wage slavery

" A larger part of the worker's own surplus product . . . is continually being transformed into additonal capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments, make additions to their consumption fund of clothes, furniture, etc. , and lay by a small reserve of money. But these things no more abolish the exploitation of the wage-labourer, and his situation of dependence, than do better clothing, food and treatment, and a larger peculium, in the case of a slave. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of the accumulation of capital, only means in fact that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-labourer has already forged for himself allow it to be loosened somewhat."

--Marx, Capital, Volume One, "The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation", added emphasis

Two conclusions follow:

1. It is an error for the citizens of the USA today to gaze backwards to the 1960's with envy and sadness. For, the citizens of the USA were equally wage slaves in the past----even if their chains today are longer and heavier.

2. It is an error to envy Europeans too much, as they are slaves just as much as are the citizens of the USA. Only their chains are longer and lighter.

(Nonetheless, I think I am reasonable to prefer a longer and lighter chain.....)

gruesome grimaces

Already in the 1990's I began to notice the evils of television sets in public places. I know that because Professor Lucas, hero of "A Neurotic in an Exotic Land", my novel whose early chapters were composed in the mid 1990's, complains about the evils of the televisions in the Chicago airport.

This evil has only increased in the intervening years.

Today I found myself in the waiting room of a hospital, in a room dominated by a "large screen" television. I managed to find the volume switch and turn it to the silent setting. Nonetheless, the images on the screen continued to be horrifying: young, healthy people distorting their faces, their eyes, their lips into an exaggerated imitation of living creatures engaged in normal conversation. It made my head spin and made me want to throw up.

I spoke to a man in the room about this. His laconic comment was: "That's why they have a mute switch." What a cocky, arrogant answer! No, the mute switch is not the solution. What we have here is the tip of an ugly ice-berg. Those are not real people, or they are real people engaged in unnatural acts. And it is a case of anti-culture. The fact that he could regard it as "normal" speaks volumes about the low level of culture in the United States. Indeed, in Slovakia, I had teenage students who clearly formulated the proposition ( and without prompting from me) that while they had a real life, with things to do, places to go, and people to meet, they had no need of television.

Earlier I had watched a Spanish language channel featuring music. Again, with the sound off, the exaggerated, ritual gestures of the singers and dancers seemed grotesque. Every woman was dressed in a way to draw attention to the fact that she was a woman. And the men, too, seemed to be grotesque parodies.

It was hellish.

And then there was the conversation segment of the program: four bimbos sitting in four chairs talking to one another in an artificial way. Yet, I thought I could discern a difference in the intelligence levels of the four imitators of human life. One looked at the camera with stupid sincerity. Most seemed completely unaware of the inanity of what they were doing. They believed it. But what they were doing, I would say, did not even reach the level of bad acting.

Only one woman, I thought, laughed in a way that suggested that she alone, of four people, realized what a pathetic pretense the whole thing was.

GET ME OUT OF HERE!

Note

Talk about arrogance and delusions of power. A stern note on the television instructed all those present that they were not allowed to "adjust" the volume. The hell with that! I am only sorry I didn't shut the god damn thing OFF! WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? HOW CAN THEY IMAGINE THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO TORTURE US WITH SUCH CRAP? And what idiotic passivity that people accept this intrusion!

oppressive encounters

If I were to die from some form of over-sensitivity, it would occur at the local YMCA, during a casual conversation with a stranger. I cannot learn to keep my mouth shut. Nor can I learn to follow through on the implications of even the briefest conversation. What I hear has countless implications which overwhelm me. Most of all there seems to be a sort of satisfaction or conviction that the status quo is good, a kind of blindness about the inadequacy of existing institutions--(Possibly based on the conviction which seems to be secular religion locally that anyone who has a job, owns a home, and two or three trucks, has a wife, a dog or two and three children, must be happy---after all, what more could there be?) Thus, if your home is about to be taken away from you---something someone did tell me about---and if there is no legal basis for that attempt, you need a lawyer. But, don't worry: use Legal Aid.

I was fool enough to suggest that such a thing simply shouldn't happen, that it was nothing more than a manifestation of a broader pattern. My words were ignored. So, too, the fact that (as the story was told), this was not the first time those holding the mortgage had attempted to steal the man's home......

My suggestion fell on deaf ears. It was naive of me to expect anything else. And I found myself wondering about the possibility of change. And what of my own personal satisfaction--or rather complete lack of it?

So long as my life is dominated by fractured conversations of this type, or a worse sort of conversation in which there is always an agenda in the background, I shall have no genuine relationship with any other human being. And so we come round, once again, to the simple fact of my deep dissatisfaction with every element of this thing they call my life. If your words fall to the ground prior to reaching the ears of another sentient being, you are talking to yourself. You can begin to believe that you are alone in the world, and that the creatures who have the form of human beings are zombies--or worse, that they never were and never will be truly human.

ugly

This place is unspeakably ugly.

So, too every element of every day, the food, the people, every moment of the day,

is misery and ugliness.....

gmooh

El Pasoans are assholes

Once again, it is 1:30 in the morning, and somebody has put their dog outside.

And that dog is barking non-stop....

asshole...

Domhoff link

A couple of days ago, there were problems with a link I posted.

That has now been corrected.

The link was to an article by G. William Domhoff, a sociologist who has documented the existence of a ruling class within the society of the USA.

Though I knew about Domhoff's work previously, I learned of this particular link at Brian Leiter's "Leiter Reports".

Incidentally, Domhoff describes recent research which shows that citizens of the USA do not know how much of the society's wealth is in the hands of a small number of people. Moreover, when asked about the ideal distribution of wealth, citizens describe a society much more egalitarian than the existing society.

(Myself, I am not inclined to hang around waiting for a change, and hoping that I won't get run over by one of the enormous trucks that people in the USA like so much .....I'd rather leave.....but I've been saying that for a couple of years.....and things have not gotten better...not one iota......)

high school philosophy

Brian Leiter, whose blog I regularly follow, and whose links I regularly recommend (see my link to Domhoff in the previous post), has a link to an essay about teaching high school philosophy in Brazil.

I've had the experience of teaching philosophy in high schools. I taught something called

"Theory of Knowledge" in two different "International Schools" in Slovakia.

First of all, I must warn anyone who knows something about philosophy that what's being called "Theory of Knowledge" is not epistemology; it's not the sort of thing that's called "Theory of Knowledge" in textbooks or course descriptions in the English-speaking world. In itself, that fact is odd.

There are many details one might reveal in a reasonably long discussion. I haven't got the time for that now.

I did, however, want to say that my experience with the attempt to teach Philosophy in two different Slovak high schools was almost uniformly unrewarding.

Don't get me wrong. I won't say that every student was hostile. Nor will I say that most students were indifferent. I can't say that my students in the two settings were necessarily more prejudiced than, say, students I taught at the University of Toledo (where I taught for four years).

However, the very bureaucratic structure in which my course was embedded assigned little importance to the course I was teaching. Students got a very small number of points toward their degree from doing well in the class.

Consequently, the very brightest students focused upon other subjects, and characteristically never read what I assigned (or asked) them to read. And, I'm not an idiot either. So, when I realized that students weren't (in all probability) going to ever read what I assigned them to read, the whole exercise began to resemble a bizarre sort of shadow boxing.

To be sure, there were talented students who read things a month or so after I had assigned them, and then even became excited about them. In the meantime, the course would have moved on to another subject.

Incidentally, the organizational structure within which these lessons happened is called the "IBO". I've blogged about their version of teacher training before. I haven't a good word to say about them, but I can add a link to that on-line essay later....