POL320 - lecture - March 25, 2009

Sheep Example

• subordinate groups accept and internalize their subservience
• equality - given 5 fat sheep and 95 thin
• richest grass, shadiest pastures,
• how do the few subjugate the many
• by believing that the wolves will go for the slow fat and delicious 5 sheep as opposed to the 95 other sheep
• it is a ratio thing wolves can only eat so many sheep

Elites

• in each generation their is a dominate elite
• their subordination is internalized
• ruling ideas express the dominate material relations
• they rule as thinkers

Propoganda

• if you are going to run things
• run how people think
• because influencing how people think influences how people act

separation of powers

• marx's thinks that the separation of power emerged because the ruling class lost dominance
• if it can regain dominance it will and the separation of powers will erode

The Role of Intellectuals in Public Life

• Marx subordinates the role of the intellectual
• there are two roles of the intellectual
• persuading their fellows leaders to believe and internalize the legitimacy of their role
• it is easy to be a king when you believe you are anointed by god
• those who can do, those who can't teach

revolution
* presupposes a revolutionary class

• a prerequisite is a transformation of the means of production
• a new norm in relations of production
• weakness of ideas independent of their source of power in production

Page 173

• the ideas people find pursuasive are not random
• they reflect the relationships of production

morality

• in the feudal world
• honour and loyalty reinforced the aristocratic land owning class
• stability depended on loyalty
• honour regulated their behaviour toward their subordinates
• in the modern world honour and loyalty are not relevant
• they have largely replaced by dominate values such as freedom and equality
• these values are more useful to the market economy and capitalism
• with the exception of the Military which maintains a rigid and hierarchical system

critical legal studies

• critical distance is useful for forwarding the interests of the ruling class
• a school at harvard
• now why would bankers and wall street lawyers in training learn post modernism and marx?
• because it fosters a creativity when engaging with critics that allows them to appropriate the language of their adversary and polemically and sophisticly forward their interests

first principles

• ideas, power, technology
• what is the distinction between production and technology
• if ideas will only be attractive or unattractive based on how complimentry they are to the current means of production

Ideology

• ideology allows us to overlook glaring contradictions
• genovese - American Civil War
• what determines the degree of internalization?
• rationally it was in the interest of the south to negotiate with the disproportionately strong north

universal interests

• the only rational universally valid ideas
• a cyclical pattern - the dominate class is challenged by the revolutionary class
• it is crucial that a group must express themselves as framing the struggle as the struggle of all society against the ruling class

schools

• working class schools are taught differently than upper middle class schools
• in working class schools discipline is enforced with sanctions - you go you sit you listen
• in upper middle class school you are taught how to manage and rule
• a leader and a manager are two different things

power

• do people - physical and mental faculties, passed down ideas,

Communist Manifesto

A Political Document

• a pamphlet to be read by workers
• intended to rouse the worker to work

page 473

• you have nothing to lose but your chains - unite!
• how did we get to this point?
• oppressor and oppressed are in constant opposition
• more than two classes have existed at different times and places
• class struggle is the key to historical change
• what determines the means of production?

berbers

• They had certain rights outside of both the serfs and aristocrates
• they were limited and contained
• guilds - many constraints on possibilities -
• skills secure livelyhood but that is it
• no incentive to expand

cottage industry emerges

• the manufacturing sector supplanted the craftsmen
• wider division of labour
• ever growing markets
• steam and machinery are introduced
• constantly increasing means of producing more goods

No Reform, Revolution Only

• existence of the market creates and drives demand
• wider markets
• corporations consolidate and penetrate wider markets
• within feudal society new patterns of trade and methods of production emerge
• these practices strengthen a subordinate class
• reform is not an option revolution is necessary

Can't remember what this refers to

• the executive of the modern state is put on a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie
• a reflection of economic power

the autonomy of the state

• can the state act independently of economic forces
• can it act contrary to economic interests

Bourgeoisie

• Marx
• the bourgeoise is a revolutionary class
• they have stamped out the feudal class
• naked self interest now rules
• they exposed the lies that "man are bound to their natural superiors"
• the ideology of free trade
• how would you like your exploitation? shameless and brutal or veiled and mystical?

page 476

• like those who bemoan the demise of amateur athletics when professional athletes enter a new city
• edmund burke - we want our exploitation veiled with illusions to make life easier to live

Coping With Constant Change - Grapplin with the inherent instability of Capitalism

• fast paced constantly changing nature of capitalist society
• what is the new way of doing things?
• we don't do things the way it has always been done, because their might be a way to make a buck and cut a corner
• nothing stable in capitalism - in a blink of an eye firms enter and exit dominance

kill or be killed

• kill or be killed - the logic of capitalism
• all that is solid melts into air
• constant transformation
• it is demystifying
• it becomes hard to believe in eternal truths, intrinsic value
• norms change and are hard to maintain
• ideas can no longer be solidified

Malcolm Gladwell

• ability to cope with perpetual change -
• a mortgage, - outliers
• intensive commitment
• Protestant ethic - weber - an arms race,
• once it gets going - once anyone buys into the dynamics - then everyone get sucked in

Post Capitalist Production

• people are trying to catch the imagination, stimulate the mind
• my desires are not limited by how much money I have,
• I don't know how much money I have
• how much I have to spend does not influence how I spend my money
• I am less concerned about the technologies that change and more concerned about the technologies that stay the same

page 477

• a european superiority bias
• he is talking about the telegram when he refers to a communications technology
• with globalization the possibilities for development in isolation are radically reduced

tutorial

Morality

• moralizing
• production is always social
• in terms of freedom we can not look at it in terms of merely personal choices or putting your will into things - a la Hegel

the Alienation of Man from Man

• people no longer think of themselves as individuals but as competitors
• you must get the job, work longer, at the expense of others, zero sum

Freedom

• the realization of human freedom
• communism is seen as a promise that human freedom can be realized

Social Relations of Production - Superstructure

• the social relations of production refer to law, capital, the economy
• they are linked with productive forces, material social,
• the degree of advancement

what is the source of power, materials, technologies?

• is their a distinction between power, coercion and control
• what is the relationship between power and technology

What is the superstructure

• compare this to Hegel's conception
• norms are products of material productive forces
• keeping the dominant class in power, seize opportunity and try to hold on
• norms are epi-phenomenal
• Marx says that the state is not the realm in which human freedom is realized
• the state can only be understood after understanding the economic structure
• just as freedom precedes the individual, production precedes the state

Hegel Overlooks the Day to Day Activities

• Hegel has not fully grasped what is required for human freedom
• he has not grappled with the concrete activities of human beings in everyday life
• first you understand everyday life then you understand the family, civil society and the state

Reason

• Hegel - reason is developmental
• Marx - reason is
• distinction between technical knowledge, vs social knowledge
• reason is intimately tied to an understanding of reason

Foucoult

• Focoult breaks from Marx and his love of reason
• Marx thinks through reason that we can reconstitute and recapture human freedom
• materialist history

Distinction Between Reason and Ideology

• what we accept as rational is not what the dominate class tells us - that is ideology

reason

• distinction between material transformation of natural sciences
• philosophy and religion

dialectical history

• we use reason not by projecting and prescribing certain values
• reason is embedded in historical struggles
• there is a historical rationality behind them
• natural science determines when and how economies will evolve

Weber

• I think weber contradicts this notion
• he gives the example of China
• China developed gun powder, and suppressed its manufacture for centuries until they were invaded
• this suggests that the natural sciences alone do not determine the evolution of the economy
• the people who are inventors are the people in the dominate class and selectively choose what is invented
• the dominate class withholds critical knowledge

critical consciousness

• Marx's understanding of reason
• the economy can be deconstructed scientifically - a natural system
• we can never be certain what we unleash
• how can you subordinate ideas,
• he simultaneously disempowers ideas
• ideas are not taken seriously - they are epi-phenomenal

Bureaucracy

• bureaucracy can become indpendent with a rationality of its own - a special rationality
• ideas as autonomous and influence our consciousness

Technology

• so what is Marx's notion of technology
• what does he think a rational technique is?
• can it not be a philosophy?

real socialism

• major failure of russian revolution
• changing economy vs. changing consciousness
• you can't change the consciousness before you change the economy
• it was a top down process
• the van guard party educates the masses to consciousness and leave them to produce
• democratic worker counsels - practice is the best school
• revolution never happens because of grand ideals
• the role of the vanguard party was the spread consciousness

P+A+T

• political consciousness
• aesthetics - the senses
• the promise of species being
• you need high capitalism and technological development for socialism to be possible
• one of the real problems of russian revolution was over emphasis on technology at the expense of the aesthetics -
• human progress vs. social progress
• progress was reduced to material progress

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Help: wiki text quick reference

JUP460 - Please Ignore
patents
fisheries
toll
land

non rivalrous/ non excludable - AIR
non rivalrous/ excludable - PATENT/ TOLL BRIDGE
rivalrous/ excludable - PATENTS
rivalrous/ nonexcludable -

rivalrous

• if I have it you can't have it at the same time
• material goods
• finite amount of it

cree the big drum -
jenn grant

excludable

• selective exclusion
• a function of property rights
• you can't patent living things