Since the vote was almost even split between “The Future of Work” and the “Democrats and Class Politics,” I’ve decided to do a bit of both. The required readings for our final week are:
Future of Work
- Aaron Benanav, “A World Without Work?” Dissent (Fall 2020)
- Chloe Watlington, “Who Owns Tomorrow?” Commune.
The Democrats and Class Politics
- Brent Cebul, “Supply-Side Liberalism: Fiscal Crisis, Post-Industrial Policy, and the Rise of the New Democrats,” Modern American History (2019).
- Gabe Winant, “Professional-Managerial Capitalism,” N+1.
Below are some additional (NOT REQUIRED) readings and the readings from the other topics we entertained:
Future of Work: for those that want to read a more fleshed out version of Aaron’s argument, see his two-part essay below
- Aaron Benanav, “Automation and the Future of Work 1” New Left Review, II/119 (September-October 2019), pp. 5-38.
- Aaron Benanav, “Automation and the Future of Work 2” New Left Review, II/120 (November-December 2019), pp. 117-146.
On the Democrats, see Matt Stoller, “How Democrats Killed their Populist Soul,” The Atlantic.
LABOR, RACE, AND MASS INCARCERATION
- John Clegg, Adaner Usmani, “The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration,” Catalyst
- Jack Norton, David Stein, “Materializing Race: On Capitalism and Mass Incarceration,” Spectre.
- Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “How Do We Change America?” The New Yorker, June 8, 2020.
I read both the readings under democrats and class politics. Brent Cebul’s “Supply Side Liberalism” was informative but a tedious read. The article focuses on the birthing of new liberals in the 1970s in the democratic party that shifted more towards the center to adopt and push neoliberal policies. “Market became an essential underwriter of social progress,” as tax cuts for the rich and financial deregulations continued. As a result, Brent writes, ” as inequality exploded in the new millennium, it became clear that New Democrats had lost sight of more than just the places and people the new economy had left behind.”
My knowledge of the US political system is only a few years old, and with what I have experienced the democratic party has been a big disappointment and it’s very hard to see much hope unless the country moves away from bipartisan politics.
I really enjoyed reading Gabe Winant’s, “Professional-Managerial Capitalism,” after the reading because it gave a clearer picture of who these new democrats were as a “professional-managerial class.” Professional Managerial Class is a new form of class formulated by the Ehrenreichs in the late 1970s, post 20th centuries “monopoly capitalism” as a “new middle class, whose purpose was to supervise the accumulation process and keep the unruly proletariat in line.”: They are professionals like researchers, engineers, teachers, doctors, nurses, managers, etc. The new democrats of the ’70s to present were a product of this class and I appreciated the insight on how the PMC enrolled black members after the civil rights to further their politics across race. Gabe ends on a hopeful note with examples, like occupying wall street as an effort to realign the interests of the PMC and the working class. I think there are shifts towards the left, especially among POCs and working-class white folks or at least I am hopeful that we are moving towards this realignment of interests between the PMC and the working class because without this solidarity across class it will be very difficult to get rid of capitalism.
Questions:
What is supply-side economics, how is it different from Reagan’s trickle-down economics?
What would it take for the US to adopt a non-bipartisan system? Can we envision a labor political party and would it survive?
I think Tsering’s take on the Gabe Winant article and its connection to the Supply Side Liberalism piece was right on the money, especially in picking up on the New Democrats’ ability to work across racial lines in enlarging the black professional class. Although it wasn’t always clear what Cebul’s thesis was in their piece, the fact is that the New Democrats espoused politics that greatly empowered the professional class, while letting the DNC’s relationship to the working class languish and in many parts of the country, die. These days especially there is a new focus on the PMC, in trying to diagnose both the constituencies of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who Winant discussed in the beginning of his piece. Some feel that the PMC is a distinct class that is directly antagonistic to the working class, while working as the managers and supervisors of capital. Others feel that the heyday of the PMC has come and gone and is now undergoing a process of proletarianization which *should* make them more amenable to cross-class alliances with the working class, as Tsering mentioned with Occupy. Personally, I feel that the professional managerial class is somewhat of a pseudo-class since their relation to the means of production is so ambiguous, and it seems that critics are mostly talking about cultural affectations instead of employing hard Marxist analysis.
Either way, it’s an open question whether the working classes and the PMC can forge an alliance to overcome capital. I think a certain amount of scrutiny is necessary when talking about the PMC, because it is a “class” with questionable allegiances and allies at times. However, in the last five years we have seen great movement from members of the now precarious PMC to win universal social goods for all people, and it takes a pretty cynical person to see that as anything but encouraging. Members of the “post-left” will cynically attempt to criticize policies like student debt cancellation and Medicare For All as ploys to uniquely benefit the PMC, since college is uniquely a calling card of the professional class and many of its members are under or uninsured. It makes me wonder if the same was said about England’s National Health Service in the 1940’s, whose existence in Britain is nearly unassailable. What IS clear is that the position of the professional class is fading, as did industrial union workers in the 1970’s. The coders and non-profit employees will soon feel the squeeze, and it is of the utmost importance who they ally themselves with. The boss or the rank and file?
1. What is an argument for the professional managerial class as its own distinct Marxist class category with its own unique relation to the means of production, without making a cultural argument?
2. Writers have no problem diagnosing the political tendencies, cultural affectations, and professions of the PMC because by and large, writers and journalists come from the PMC. What would the same look like for the contemporary working class?
I opted to read the article written by Chloe Watlington “ Who Owns Tomorrow? ” .
At first glance, the opening title of the article didn’t seem to connect anywhere close to the subjects thus far studied in the Labor class. Topics such as Economics, Labor movements, or Politics didn’t seem to correlate with the title. But little did I know, each topic had everything to do with what the author was conveying.
For starters, I totally related to her feelings about the death by suicide of her one and only brother.
In the late 80’s, I also lost an only brother, although not by suicide, but by the danger of over consumption of alcohol and drug abuse. I agree that his death was a death of despair because he too became a victim. A whole victim to a World not structured for a young black man in the 80s to survive, constantly fighting against all the odds stacked against him. If I was to compare her story to mine, and her brother to mine, I would say it is quite the same.
The author is also convincing in her analysis of a society that cares about a person’s credit score or, a W2 statement and nothing about their wellbeing. These types of stories of deaths of despair will continue to cycle and grow as the worlds current state of the health pandemic threatening the livelihood of each and every one of us soars. I am certain that there have been plenty deaths by suicide and drug overdoses since March of this year, so the total count of deaths by despair will constantly rise along with the unemployment rate, housing evictions, and consumer debts responsibilities.
Another thing which came to mind after reading this was the Maslow hierarchy theory of the five (5) human needs that dictate a person’s behavior. It identifies safety, love and belonging, esteem needs, and self – actualization. When these securities are absent from some people lives it’s hard for them to function in life.
Wow. This was some dismal reading this week. The Watlington piece was devastating and Benanev made me very anxious, to say the least. I don’t really buy the premise that robots are going to take our jobs away. We have seen declines in capital investment, as a whole in the U.S. Unskilled labor has been inexpensive and automation requires highly skilled engineers, technicians, mechanics, expensive spare parts, and constant monitoring which requires workers who require training. I took a breather and thought the Winant article might be a respite from all this gloom. I was wrong. It made me very angry. I’m not so sure that, especially after the 2008 downturn, being in the professional-managerial class necessarily means being in the middle class as well, especially in high-priced cities. The Cebul piece was a big help in understanding the past 40 years of economic decline for a big chunk of America. This period has a lot of moving parts as compared to this rest of last century. The big takeaway is that we’ve been consistently duped, but that most Americans (and I’m complicit to large extent) kept supporting programs and leaders who were justifying funneling money from the poor to the rich, while we sat back and thanked them for taking the focus away from our economic plight. They plotted, rigged the system, and destroyed even the pretense of the American Dream while we applauded every low-cost, weak social reform which changed little beyond what had mostly become societal norms already.
1. What are steps we can take to insure that the PMC and remaining skilled workers don’t get their compensation diluted further?
2. Did unions take any concrete steps to attempt to stop any of this decline? If so, what?
I completely agree with David what depressing readings! It was interesting to read the Cebul piece and see the initial choices that would eventually lead to the Professional-Managerial Class as well as to this Tech concern. I found that parts of the Cebul piece where he discussed how some Democrats just abandoned working-class issues to focus on venture capital and economic growth both incredibly upsetting and very clarifying. Talk about just choosing the easy road. Something I noticed while reading the Benanev piece that was brought up again during the Cebul piece is that these issues of Technology and advancement and progress are sort of sexy and interesting, it’s all about the future and robots and I think allows politicians an excuse to ignore the tough issues. Jobs are disappearing, money is harder to come by, inequality is only getting worse, and as the Watlington piece so plainly shows those issues have very real and painful repercussions.
I do agree that I think the Professional-Managerial Class piece misses something though I’m not sure exactly what. It’s tough for me to buy into the delineation of that class along professional lines I think because, as Benanev’s piece points out, manufacturing jobs and working-class jobs as a whole are disappearing. And people like social workers, teachers etc are lumped into the PMC when in reality salaries in those positions are, on the whole, lower than someone who works as a contractor or a plumber (due, I’m sure, to unions) but it fractures the definition Winant lays out in a way that makes it difficult for me to buy into the premise as a whole. I know the PMC is not solely about salary but I question the class aesthetics that lump all of those groups together. The piece does acknowledge the Ehrnreich’s definition of class which makes clear that class is something shifting which does help explain away my issue, but I still feel something missing. I also bristle pretty hard at the way he separates Sanders and Warren ideologically and politically. His analysis says that their methods would end with very different results but I actually think that’s backwards. Sanders and Warren’s ideologies are different, they start from different beliefs, but if you look at their goals, and especially their policy platforms from their campaigns, they are close to identical. I did find the piece very compelling even with my disagreements. Winant’s analysis about the PMC serving as a buffer between the working class and the capitalists and the ways in which they helped to solidify neoliberalism is reflected in both Cebul and Benanev’s pieces.
I appreciated in Benanev’s and Watlington’s pieces the decision to include a vision or possibility for the future. It helped after reading how bad we have it and how far we have to go.
Questions:
1) I find it hard to believe that manufacturing jobs will come back in a meaningful way and this, to me, is the center of Benanev’s economic beliefs. If those manufacturing jobs do not come back, what does our economy need to look like to serve everyone?
2) Can anyone in the PMC (Winant’s definition) truly be a radical? Does class interrupt intention/desire/belief so much that someone with an office job fundamentally could not be a part of working-class movement politics?
I read “Who Owns Tomorrow”? by Chloe Watlington and “A World Without Work “by Aaron Benanav. I think that the general consensus with Watlington was yes, it was pretty depressing and I’m not sure if there was a deeper meaning behind the story other than her brother passing. Not to sound unsympathetic, but quite a few people have gone through what Watlington went through and if they are insinuating that their brother died because he was a victim of a capitalistic society or because his American Dream was not realized, to me, isn’t this the same thing that Black Americans have been talking about? Where they only cognizant of inequalities that people like her brother faced only because they were personally affected, and this hit close to home? Reading Watlington’s essay on his despair made me remember that during the Great Depression, when the stock market crashed, people jumped out of windows committing suicide and also when Bernie Madoff was arrested his son and other people involved committed suicide as well. This is a capitalistic society and even during this pandemic, Americans hold the economy at a higher standard than health, nothing has changed. Of course, having a job gives you a sense of security, but depending on the type of job you have, it can affect your mental health as well. If you don’t have a sense of self of who you are, a job is not going to do that for you.
Benanav’s piece was good and I think that even before the pandemic, we have been heading down this road anyway. Just like that Charlie Chaplin short that we watched in class, businesses are interested in maintaining their bottom line and if a machine/computer can do the job that a human being can do, why not? I actually have a friend that works whose brother works a car manufacturing job in Georgia (Kia I believe). I was pretty surprised because it is rare that you hear of someone who actually works in a factory but the jobs do exist out there and they do have excellent benefits. Although robots are involved in some aspects of the job a human person is still needed (at the moment anyway) for tasks that a robot/computer cannot do, but I can see that change in the future. Outside factory work, we already are using self-checkout at stores, self-check in at the airport, virtual doctor visits and most recently (supposedly) a robot was involved in the assassination of an Iranian scientist. And when pilots fly a plane, who is flying it? Who’s to say that if a country goes to war, we would be fighting alongside robots in the near future. You just never know. Even during the pandemic, drones were used in some places to deliver food or books to people that needed it. If computers can do all of that who knows what they could be capable of in the future.
Aaron Benanav’s article in *Dissent* was *totally* not depressing as I begin my post-Union Semester job search! Rising underemployment? Fantastic! I love not putting my skills to use. All sarcasm and agita aside, Benanav’s article was very interesting. His analysis (as depressing as it is) largely lines up with my thoughts about the future of work. Personally, I’m pretty cynical about the “automation” discourse. Benanav is critical of utopian automation theorists and it is here that I really agree with his analysis. Automation utopias don’t really sound utopian to me; they sound more dystopian. I don’t trust Silicon Valley techno-capitalists to deliver a future not built upon misery and exploitation.
I also really agree with Benanav’s thoughts regarding economic growth. Benanav discusses how the shift to the service sector in work has produced the stagnate economy we live and work in. However, is growth really all that important? Economists such as Kate Raworth have written about the need to move past models of growth due to the fact that growth is exploitative and destructive in an ecologically fragile world. Raworth and others suggest we shift toward a low-growth, regenerative economy that would totally upend traditional models of how we think about the economy. In his *Dissent* article, it seems that Benanav largely agrees with this post-growth drive for a world in which “everyone is guaranteed access to housing, food, clothing, sanitation, water, energy, healthcare, education, child and elder care, and means of communication and transportation, without exception.” To me, this is a world worth fighting for and it sounds much more desirable than the automation utopias of Silicon Valley techno-capitalists.
(Back to the topic of depressing reading material I won’t really comment much on Chloe Watlington’s article. It was very powerful and much of the material resonated, but hit too close to home in a few spots.)
Anyway, I also found the reading for the Democrats and class politics topic really interesting. This is an issue/theme I’ve been really interested in lately. Even though it’s an optional reading I highly recommend folks check out Matt Stoller’s piece in *The Atlantic*. I don’t always agree with Matt Stoller, but it’s a pretty solid analysis; however, I think Thomas Frank does a better job of articulating Stoller’s argument in books like *Listen, Liberal* and his recent *The People, No*. Stoller’s *Goliath* is also worth checking out even if I had quite a few disagreements with his way of framing antimonopoly history.
Brent Cebul’s piece was excellent. This paper was totally up my wheelhouse as someone interested in the Democratic Party’s history along with the political economy of American liberalism. I loved how Cebul argued against the prevailing view that the New Democrats were a response to Reaganite conservatism and argued instead that the New Democrats’ focus on supply-side economic issues was a result of the fiscal crises and economic issues of the 1970s. I’ll be thinking about this paper a lot and revisiting his arguments quite often, I think.
Gabriel Winant’s piece was super interesting and reflects a lot of the thoughts I’ve had about the so-called professional-managerial class (PMC). Personally, I believe that the issue of the PMC is a major problem for working-class politics. When I was in undergrad the work I wanted to pursue was essentially a form of PMC work such as working at a think tank or nonprofit. However, I’ve slowly become more skeptical and critical of think tank and nonprofit work. To crib a phrase from the late David Graeber I see this field as “bullshit” work. Progressive think tanks have a role to play, but I can’t help but wonder why they still exist if they have such wonderful ideas about how to fix the economy or our political system? Fixing problems for the PMC would essentially undermine their work and would threaten their extinction. There is a vested interest among the PMC for problems to go unsolved so that they can peddle their “expertise” on hot-button issues plaguing the modern world.
(Side note: I haven’t been on Twitter in months, but I’m pretty sure Gabriel Winant follows me. I have no clue why he would follow me, but there you have it.)
Questions:
1.) What steps can we take today to foster a post-growth, regenerative future?
2.) What role do you see for the PMC in working-class politics?
I choose to read “Who Owns Tomorrow?” by Waltington Chloe. This reading, in real-time really, brought in to focus how corrupt this country is when it comes to the standard of living. Waltington brings up her brother’s “death by despair”, that is technically a suicide, but she says there is more to than a death being deemed a suicide. There is a lack of hope and fairness in this country that causes the average man to no longer want to live in this world. Waltington’s brother died with student loan debt, what appeared to be a mediocre job, an alcoholic, all while still trying to better himself. A quote in the article “Rodney worked the festival circuit with such enthusiasm was because it freed him from the debt collectors. If the he worked any job for longer than six months, student-loan creditors were able to find him and garnish wages.” What was even sadder is that after his death the student loan people called their mother after his death to remind her that even in his tragic death he still has a debt to pay. Relating to this reading is almost all the millennials that have tried to figure out ways to overcome these student loan debtors. I myself have put in for an income driven plan and still feel despair when I see the amount I owe in student loans rise and my payments not even putting a dent. Waltington even mentions how more people are dying of drugs and alcohol in one of the richest countries.
1. Will this new administration coming in to office really take on student loans?
2. When will this country work for the poor/ average man instead of on the side of the rich?
I really agree with Jay’s analysis of the Winant article. While it reoriented my thinking on the PMC in a lot of ways, he misses this huge point of analysis on the PMC’s very existence that Jay pointed out. While it made me more sympathetic to the idea that socialist transformation is going to require some degree of PMC realignment, which to some extent (I think overstated by Winant) has happened, a big warning that I would add to this line of thinking is that a PMC led or dominant movement would be ineffective and and most likely benefit the interests of capital due to the aforementioned reason of the very basis of existence for the PMC, specifically PMC intellectuals. I think this is the tendency of the way the socialist movement and unfortunately the DSA is heading for lack of self-criticism and an analysis on the matter. While radical solidarity is possible, and powerful when it happens, this kind of action requires a resistance against the PMC’s natural impulses. Bringing this to the labor movement specifically: the NYC Teachers Union in the 30’s (communist controlled) fought for industrial unionism in schools: the organization of janitors, nurses, cafeteria workers, teachers etc into the same union. Since the crushing of the TU by Cold War repression, professional unionism has prevailed in much of teacher’s unions and prevented the radical social movement unionism type orientation that made the TU so powerful and paradigm-shifting. The AFT’s motto is “A union of professionals,” on its very face trying to distance itself from the non-professional workers that make schools run. PMC social frameworks therefore have material implications on the direction of the labor movement, in my view, in many counterproductive ways.
1. What implications does the, albeit highly debated, existence of the PMC have for the professional labor movement? Specifically, how has the rise to dominance of professional unionists affected the labor movement?
2. What kind of social transformation is needed to reverse the trend of increasing deaths of despair?
Should issue a correction, the TU was not an industrial union, I was mistaken on this history – my bad!
I agree with David that a lot of automation discourse gets overblown. There have been technological advancements throughout history and the culture of labor has transformed with them. The difference now is that US society has been organized in a way to deplete the manufacturing sector, and now must adapt. Benanev proposes a renewed industrial policy, but I am skeptical. Keynes famously had a vision of leisure accompanying great technological advancement, because he imagined the role of work in society was to produce enough goods/ services to allow society to continue functioning, not as an end that summed up a humans individual value. But he was wrong, or if I were an optimist, his timeline was just a little off.
Benanev shows that economic growth has slowed down considerably since that golden post-WWII era, and with it the demand for labor, and subsequently labor power has diminished. The government response to decreasing growth has been austerity, which has caused material and political harm throughout the world. He posits that businesses would largely rather shed jobs and impose austerity than invest in an automated future. The result of these lost jobs, and generally worse conditions in employment, is chronic underemployment for workers. The only solution for Benanev is to democratize production, which is essentially granting workers agency in how we create and distribute goods. This amounts to a dramatic reorganization of our economy. We’ve spoken in class about different theories how to bring about this necessary change as politics is a slow-moving endeavor. Benanev kind of shrugs off the method for reorganizing society with gestures towards “organizing.” This is a great start but organizing is real, complicated work. As Carmen said in her reply, people are so focused on mere survival, it is hard to expend energy on actualization, let alone solidarity.
Questions:
Unions are, obviously, mechanisms for “democratizing production.” What are some ways unions have failed to do this, and how can they adapt to the future?
I like Carmen’s response on “Who Owns Tomorrow” (which was well-complimented with “A World without Work”) because she captured the personal approach to broad disparities used by Watlington in her article. The personal narrative paired with general trends is a compelling writing style, because readers can more easily connect with the materials. One thing Carmen didn’t mention and that I’d like to add, is that the ending of the article is inspiring, but too vague. The sentiment is “if we want things to change, then we have to change them together!” This kind of an ending is valid and thought provoking, but not as effective as a clearer path forward like in “A World Without Work” where “democratizing production is the only solution if we want a “sustainable, post-scarcity planet”. When things are pretty bad and looking to get worse, it’s nice to have a proposed plans forward instead of many people independently pondering the topic. (I really liked how Carmen included Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because Watlington provides a case study that supports greater trends which show that when basic needs are not being met or are barely being met, coping, survival, and despair set in. Benanav reiterates this as well, providing potential futures (imagined by DeBois) where everyone has their basic needs met and everyone serves the common good with enough time to engage in art and leisure.
1. Why is the automatization of work pushed as a narrative instead of secular stagnation? (Or why is is more widely accepted by the general public?)
1.5 Are the rich really focusing on Mars??
2. Watlington poses that we must “carve out the spaces of a fuller human flourishing, which the cold-hearted society of the cash nexus will never provide”, but is that enough?
I have to third the sentiments made by David and Hollis in that the readings this week, “Who Owns Tomorrow” and “A World Without Work” were very heavy for me especially given the current state of the world. Although both articles offer commendations towards an upward climb towards social equality or an “economy of abundance”, there are major struggles to overcome in order for those theories to come into play.
It was very disparaging to read Watlington’s account of her brother’s Rodney’s death and other “deaths of despair” in the United States as well as the daily suicide rates in Puerto Rico. So many people must share or have entertained the same sentiments of those described in the article that have chosen to commit suicide as a means to ending emotional and economic struggles and its heartbreaking. As referenced by Watlington and Benanav, as residents of “richest country in the world” surely we should be able to attain a “world of abundance” wherein every member of society will be guaranteed access to all of their basic needs regardless of their labor contribution.
They promote ideas like W.E.B Du Bois’ “future industrial Democracy” which would renovate the inner artist is everyone, immersing ourselves as one in social movements based on our struggles to move towards a better world, going to war against our own decline and finding each other inside the storm and fighting our way out. All of those steps would first require racial equality in order and are just grandiose ideas for people of color who are currently struggling to survive 2 pandemics, COVID and racism. There are 2 different starting lines for this race and when that disparity is eliminated we can tackle this recession
I think both the future of work reading and the Democratic Party readings complimented each other well. First off, Chloe Watlington’s absolutely devastating piece highlighted the human toll of deindustrialization and the collapse of the New Deal Order. Alongside it, Benanav diagnoses the problem and makes a strong case that our most serious problem is the over-supply and under-demand of labor within a completely stagnant economy. Rather than fear automation, he contends, we should instead be worries about this chronic underemployment heightening economic inequality and leaving workers more and more vulnerable. The takeaway from both of these pieces however, is that we need to be building highly-organized movements for democratic control of our resources, rather than some technological solution. Carmen noted the sense of sorrow that Watlington evokes. A successful movement will not only be able to challenge material inequality, but in diagnosing the problem, turn workers away from inward despair and towards something more productive and hopeful.
Going from these to the Cebul reading added an additional political understanding of how we got here. Significantly, I think one important takeaway is that the shift taken by the New Democrats its more sincere than we often think of, and how it was still indebted to the some of the assumptions of the New Deal order. Of course, as Tsering noted, the Democrats couldn’t help but absorbing new, conservative ideologies and so while they could recognize problems, the liberal imagination had become so atrophied that there was no way to address them besides doubling down on entrepreneurialism, etc.
1) Looking at our political institutions now, how do they play into our drive to build the kind of world Benanav rages for? Do we need new ones?
2) Are the ideologies underpinning the New Democrats distinct from the conservatism of the time? Or are they looking at the same solutions from two different different angles?