Europe, I have heard people say, and I have read that during
the period called “communism”, there was more time for personal
relationships and families. Today everyone is busier. They may be,
in some sense, freer, but overall they have less time to enjoy
friends and families.
And, I have
to add immediately that I am in no way desirous that that old form of
society should return. What is called “communism” was not
democratic and it meant great suffering for many people.
Nonetheless,
our current social and economic system also has its victims, and they
are uncounted and countless.
However, my
point now is to speak about, write about, think about the character
of “Tomas”in Kundera's novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of
Being.”Tomas loses his job as a surgeon because he was outspoken about the hypocrisy of communists.
He agrees with his wife to
move to a small village to save her from the intrusions
of the secret police.
And, in the
end, he has a sort of life in a small village, a life which provides
him a degree of happiness or contentment. As he says at the book's
end, when asked by Tereza, his wife, whether he regrets the fact that
he gave up his career: a career is bullshit.
But, the same
terrible system which prevented him from realizing his skills as a
surgeon also allowed him to escape to a village. He didn't have to
worry about whether he would earn enough money to pay his bills and
pay for health insurance. A certain minimum standard was maintained.
Nothing of that sort is available today for men who lose their jobs.
And I simply
don't believe that the choices are: either the repressive system
called “communism”or a totally insecure life within capitalism. I
can't see why people cannot be guaranteed a decent life. However, I
do not see that we are heading in that direction today. Rather,
things are getting worse. The only sign of hope is the willingness
of people to go into the streets to express their dissatisfaction
with the status quo.
Appendix
“If dating
and mating is in fact a market place---and of course it is......”
----added
emphasis, Kate Bolick, “All the Single Ladies”, Atlantic
Monthly 2011, accessed on line 18.11.2012;
Of course, dating and mating are not a market place...........
Homework
assignment for Professor Bolick:
Read and
study Chapter Four of Robin Hahnel's The ABC's of Political
Economy; A Modern Approach; Pluto Books, London and
Sterling VA, 2002.
In brief, the
argument I would make is that dating and mating simply are not
markets because the conceptual apparatus of markets does not allow
for justice, or fairness or anything that a civilized human being
cares about. You can conceive of your relationships with human
beings in that manner, but you will thereby narrowly reduce
(distort/over-simplify) yourself and your friends—and what you are
really feeling, thinking.
Recommended
Reading
I continue to
believe that the most enlightened account of this trend is provided
by the therapist, Harriet Fraad.
http://rdwolff.com/content/letters-and-politics-economist-richard-wolff-and-psychotherapist-harriet-fraad
http://rdwolff.com/content/letters-and-politics-economist-richard-wolff-and-psychotherapist-harriet-fraad
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